PORTLAND – The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled this week that juries may be told the full decision of pretrial screening panels when they issue split findings.

In the short run, the court’s 4-3 ruling – itself a split decision – means a Winter Harbor man will get a third trial in his lawsuit against a former Machias doctor. In the long run the three dissenting justices claim the court’s ruling will result in more medical malpractice lawsuits without merit being filed.

The decision may require the Legislature to look again at the wording of the review panel statute, according to one of the attorneys involved in the lawsuit on which the decision is based.

The majority opinion noted that Maine handles the findings of screening panels differently from other states, which allow either the admission of a full finding to a jury or prohibit it.

James Edward Smith, now 45, suffered an open fracture of his left ankle in 1997. According to court documents, the injury did not heal properly, and he developed an infection. He claimed that Dr. Catherine Hawthorne’s malpractice required him to undergo several additional operations, miss work and suffer long-term impairments.

A pre-litigation screening panel, required by the Maine Health Security Act, found in November 2000 that Hawthorne had deviated from the applicable standard of medical care. However, it also found that the deviation did not cause Smith’s injury and that his negligence was not equal to or greater than Hawthorne’s.

The panel’s split between Smith and Hawthorne meant that under the act and a previous ruling by the state’s high court, the jury wouldn’t hear all of the panel’s findings.

Smith and his wife, Sheryl Smith, sued the doctor in Hancock County Superior Court. Their first trial in January 2004 ended in a mistrial when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. Two months later, a different jury found 6-2 in favor of the physician.

The Smiths’ attorney, A.J. Greif of Bangor, appealed the verdict to the state’s high court, which first heard arguments in January 2005. The case was argued again in October after Justice Paul L. Rudman of Veazie retired and Warren M. Silver of Bangor replaced him.

The court most likely reheard arguments to allow Silver to break a 3-3 tie in the case, according to court observers.

In Tuesday’s ruling, Justices Susan W. Calkins, Howard H. Dana Jr., Donald G. Alexander and Silver joined the majority. Dana and Alexander issued a concurring opinion that agreed with the decision reached by the majority but for different reasons.

Chief Justice Leigh I. Saufley and Justices Jon D. Levy and Robert W. Clifford dissented.

Greif argued last year that either all of the review panel’s findings should have been presented to the jury or none of them should have been. He said the panel found that although Hawthorne had been negligent in her care of Smith, the jury was told only that the same panel found that Hawthorne’s care hadn’t harmed Smith.

A majority of the justices agreed with Greif.

“The findings in favor of Smith, like the findings in favor of Hawthorne, were highly probative and relevant to the jury’s determination of material questions of fact,” Calkins wrote for the majority. “The partial admission reduced the strength and persuasiveness of the Smiths’ case to the jury and, at the same time, strengthened Hawthorne’s case, thereby significantly infringing upon the Smiths’ right to have the facts determined by a jury.”

Levy, who wrote the dissenting opinion, warned that the majority opinion “invalidates” a key provision of the act that established the review panel process. It also “undermines the inducement to settle nonmeritorious medical malpractice claims that the statue was intended to achieve,” he wrote.

“The court’s analysis … occurs in a vacuum, divorced from any consideration of the statute’s legislative purpose,” Levy wrote in the strongly worded dissent. “This approach is perilous … We risk overstepping our institutional bounds as a coordinate branch of government when we invalidate an act of the Legislature without having weighed and accounted for the public policy the Legislature has sought to advance.”

Greif predicted a new trial would be held in Hancock County Superior Court before the end of the year.

“There is only one forum in the state where everyone stands equal, and that is a court of law before a jury of one’s peers,” he said on Thursday. “Medical insurers pressured the Legislature, where they have an unequal voice and a louder voice, to tip the playing field and require the court to tell the jury a half-truth – that no harm was done by the doctor even though there was a prior decision that the doctor had been negligent.

“Now, we get to try this case on a level playing field,” Greif continued, “and we get to tell the jury the whole truth. Half-truths may satisfy the folks in Augusta, but juries demand the whole truth.”

Bangor attorney George Schelling, who represents Hawthorne, said the majority opinion would require the Legislature to revisit the wording of the statute that created the screening panels. He called the majority opinion confusing.

“The majority said that the law is unconstitutional because the jury was not told enough about the panel’s findings,” Schelling said. “But it also says that Maine’s law is not like those in other states. In other states, jurors are told less about what a panel does.

“In Maine, if the Legislature goes back and does what the law court says is constitutional, the jury would be told less,” Schelling continued. “If the panel in this case had done what the court now says is constitutional, the panel would have said, ‘This case has no merit. There is no liability here.'”