What Is Goin’ On?

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! There is Justice for the common man, in spite of our misguided, special interest controlled Republican legislature and Governor!!!!

What is all this about? CAPS are dead. Dead. Dead! DEAD! (Well, practically speaking, anyway!)

Many of you may be living in ignorance, but listen up, and you shall hear, a story as significant as that of Paul Revere, the freedom rider.

In 2005, within months of gaining a stranglehold majority on the Georgia Legislature, the Republican leadership and Governor Perdue repaid their campaign promises to the Chamber of Commerce, the doctor lobby and the insurance companies by depriving the citizens of Georgia of the right to hold negligent doctors fully responsible for the harm they cause. They did it by enacting, as the very first piece of litigation, a bill infamously referred to as “tort reform,” SB-5. That piece of legislation was rammed down the throats even of the Republicans who knew it was bad legislation, no amendments were allowed, vote up or down, and don’t ask questions.

One of those provisions said this:

In any verdict returned or judgment entered in a medical malpractice action, including an action for wrongful death, against one or more health care providers, the total amount recoverable by a claimant for noneconomic damages in such action shall be limited to an amount not to exceed $350,000.00, regardless of the number of defendant health care providers against whom the claim is asserted or the number of separate causes of action on which the claim is based. Official Code of Georgia 15-13-1 (b)

(Note: This is only a portion of the statute. There are other provisions which allow this amount to increase to just over $! million in limited cases, but not in suits where you sue just one doctor.)

So, no matter if you were a quadriplegic, unable to move anything other than your eyeballs as a result of a doctor’s negligence, those wise fools in the legislature decided that you couldn’t possibly be entitled to more than $350,000 for pain and suffering, even if you lived and suffered for 40 more years in that condition.

To add insult to injury, the bastards applied this law only to medical malpractice lawsuits. It a truck driver put you in that condition, there was no limitation.

Well, it took over 3 years but on April 30, 2008, a Superior Court Judge in Fulton County declared the limitation on non-economic damages to be unconstitutional. It was not surprising when the insurance company appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Georgia. The case was scheduled for argument before the Supreme Court before the end of the year, but that will never happen. Why?

A couple of days ago, the insurance company chickened out, decided they would probably lose in the Supreme Court and rather than have the statute declared unconstitutional, they settled the case with the injured person. I don’t blame the injured person for taking the settlement (which by the way is super confidential, a secret).

What does all this mean? It means:

(1) The insurance company can still tell everyone that Georgia has caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.

(2) Lawyers know that the insurance companies are chicken and will be more likely to pursue cases without regard to the caps.

(3) Some lawyer, some where is going to get the same issue in front of another judge in the state and it will get to the Supreme Court for a final decision.

(4) The Chamber of Commerce and the insurance companies are going to focus their attention on judicial appointments and hopefully get the people they want on our Courts before the case gets there again.

(5) YOU AND EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU NEED TO BE VIGILANT IN WHO YOU VOTE FOR IN JUDICIAL RACES, PARTICULARLY ON THE COURT OF APPEALS AND SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA.