PublicNuisanceWire.com

“The statutory cap on non-economic damages was an essential piece of the 2004 tort reform spearheaded by the Governor and passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of the Legislature,” Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour argued in an amicus brief recently filed in the case of Double Quick Inc. v. Ronnie Lee Lymas.

Shot while leaving a Double Quick in 2007, Ronnie Lee Lymas successfully sued the Indianola-based convenience store chain for failing to ensure his safety. A circuit court judge lowered the jury award for medical costs and non-economic damages from $4 million to the state cap of $1 million, prompting Lymas to challenge the constitutionality of the cap. Barbour’s brief asks the state supreme court to affirm its constitutionality.

“The cap was partly a response to the multitude of outrageous and unpredictable damage awards being handed to plaintiffs in civil suits,” Barbour explained in his brief. “Its aim was to restore predictability and fairness to the system by setting a reasonable limit on non-economic damages, which are inherently difficult to quantify. Predictability and fairness were needed for the protection of the public welfare to prevent doctors from closing their practices, to stop insurance companies from not issuing policies, and to keep new business enterprises from choosing other states over Mississippi.”

Recalling that the state had been ranked as the “worst litigation environment in the country” and labeled a “judicial hellhole” and “lawsuit capital of the world,” Barbour attributed its bad reputation “in large part to unconscionably high awards to personal injury litigants with little, if any, identifiable injuries or medical expenses.” He emphasized that “the awards had little or no connection to Mississippi or the county where the cases were filed.”

Barbour lamented that “business, industry, and health care providers faced sky-rocketing and, in many instances, unaffordable liability insurance premiums. More than 70 insurance companies stopped writing insurance coverage in Mississippi,” he noted. “The legal climate was so bad and malpractice insurance rates were so high that many physicians had to stop practicing in certain specialties. The State also lost jobs and economic development opportunities as a result of the legal climate.”

The governor and the legislature “addressed the crisis with reasonable and meaningful reforms such as the damage cap in issue. These reforms were desperately needed then and are now essential to the continued growth of Mississippi and the preservation of thousands of Mississippi jobs.”

According to Barbour, “The 2004 reforms ensured fairness and predictability for all litigants by addressing damage caps and other serious problems such as changing venue law to require (in most cases) that trial be held in the county where the event in question occurred, abolishing joint and several liability except for cases where defendants acted together, and protecting sellers of products who had no involvement in the design and no reason to know about alleged defects in product liability suits.”

Brabour described the cap on non-economic damages as “the only one of these reforms that directly guards against the unpredictable and unconscionably high awards for pain and suffering and similar damages that had become common and that continue in the State. By providing a clear and reasonable limit for these damages,” he argued, “the cap promotes predictability and fairness in the civil justice system.”

Barbour concluded his brief with a recitation of the “tangible success of tort reform,” which included a 90-percent drop in medical malpractice lawsuits, the creation of “thousands of new jobs,” the return to the state of “several major insurance companies,” and, last but not least, a distinct improvement in the state’s tarnished reputation.