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of tragedy that the Hickses endured the way the Hickses endured
it, by drawing together to do the best for all the members of the
family. Some families will be rent asunder in dividing large
amounts of money, and some parents will inevitably be tempted to
cheat their own children. But Ohio foresaw that threat and
created courts to forestall it. Due regard for them again
counsels us against upsetting the allocation of the settlement
here.
Our hesitation echoes the Supreme Court’s, which recently
noted the potential importance of State-court approval in similar
circumstances. Ark. Dept. of Health & Human Servs. v. Ahlborn,
547 U.S. 268, 126 S. Ct. 1752, 1765 (2006). Ahlborn involved a
statutory lien that Arkansas imposed on settlement proceeds
received by accident victims. The lien’s purpose was to
reimburse the State for its Medicaid expenses in caring for the
victim, but the lien was limited to “medical expenses” that were
recovered. Arkansas wanted to extend the lien to the entire
amount of any settlement proceeds, suspecting that the parties’
allocation of the settlement among various categories of damage
was done with an eye to minimizing the reach of the lien.
To be sure, Ahlborn is not directly on point either, because
the Supreme Court did not actually rule on the argument that
court approval should shield an allocation from subsequent
second-guessing. But it did hint strongly in that direction:
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