Tavitas, J.
Case Summary
Frances L. Batchelder, special administrator of the estate (“the Estate”) of John E. Batchelder, M.D. (the “Decedent”), appeals from the trial court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of Indiana University Health Care Associates, Inc. d/b/a IUHP (“IUHP”) regarding the Estate’s medical malpractice action. We reverse and remand.
Issue
The sole issue on appeal is whether the trial court erred in granting IUHP’s motion for summary judgment and finding that IUHP was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
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The Estate argues that the trial court erred in entering summary judgment in favor of IUHP. Specifically, the Estate argues that: (1) setoff should be applied to the verdict; and (2) the trial court’s decision to apply the Mourouzis settlement setoff to a possible judgment against IUHP “conflicts with controlling precedent as well as the policy considerations that gave rise to such precedent[.]” Estate’s Br. p. 7. IUHP counters that a jury verdict in excess of the $1.25 million statutory cap must be reduced to the statutory cap prior to becoming a judgment; and “[o]nce reduced, the judgment should then be reduced by the amount of any payments received in settlement from another joint tortfeasor.” Estate’s App. Vol. II p. 26. IUHP maintains that, doing so, renders the Estate’s claim against IUHP moot because the Estate has already recovered $1.25 million.
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The Estate alleges that Mourouzis and IUHP are joint tortfeasors whose acts or omissions caused the Estate to suffer injury—namely, the Decedent’s death. The Indiana Comparative Fault Act, which replaced the common law defense of contributory negligence with a system for providing for the reduction of a plaintiff’s recovery in proportion to the plaintiff’s fault, “expressly exempted medical malpractice claims from its ambit[.]”…
Stated differently, “[u]nder the one satisfaction rule, where a plaintiff asserts that the wrongful acts of two or more joint tortfeasors caused a single injury, satisfaction of the loss by one tortfeasor releases all other joint tortfeasors.”…
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Here, in its order granting summary judgment for IUHP, the trial court found: “[T]here are no genuine issues as to any material fact, and [IUHP] is entitled to judgment as a matter of law[.]” Estate’s App. Vol. II p. 11. The record reveals that, at the hearing on IUHP’s motion for summary judgment, the Estate asserted that “the value of this case is between six and ten million [dollars].” Tr. Vol. II p. 11. Counsel for the Estate further argued:
[M]y first argument, Your Honor, is that the overall value of this case needs to be established first, that the issue is not ripe for decision-making because we don’t know what the value is. We know what the facts are and the allegations are. [Mourouzis] and [IUHP] are joint tortfeasors in this case. And the court in Everhart [ ] talks about the one satisfaction rule, and that is you can have joint tortfeasors but you can’t collect more than the case is worth. That’s the issue and that has been the law in Indiana forever, that you can’t collect more than the value of the case. My point is we don’t know the value of this case till we try it. This is way premature to try to establish the value of the case now before it’s even been tried.
Id. at 12-13.
The Palmer and Everhart decisions highlight a crucial omission in the instant case. In those cases, the jury or trial court determined the value of the case or the entirety of the recoverable damages incurred by the plaintiffs before the trial court applied any setoffs…
In the instant case, however, the trial court applied the setoff without first determining: (1) the value of the case or the extent of the Estate’s injury; and (2) whether the Mourouzis settlement satisfied the Estate’s injury and made the Estate whole. Forgoing this threshold determination, the trial court found that the Mourouzis settlement satisfied the Estate’s losses such that the Estate was not entitled to pursue additional damages from IUHP. We have found no support for this conclusion.
Assuming arguendo that the Estate correctly valued its injury at between six and ten million dollars: (1) the $1.25 million Mourouzis settlement left remaining several million dollars in uncompensated damages and did not make the Estate whole; (2) the Estate would be entitled to seek the remaining balance of the uncompensated damages, up to an additional $1.25 million, from IUHP and the PCF; and (3) there would be no danger of the Estate receiving a double recovery because, as the Everhart Court found, even if the Estate received an additional $1.25 million from IUHP, the combined Mourouzis and IUHP settlements would still fall short of the Estate’s “one satisfaction.”
By prematurely applying the Mourouzis setoff to the statutory limit and offsetting the IUHP judgment to zero, without first determining the value of Estate’s case, the trial court denied the Estate the potential full recovery to which it is legally entitled. See Everhart, 960 N.E.2d at 140 (“The purpose of the one-satisfaction doctrine is to prevent a plaintiff from realizing more than one recovery. It is [ ] not to reduce a plaintiff to realizing less than one full recovery.”). Accordingly, we find that genuine issues of material fact exist; and, thus, as to the amount of damages, IUHP was not entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
For these reasons, the trial court erred in granting IUHP’s motion for summary judgment and finding that IUHP was entitled to judgment as a matter of law; we must, therefore, reverse the entry of summary judgment in favor of IUHP and remand for further proceedings.
Conclusion
The trial court erred in granting IUHP’s motion for summary judgment. We reverse and remand.
Reversed and remanded.
Najam, J., and Vaidik, J., concur.