Thursday, January 14, 2010

Correction: Ohio's Medical "Tort Reform" Does Not Apply To Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death Cases

Recently a colleague of mine pointed out an error in my past blog posts discussing Ohio's "caps" or limits on what Ohio medical malpractice victims can recover in lawsuits. In those previous posts, I pointed out that the Ohio Legislature in 2003 passed laws limiting malpractice victims' recovery to arbitrary caps of anywhere from $250,000 to $350,000.

She said to me: "You forgot to mention that there are no caps or limits in cases of wrongful death." And she's right. The reason for this is that Section 19a, Article I of The Ohio Constitution states that damages recoverable in wrongful death claims
cannot be limited. Since The Ohio Constitution trumps any attempt by the Legislature to contradict it, The Legislature could not pass any caps in wrongful death cases.

So there you have it. I'm just glad someone was actually reading some of this stuff and paying attention.

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