State Courts: Caps are Unconstitutional

As injury attorneys based in Washington, D.C, we have seen plenty of examples of the inherent unfairness of so-called “damage caps.” This is when a state puts a limit in place on the amount of money that an injury victim can recoup in a lawsuit. The tort reformers and insurance companies who lobby  their legislatures for more restrictive versions refer to them as “damage caps,” but we refer to them as “responsibility caps.” By placing a limit on the amount that offending parties would be required to pay, state legislatures have removed any incentives for good behavior on the part of corporations and insurance companies. After all, if a corporation does a million dollars worth of damage but is only legally required to pay $250,000, what would stop them from continuing to do business as usual?

We also believe that damage caps are unfair to the victims. These caps are essentially a legal condescending pat on the head to victims who deserve a lot more than that. “Sorry we wrecked your life, kid. Here’s a shiny 50 cent piece for you. Best of luck.” If you can imagine having a loved one taken from you due to a preventable medical mistake, and then being told that under the law, this loved one was only worth a certain fixed dollar amount, then you can put yourself in the shoes of hundreds of people in 30 out of the 50 states. The opinions of juries are also discarded in these states. If you get selected to be a jury member in one of these 30 states with responsibility caps, your thoughts on how the victim should be compensated can be completely disregarded. You are there to be a rubber stamp and nothing else.

The battle over responsibility caps has been going back and forth in legislatures for a few decades now. So-called “tort reformers” push for more and more damage caps to be enacted under state law, while attorneys and consumer rights advocates make every attempt to prevent these caps from being enacted. But a few state courts have taken the novel (and we think correct) approach of removing these caps from the state codes based on the constitutionality of the matter. In other words, having state legislatures place arbitrary limits on how much (or how little, for that matter) an offending party in a lawsuit can pay is unconstitutional meddling. You can’t have state representatives set the ground rules for how a completely different branch of the government conducts itself, and you can’t remove the opinions and deliberation of the jury in court cases. Damage caps do both of these things.

In April, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that the $350,000 cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases was unconstitutional. This came a month after the Illinois Supreme Court made a similar ruling. Responsibility cap laws in Oregon, Washington and Oregon have been removed from the books, and at the time of this writing a case is pending in our own state of Maryland that contends that the cap on non-economic damages is unconstitutional. We hope it succeeds.

It should be remembered that there are some things that you can’t put a price tag on. If your house catches on fire and your families’ entire old photo album collection goes up in flames, would a check for the actual value of the photograph albums be enough? Or are those photos worth more to you? If a surgeon makes the wrong cut and as a result you can’t drive anymore, would it simply be enough to get the equivalent of cab fare? Or is what you went through worth more than that? If a doctor makes a mistake and your husband dies as a result, is there a conversion chart that they can consult? Is the value of your husband’s life pre-determined by the politically driven legislators who never met him? Or is he worth a lot more? These are questions that should be debated and settled in courts, not mandated by unfair and arbitrary laws. The Supreme Court of Georgia made the correct call, and we hope to eventually see all the other states do the same.

Greenberg and Bederman is an injury law firm based in Washington, D.C. For the past twenty five years, we have been offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to no fault of their own. We help victims of car accidents, medical malpractice and victims of faulty and dangerous prescription drugs on a daily basis. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.