By Hank Russell
Another bill is on Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk awaiting her signature. If it looks familiar to the governor, it should.
The Grieving Families Act was on Hochul’s desk three times before and, all three times, she vetoed it. Whether she will sign this time remains to be seen.
The legislation — introduced by state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D,WF-Manhattan) and Assemblywoman Jen Lunsford (D-East Rochester) — would update the state’s existing 175-plus-year-old law by allowing families to be financially compensated for their emotional suffering. Among the elected officials who sponsored the bill were state senators Mario Mattera (R-St. James), Dean Murray (R-Patchogue), Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) and Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni (D-Sag Harbor).
On December 1, the Act was delivered to the governor. She has until December 12 to sign the legislation.
Those in the legal profession called for Hochul to sign the bill. The New York State Trial Lawyers Association (NYSTLA) said the existing law is “an outlier in the country and continues to deny families a fair chance to hold wrongdoers accountable. The Grieving Families Act would change this.”
Newsday reported that Hochul vetoed the bill back in January because she thought the Act would “risk the financial well-being of our health care system.” The NYSTLA said the governor “[chose] to echo the unsupported rhetoric of powerful insurance companies and big corporations over the needs of grieving families, children, the elderly, minorities, and people from traditionally underserved communities.” The organization added that 47other states that have the Act did not see a financial impact on their healthcare costs.
Kevin Fox, an attorney with the Riverhead-based Fox Law Firm, PLLC, echoed those sentiments. “New York’s wrongful death statute is a 19th-century relic that denies families the ability to recover for the real human losses caused by negligent acts of others,” he said. “Unlike every other state in the country, New York limits wrongful death damages to economic loss only – meaning the life of a child, a stay-at-home parent, or a retiree is treated as having almost no value under the law. That is not justice.”
He called on Hochul to sign the bill because “it is fair, ends the decades-long discount placed on human life, and makes sure New York families are treated with the same dignity and compassion as families in every other state.”
However, the Act is not without opposition. The Medical Society of New York cited actuarial studies stating that, if the bill were to become law, it would result in a 40% increase in insurance premiums.
“The latest version of this bill does not in any way change the substantive impact of this bill and its massive increase in insurance costs for our hospitals and physicians — who already face by far and away the highest liability costs in the country,” said the organization’s president, Dr. David Jakubowicz.
Jakubowicz said he would work with Hochul and the state Legislature to find on a version of a bill that “would ensure legal remedies for grieving families, but at the same time protect the ability of New York’s physicians, hospitals, and other health care workers to continue to deliver the care our patients expect and deserve.”
“New York has a reputation for a world class healthcare system, but also a reputation for being one of the worst states in the country in which to be a physician,” Jakubowicz continued. “We must take steps to ensure that we can retain and attract skilled physicians to our state to best serve the healthcare needs of our patients. At a time when we are already facing severe cuts from Washington D.C., we must not make this problem even worse.”