Looney v. Meyer et al

Filing 37

Order: The defendants may not rely on the write-offs to argue or to suggest to the jury in any way that those reduced figures represent a fair and accurate assessment of plaintiff's overall non-economic damages (Re: 30 ). Judge James G. Carr on 12/27/17. (C,D)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO
WESTERN DIVISION

Ben Looney,

Case No. 3:15CV188
Plaintiff
v.

ORDER

Heidi Meyer, et al.,
Defendants

This is a personal-injury case arising from an automobile accident on I–75 in Wood County,
Ohio. (Doc. 4 at ¶¶8–16).
Trial is set to begin on Tuesday, January 9, 2018.
Pending is a motion in limine by plaintiff Ben Looney to exclude all evidence of “collateral
source benefits, workers’ compensation, pensions, and social security benefits.” (Doc. 30). For the
following reasons, I grant the motion in part and deny it in part.
A. Collateral-Source Rule
Under Ohio law, which controls in this diversity case, a defendant may not use evidence of
payments that a collateral source (usually an insurance company or a workers-compensation
program) made on the plaintiff’s behalf to reduce her liability for the damages that her negligence
proximately caused. Ginn v. Stonecreek Dental Care, --- N.E.3d ----, 2017-Ohio-4370, ¶18 (Ohio
App.); see also O.R.C. § 2315.20(A).

This principle is known as the collateral source rule, and it “assure[s] that the tortfeasor does
not benefit, by way of a reduced damage award, from payments that the plaintiff receives from an
independent third party.” Caruso v. Leneghan, 2014-Ohio-1824, ¶15 (Ohio App.).
Accordingly, the defendants may not introduce “evidence of any amount payable as a benefit
to the plaintiff as a result of the damages that result from” a defendant’s negligence from any “source
of collateral benefits [that] has” a subrogation right. O.R.C. § 2315.20(A).
B. Write-Offs
In a trio of cases, however, the Ohio Supreme Court has considerably cut back the protection
that the collateral-source rule affords.
In Robinson v. Bates, 112 Ohio St. 3d 17, 23 (2006), the court held that evidence of the
difference between “the original amount of a medical bill and the amount accepted as the bill’s full
payment is not a ‘benefit’ under the collateral-source rule.”
For that reason, the court explained, the common-law collateral-source rule does not prevent
defendants from introducing “evidence of the amount accepted by a medical care provider from an
insurer as full payment for medical or hospital treatment” to prove the reasonable value of such
treatment. Id. at 18. This is so, even though the amount accepted to satisfy a medical bill says more
about modern-day insurance practices than, from the provider’s standpoint, the reasonable value, in
light of the treatment the provider deemed necessary to treat the plaintiff’s injuries, of the plaintiff’s
medical expenses.
Moreover, as one commentator has observed, Robinson’s write-off rule “will likely lead to
lower economic damage awards as a result of the reductive nature of write-offs. If a jury uses the
reduced fees as indicators of the ‘reasonable and necessary’ value of the treatment, it will drastically
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lower the plaintiff’s economic damage award[.]” Hanson, Ohio’s Collateral Source Rule Following
Robinson v. Bates and the Enactment of Ohio Revised Code Section 2315.20, 40 U. TOL. L. REV.
711, 733 (2009).
The situation would worsen, moreover, were the defense able to argue that the jury should
view the discounted amount, rather than the billed amount, as the benchmark for assessing the
nature, extent, and consequences of the plaintiff’s injuries when fixing just compensation for those
injuries (rather than simply as his recovery for medical expenses). Allowing the defense to do so,
especially vis-a-vis non-economic damages, would give it an undeserved, and unjustifiable, windfall.
The court extended Robinson in Jacques v. Manton, 125 Ohio St. 3d 342 (2010).
There the court held that O.R.C. § 2315.20, which abrogated the collateral-source rule by
permitting defendants to introduce evidence of non-subrogated collateral-source payments, does not
apply to write-offs.
Finally, in Moretz v. Muakkassa, 137 Ohio St. 3d 171 (2013), the court held that evidence
of the amount accepted in satisfaction of a bill is admissible without the need for expert testimony.
In light of these cases, the defendants may introduce, to limit plaintiff’s recovery vis-a-vis
reasonably and necessarily incurred medical expenses, evidence of the amount that plaintiff’s
medical providers accepted as full payment. The evidence is admissible to prove only “the
reasonableness and necessity of charges rendered for medical and hospital care.” Jacques, supra,
125 Ohio St. 3d at 345 (emphasis supplied).
C. Relevance of the Write-Offs for Other Purposes
However, the amounts accepted to satisfy plaintiff’s medical bills are not relevant to the
jury’s task of determining just and fair compensation for plaintiff’s injuries and their consequences,
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including past and future pain and suffering. Accordingly, the defendants may not rely on the writeoffs to argue or to suggest to the jury in any way that those reduced figures represent a fair and
accurate assessment of plaintiff’s overall non-economic damages.1
So ordered.
/s/ James G. Carr
Sr. U.S. District Judge

1

In fact, I may instruct the jury that, in determining plaintiff’s just and fair compensation for
his injuries and their consequences, including past and future pain and suffering, the jury may
consider the amount billed, but not the amount accepted, in addition to the other evidence of record.
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