Malpractice cap may punish unemployed
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
February 6, 2005

Law professor Lucinda M. Finley argues that such caps are harmful to women in general. The classic example, she said, is a woman who is left unable to conceive because of a medical error.

"It's often the aspects of life that we consider more important and priceless, such as your reproductive health, your ability to have children" that are compensated through non-economic damages, said Finley, who teaches at the University of New York at Buffalo.

"When somebody is injured in a way that renders them infertile or unable to sexually function, those are very serious injuries, and just because they don't take you out of work doesn't mean they're not serious injuries deserving compensation."

David Studdert, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, said his research in California, which has a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages, found that the people who were most affected by the cap were those with the most severe injuries.

"If you suffer a minor injury, the value of your non-economic loss is unlikely to rise to the level of the cap," Studdert said. "So a person who is awarded $200,000 in non-economic damages in California will get $200,000. On the other hand, somebody who is awarded a million dollars in [non-economic] damages will get $250,000."

Studdert said his research found only a few cases of large jury awards for "trivial or inconsequential injuries."

Most of the cases where the jury award was reduced to meet the $250,000 cap "were very serious injuries, including death," he said.

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