BY IAN ZIMMERMAN,ESQ
Did you know that the most an injured patient can ever recover from a negligent doctor or hospital is $250,000 for pain and suffering here in the state of California?
This is true regardless of the pain, disfigurement or severity of the disability or whether the patient is 5 or 75.
No matter how much a patient may suffer or how disfigured they may be for the rest of their lives the absolute total dollars that they can ever receive from the negligent doctor or hospital is $250,000 for pain and suffering. The only additional recovery they’re entitled to might be out-of-pocket expenses such as wage loss (assuming they were working and can no longer do so) and possibly future medical costs (assuming those can be shown to be necessary).
How can this be true?
Here’s the short and long answer- the very powerful insurance lobby got a law called MICRA passed in the early 1970s which put a lid or cap on the amount a jury could award to a legitimately injured patient. No other type of injury is limited or capped. Only medical malpractice cases.
They did so for one reason to protect their own interests-the hell with the patient.
For nearly 50 years this limit of $250,000 (even if your wrong leg got cut off) has not changed. The same limitation or “cap” of $250,000 established in 1974 applies today and hasn’t even adjusted for inflation!
Of course few people outside the legal system know about this, i.e., that no matter how much pain and suffering you been through and will continue to suffer for the rest of your life the negligent doctor or hospital will never have to pay a penny more than $250,000.
It gets worse. Assume you’ve been seriously hurt as a result of a doctor’s or hospital’s negligence and your lawyer takes your case to trial. A jury is not allowed to know that any award greater than $250,000 will be reduced after they leave the courtroom. The jury may award a million dollars or more and go home believing that they have done justice but unbeknownst to them the Judge will automatically reduce their award down to $250,000 and the injured plaintiff will only receive $250,000 despite the will of the jury!!!
Imagine a jury sitting attentively for weeks and weeks and then trying their best to award a fair, honest and proportionate verdict never knowing that their hard work was drastically altered once they left the building.
Until this blatantly greedy insurance-industry-backed-law is changed, I pray that you are not the victim of some doctor’s or hospital’s negligence.