Mississippi Medical Malpractice Caps

On Friday of last week in federal court, the Southern District of Mississippi addressed the constitutionality of Mississippi’s caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases in Clemons v. United States of America, Cause No. 4:10-CV-209-CWR-FKB (S.D. Miss. June 13, 2013).  The  damages are currently capped at $500,000.00.  The facts of the case are tear-jerking to say the least as a mother and unborn child died from as the judge called it “staggering incompetence” as the mother died screaming in pain and the minor child suffocated.  The court ultimately held the caps were constitutional but made the following quote which is quickly circulating in the legal community and my fellow bloggers: 

“All grief is not equal. All pain cannot be reduced to a one-size-fits-all sum. One cannot imagine what it is like to know that the doctor right in front of you, the one who is refusing to insert a chest tube into your body even as nurses beg her to provide that treatment, is causing you to die and killing your unborn baby as you are helpless to stop her. In Mississippi, though, one’s suffering at the hands of a health care provider is worth no more than half a million dollars, no matter how egregious, and no matter if your suffering leads to your death, your unborn child’s death, and leaves your children orphans. This is offensive.”

In the case at hand, the government stipulated to liability.  Any person who had to live through would never support capping liability.  The often overlooked argument with tort reform is that if the legislature can set caps damages at $500,000.00 what is to keep them from setting the damages at $0.  This bothers my conscience and should any citizen of this state.