By Adam Sidoti

In Illinois, legislature created certain statutory guidelines for plaintiffs who wish to file
law suits alleging medical malpractice. Those restrictions, codified in section 2-622 of
the Code of Civil Procedure, provide that a plaintiff must attach a report of a licensed
physician identifying the author of the report, and that the physician must be licensed to
practice medicine in all of its branches and board certified in the specialty at issue.
Further, the report must be signed and reveal the professional’s name and address.

There is significant disagreement about whether these requirements are constitutional,

and in the recent fourth district case of Crull v. Sriratana, MD, et al., the plaintiff’s
attorney represented to the court that he would not reveal the identification of his
reporting physician, except under direct court order. He stated as his rationale that if he
were to reveal this information, he would be going against a directive by the Illinois Trial
Lawyers Association as well as a Rule 23 Order issued by the First District Appellate
Court requesting review of the 2-622 requirements due to a belief they are
unconstitutional.

The Fourth District Appellate Court held that plaintiffs cannot simply ignore the
requirements of section 2-622 of the Code of Civil Procedure simply because a
subsequent case decided in the First District called 2-622 into question. In a lengthy
exploration of the requirements of section 2-622, the court explored the Cargill decision,
which required that medical malpractice plaintiffs must disclose the name and address of
the physician who prepared the plaintiff’s health-care professional’s report.

In the Crull case, the plaintiff filed a 2-622 report, but did not want to reveal the name
and address of the physician who prepared the report. In fact, the original report filed
was unsigned and did not reveal the reviewing health care professional’s name and
address. The trial court ordered that the plaintiff reveal the author of the report. Instead,
the plaintiff filed a different letter was signed by Dr. Bruce Leslie, who the plaintiff’s
attorney revealed was not the same as who had authored his original report.

Because the plaintiff relied on the original report (not by Dr. Leslie) in filing the claim,
the Court ordered plaintiff to disclose the author of the original report. Plaintiff stated
that Dr. Bernard R. Lerner had authored the original report. The defendants moved to
dismiss the claim with prejudice after discovering that Dr. Lerner’s medical license had
been revoked in July 1990 after a felony narcotics-related conviction. At the time that
Dr. Lerner wrote the report, he was in fact not a licensed physician.

The Court dismissed the case with prejudice, and the Fourth District Appellate Court
affirmed the decision. The appellate court, in dicta, commended the trial court for
“asking the (plaintiff’s attorney) probing questions.” Had the court not questioned the
plaintiff’s attorney, it would not have been able to discover that the report did not meet
statutory requirements.