In 2003, Texas voters approved an amendment to the state’s constitution limiting jury awards. Generically, it’s called “tort reform,” and the gist of the legislation places a $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards.
Advocates of Prop 12 claimed the amendment would cut the number of “frivolous” malpractice lawsuits and attract more doctors to Texas’ rural areas by reducing medical malpractice insurance rates and fostering a more physician-friendly atmosphere in Texas.
Five years later, some of those predictions have come true. Insurance rates have indeed dropped by about 25 percent and Texas has many more doctors than it did in 2003. And medical malpractice lawsuits have been cut in half.
But the same rural Texas counties that lacked a primary care physician or an ob/gyn in 2003 remain grossly under-served today. And, that 25 percent drop in insurance premiums doesn’t take into account the 150 percent rate increase Texas doctors suffered in the five years leading up to the 2003 referendum.
Further the reduction of malpractice suits has come at the expense of people who honestly suffered because a doctor made a mistake.
Increasingly, lawyers turn down medical malpractice cases because they can’t afford the often high expense of taking a case to trial. It can cost $100,000 or more to get a case ready for trial, an expense which lawyers must absorb if they lose. And, if they win, once the expenses are deducted from the jury award, the seriously injured victim is often left very little compensation.
This fact that the arbitrary caps prevent injured Texans from having a day in court has even prompted a lawsuit testing the constitutionality of Texas’ injury and negligence caps.
Among other claims, plaintiffs allege the Texas law violates patients’ jury trials and due process rights under the federal constitution. This case is pending in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and is expected to be heard this fall.
