{"id":438,"date":"2014-12-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defranciscolaw.lawblogger.net\/blog\/ca-supreme-court-to-examine-constitutionality-of-damage-caps\/"},"modified":"2017-10-23T12:28:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T16:28:33","slug":"ca-supreme-court-to-examine-constitutionality-of-damage-caps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/blog\/ca-supreme-court-to-examine-constitutionality-of-damage-caps\/","title":{"rendered":"CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a prior post we highlighted the failed legislative initiative in California to overturn the state\u2019s cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. The current law, which was enacted by the legislature in 1975, limits the amount of money plaintiffs in med mal cases may be awarded by a jury to $250,000. In the nearly 40 years since the law was passed, this amount has not been adjusted\u2026even for inflation.<\/p>\n<p>California&#8217;s law has likely been the impetus for similar laws by legislatures around the country, especially as jury awards for pain and suffering continued to rise in the 1980\u2019s and 1990\u2019s. In fact, it is arguable that states that did not have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/medical-malpractice.html\">non-economic damages<\/a> caps were more likely to lose physicians who were not able to pay the skyrocketing insurance costs ostensibly driven by the fear of large medical malpractice awards.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>However, as more information comes forth indicating that tort reform does not actually lower medical costs, some states are re-thinking their caps on liability. For example, the Florida Supreme Court recently found that damages caps are <a href=\"http:\/\/insurancenewsnet.com\/oarticle\/2014\/11\/27\/california-supreme-court-to-review-constitutionality-of-medical-malpractice-dama-a-575079.html#.VHz-xo1IPwh\" target=\"_blank\">unconstitutional<\/a>. The court explained that such caps served no other purpose than to \u201carbitrarily punish the most grievously injured or their surviving family members.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/blog\/ca-supreme-court-to-examine-constitutionality-of-damage-caps\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a prior post we highlighted the failed legislative initiative in California to overturn the state\u2019s cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. The current law, which was enacted by the legislature in 1975, limits the amount of money plaintiffs in med mal cases may be awarded by a jury to $250,000. In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medical-malpractice","tag-medical-malpractice"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps &#8212; Syracuse Personal Injury Law Blog &#8212; December 3, 2014<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps - Medical Malpractice - DeFrancisco &amp; Falgiatano Law Firm\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/blog\/ca-supreme-court-to-examine-constitutionality-of-damage-caps\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps &#8212; 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Syracuse Personal Injury Law Blog &#8212; December 3, 2014","twitter_description":"CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps - Medical Malpractice - DeFrancisco &amp; Falgiatano Law Firm","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Jeff DeFrancisco","Est. reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/blog\/ca-supreme-court-to-examine-constitutionality-of-damage-caps\/","url":"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/blog\/ca-supreme-court-to-examine-constitutionality-of-damage-caps\/","name":"CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps &#8212; Syracuse Personal Injury Law Blog &#8212; December 3, 2014","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-12-03T00:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2017-10-23T16:28:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.defranciscolaw.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/798006ba40dee3a60d61603f8022a9f9"},"description":"CA Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of damage caps - Medical Malpractice - DeFrancisco &amp; 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