The Illinois Supreme Court recently decided the case of Akeem Manago, a Deceased Minor, et al. v. The County of Cook, 2017 IL 121078. The Supreme Court overturned the appellate court’s decision to find that nothing in the statutory language of the Family Expense Act (750 ILCS 65/15 (West 2012)) or the Hospital Lien Act (770ILCS 23/1 et seq. (West 2012)) precludes a lien from attaching to a damage award recovered by or on behalf of an injured minor or limits the lien’s potential funding sources to sums earmarked for medical expenses.
This case arose out of an injury sustained by a minor who subsequently received treatment at a Cook County health facility. Cook County filed a lien in the matter to protect its rights of recovery. After a bench trial, the minor plaintiff was awarded $200,000.00. The trial judge declined to award any medical expenses because the plaintiff, mother did not show that she was obliged to pay her child’s hospital bills. The trial court also extinguished the lien held by Cook County for the bills incurred for the the medical services rendered to the minor child. Cook County appealed the ruling striking its lien. The First District agreed with the trial court and concluded that the lien was invalid because: (1) the plaintiff mother did not assign her right to claim medical bills as damages to her minor child, and (2) under the Hospital Lien Act, liens may only attach to recoveries for medical expenses, and here no such expenses were awarded. Cook County then appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, who reversed.
The plaintiff argued that a health care lien cannot attach to a minor’s tort recovery in the absence of an assignment of the parent’s cause of action for medical expenses owed under the Family Expense Act because the obligation to pay a child’s medical expenses belongs solely to the parent. In essence, the plaintiff argued, the minor is never responsible for paying his or her own medical expenses, the parents are. Therefore, no lien for medical expenses can attach to an award in favor of a minor. Moreover, no medical expenses were awarded by the trial judge. Cook County countered by arguing that there should be no attempt to harmonize the Hospital Lien Act and the Family Expense Act by adding exceptions and conditions to the statutes, namely that a lien cannot attach to a minor’s recovery. This, the County argued, is because doing so would violate rules of statutory interpretation. The Hospital Lien Act is clear, a health care facility “shall have a lien upon all claims and causes of actions of the injured person” and the lien “shall attach to any verdict, judgment, award, settlement, or compromise secured on behalf of the injured person.” 770 ILCS 23/10(a), 20 (West 2012).
The Illinois Supreme court, in its opinion, agreed with the County. The Hospital Lien Act’s explicit language states a lien may attach to all claims and causes of actions. The Court relied on that language and determined that it is not the Court’s responsibility to make policy; that function belongs to the legislature. Accordingly, the Hospital Lien Act explicitly allows a lien holder to recover monies from a minor recovery, even though–absent assignment–the law prevents a minor from claiming these medical expenses. Hopefully the Illinois legislative bodies will treat this as an invitation to revisit this language as it is clear there is at least some inconsistency between the two acts, as the appellate court found. In addition to holding a that a lien holder can invade a minor’s recovery whenever they recover in tort, it also seems suspect that any lien holder can attach its lien to any recovery regardless of whether there is an actual award for medical expenses. Plaintiffs must be conscious in their trial strategies knowing that if they do not submit medical expenses to a jury, minor or not, any lien holder can still come knocking.
The opinion can be found at: https://www.illinoiscourts.gov/Opinions/SupremeCourt/2017/121078.pdf
— Joseph A Konrad
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