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Horizon/CMS Healthcare Corp. v. Auld8/24/2000
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If the statutes are reconciled as I propose, the Legislature's overriding goal of keeping health-care liability damages reasonably determinable and predictable in an effort to ameliorate the costs of the health-care system is still met. If one knows the amount of damages to be awarded under the cap and the prejudgment-interest rate, one can simply calculate the amount of prejudgment interest owed. Damages remain capped as dictated by article 4590i, section 11.02, but prejudgment interest can also be awarded as dictated by article 5069- 1.05, section 6(a).
Finally, I must agree with Auld's counsel that the Court has in effect granted a third motion for rehearing in Rose v. Doctors Hospital, 801 S.W.2d 841 (Tex. 1990). Prejudgment interest was awarded by the court of appeals in that case, and in its application for writ of error, the hospital's counsel, the same attorney who represents Horizon in this case, made the same argument that prejudgment interest had to be capped. The hospital explicitly repeated its argument that prejudgment interest had to be capped in its two motions for rehearing following this Court's opinions in Rose. Although the argument was not addressed by the Court in Rose, it was implicitly rejected by the Court's judgment that the plaintiffs "shall each recover from Doctors Hospital Facilities . . . prejudgment and postjudgment interest thereon at the legal rate."
Thus, instead of harmonizing article 4590i and the prejudgment- interest statute so as to give effect to both, the Court's reading at best ignores the mandatory language of the prejudgment-interest statute and at worst creates an unnecessary conflict between that statute and article 4590i, and an internal conflict between article 4590i's cap and its new prejudgment-interest section. If prejudgment interest is not included in the cap, all parts of both statutes can be given full effect for all claims; actual damages remain capped under article 4590i, and prejudgment interest is awarded on the judgment, with no violence done to the Legislature's express purpose and language in article 4590i. Accordingly, I dissent from the Court's resolution of the prejudgment- interest issue.
Deborah G. Hankinson Justice
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