Special malpractice courts are sought.

By William Lamb, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Feb. 4--Republican lawmakers in Springfield, Ill., have renewed an effort to create a separate court system to deal exclusively with medical malpractice cases, reasoning that doing so would result in fewer "frivolous" lawsuits.

State Sens. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, and Frank Watson, R-Greenville, have introduced a bill to create a medical malpractice circuit court in each of the state's five appellate court districts.

The idea is that the judges assigned to those courts would be more knowledgeable about the subject and therefore less likely to approve the sort of …