The Missouri State Medical Association (MSMA) has filed an amicus brief with the Missouri Supreme Court in a Jackson County case involving a woman whose $1,030,000 jury award was limited to $778,828 after the trial court applied the state’s medical liability statute.
Maria Ordinola Velazquez v. University Physician Associates and the State of Missouri challenges the constitutionality of the medical liability statute and its noneconomic damages limits.
“We filed an amicus brief in support of the defendants because we were one of the groups that helped the limits on noneconomic damages get enacted in 2015,” said Jeff Howell, executive vice president of the MSMA.
Senate Bill 239, signed into law in 2015, established limits on the amount of non-economic damages recoverable by a plaintiff in a medical malpractice action, including $400,000 for non-catastrophic and $700,000 for catastrophic injuries, according to the Missouri Department of Insurance.
“Our position is if they are not capped and you allow unlimited pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice cases, that cost is eventually born by the consumer in that healthcare costs are passed on and those higher premium costs are passed on, which results in less competition in the market,” Howell told the St. Louis Record.
Velazquez sued University Physician Associates and the State of Missouri, alleging medical negligence related to a cesarean section and post-procedure care.
“Plaintiff's attorneys tend to, when they challenge these caps, look for sympathetic plaintiffs who would normally have, without the limits, received extremely high pain and suffering damage amounts,” Howell said.
Velazquez, through her attorneys, is arguing that the limits on noneconomic damages are a violation of the Missouri Constitution, which guarantees the right to a jury trial.
“The plaintiff's attorneys are saying that this decision was taken out of the jury's hands because the statute only awards an amount of money up to a certain amount and that’s a violation of the right to a jury trial because that decision making should be reserved for the jury,” Howell said.
The issues argued in the amicus brief include:
Limits on non-economic damages provide a rational response to the irrational growth in noneconomic damages in the past few decades.
“Premiums not only get higher because there's no cap but they increase because there's less competition in the market because no insurer wants to come here and deal with no limits,” Howell said.
Missouri’s medical liability statute, which includes noneconomic damage limits, addressed a health care crisis in Missouri caused by excessive liability.
“In 2005, premiums were so high that physicians just stopped working here,” Howell said. “They either retired or they moved out of state because they couldn't support their practices with the size of malpractice premiums.”
Reasonable limits on noneconomic damages in medical liability cases safeguard available and affordable health care.
“No limits is a really easy and quick way to run out of obstetricians and neurosurgeons as they tend to have the highest premiums,” Howell said.
Courts across the country have upheld noneconomic damage limits similar to the limit at issue in this case.
“Every time we have a non-economic cap in place, at some point, plaintiff's attorneys challenge its constitutionality and that's not just in Missouri,” Howell added. “That's in every state that has them.”