Connecticut Tort & Insurance Practice Update #1

On March 3, 2021 the General Assembly’s House Judiciary Committee convened a public hearing on H.B. 6465, an act designed to undo the December, 2016 Supreme Court of Connecticut holding in Marciano v. Jimenez. The Marciano court, interpreting Connecticut’s collateral source statute (C.G.S. §52-225a – specifically its language qualifying a defendant’s right to a collateral source deduction by declaring “. . . there shall be no reduction for (A) a collateral source for which a right of subrogation exists . . .”) held that if a third-party payor (a group health provider, or Medicare, eg.,) was asserting a lien against an underlying recovery, no corresponding collateral source reduction could be had – even if that payor had adjusted the underlying medical bills downward and the subrogation or lien amount being pursued was substantially less than the “on the board” medical bills claimed and subsequently awarded by the jury. The effect of Marciano was to allow a claimant to recover of the tortfeasor, without diminution, the dollar value of medical bills rendered by providers, even if those bills were not actually paid by or on behalf of the claimant.

This legislation is designed to reverse that holding, specifically contemplating that there will be no collateral source reduction “for the amount (A) subject to a right of subrogation (B) agreed upon in full satisfaction of any right of subrogation, (c) to which a right of subrogation has not been waived, limited or extinguished, or (D) of collateral sources equal to the reduction in the claimant’s economic damages attributable to the claimant’s percentage of negligence pursuant to section 52-572h.”

It remains to be seen whether the bill will emerge from House committee and whether a version will be taken up in the Senate as well.