The Florida
Supreme Court has sent shockwaves through the legal world with
its recent pronouncement that the state's cap on noneconomic damages
in medical malpractice cases is unconstitutional when applied to
wrongful death actions.
The case involves a young woman who
died shortly after giving birth due to a series of medical errors
made during the delivery. Her estate filed a wrongful death lawsuit
in federal court under the Federal
Tort Claims Act, since the woman received her medical care at a
clinic on a U.S. Air Force Base as an Air Force dependent.
The United
States District Court for the Northern District of Florida
applied Florida law, namely the Florida
Wrongful Death Act, to determine the liability of the doctors and
the amount of damages owed. In its 2009
Order and Final Judgment, the court awarded slightly under $1
million in economic damages and $2 million in noneconomic (pain and
suffering) damages, with $500,000 of that amount going to the infant
child and the other $1.5 to the deceased woman's parents. However,
applying the Florida
damages caps, the court was forced to cut the noneconomic damage
award in half from $2 million to $1 million.
The plaintiffs argued that the damages
cap was unconstitutional on several grounds. The District Court did
not have authority to ask the Florida Supreme Court to rule on the
constitutionality of the law, but stated that it did not believe the
court would overturn the caps.
The case was appealed to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which in 2011
upheld
the application of the damages cap by the District Court. The
court held that the damages cap did not violate the Equal Protection
clause or Takings clause of U.S. Constitution or the Takings clause
of the Florida Constitution. As to the rest of the plaintiff's
constitutional arguments, the Court certified those questions to the
Florida Supreme Court, asking it to rule on the constitutionality of
Florida's statute in relation to Equal Protection, Access to Courts,
Trial by Jury, and Separation of Powers under the Florida
Constitution.
The case was argued to the Florida
Supreme Court in 2012, which after deliberating for two years,
finally released its decision
earlier this month. The court held "that the cap on wrongful
death noneconomic damages provided in section 766.118,
Florida Statutes, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the
Florida Constitution." The court quoted Article
I, Section 2 of the Florida Constitution, which states that "All
natural persons, female and male alike, are equal before the law."
Since it found the caps to be unconstitutional on equal protection
grounds, the court did not need to address the other questions
certified by the Eleventh Circuit.
According to the court, the cap on
wrongful death noneconomic damages imposes "unfair and illogical
burdens" in cases involving multiple claimants as compared to
cases with only one claimant. Not only is this disparity arbitrary,
it does not bear any rational relationship to the legislature's
stated reason for adopting caps in the first place, which was to
address an alleged crisis in Florida medical malpractice insurance.
The court went on to question whether such a crisis ever actually
existed or was merely manufactured to provide a premise for enacting
"tort reform."
