What Price Life?

HOW MUCH is it worth to you to be able to read a book? To carry on a conversation? To run along the banks of the Charles in the spring? The average person "of sound mind and body," as the old legal phrase goes, takes a lot for granted.

But the parents of a brain-damaged child and the owners of the hospital the parents accused of malpractice in the little girl's birth have agreed that a fair reparation for her condition is $4.2 million down, $7000 a month for the rest of her life.

Two and a half years ago Linda Ferris underwent Caesarean section, in the birth of a daughter, Andrea, at the Pasadena Bayshore Hospital. During the birth, the Ferrises claimed, Andrea suffered the oxygen deprivation that caused her to become permanently brain-damaged; according to doctors, she will remain at the mental and physical level of a two-year-old for the rest of her life, which could be 75 more years.

The Ferrises sued the Hospital Corporation of America-which owns the Pasadena Hospital--for malpractice, but settled out of court. The corporation agreed to pay the Ferrises $7000 a month for twenty years or for the rest of Andrea's life, whichever is longer, increasing 6 percent a year. If Andrea lives until she is 77, the total payment will come to $119 million, which would make it the largest malpractice payment ever.

Obviously, the Hospital Corporation agreed to settle out of court for two reasons they wanted to avoid the unsavory publicity of a trial, and they believe a jury would have awarded an even higher settlement. Yet even with this settlement, too much money has changed hands.

What happened to Andrea Ferris is certainly a terrible thing, it is entirely reasonable and right for her parents to be awarded $7000 a month, or whatever is necessary to provide the extra care she will need for the rest of her life: nurses, therapy, medical supervision and so on. In a real sense, they will suffer more than Andrea will: she will never understand what has happened to her, while the Ferrises will be reminded every day, possibly for the rest of their own lives, of the terrible thing that happened to their daughter.

BUT WHAT about this $4.2 million? The Ferrises will suddenly become a very rich family, even after the lawyer's fees, taxes and the hospital expenses they have no doubt already incurred have been settled. The remaining money does nothing to help their daughter, or heal the trauma they have gone through in the last two years.

It's distasteful to think that this money is nothing more than a sort of casual pacifier tossed to the Ferrises by HCA; Andrea's erased future cannot be quantified into dollars and cents. Although the settlement probably does not represent anything so consciously insensitive, people in this country are too quick to sue. Yelling for large sums of money has become the accepted way of resolving disagreements and solving problems--burying them in a mountain of dollar bills.

It's all very easy, really. If every once in a while some poor kid gets the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck and can't breathe for a few minutes, HCA or whoever owns the hospital just raises its rates and shoots off $119 million to the unfortunate parents. And what happened to Andrea Ferris was of course an accident, probably as upsetting to the doctor who performed the operation as to the Ferrises themselves (at least one would hope so).

HCA knew when it settled that the jury would feel sorry for the Ferrises if it came to a trial, and they would show their sympathy by awarding the Ferrises a whole lot of money. So HCA avoided the hassle and just gave them the money voluntarily. Now the case is settled, the Ferrises are compensated, everybody's happy. Right? David M. Rosenfeld