Caps on monetary judgements from medical malpractice lawsuits may seem like random state laws with no correlation to each other. However, upon further examination, there are regional and industry trends that make these regulations more related than random.
Cap Consciousness
As of November 2021, there are 29 states that currently have enacted tort reform laws that places a cap on medical malpractice damages. Nineteen states have limits on payouts regarding non-economic damages related to pain and suffering. These states tend to skew to the midwestern, plain and southern states: Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
States that have no caps on malpractice damages definitely skew towards the northeast region of the United States. There are a total of eight states that do not have caps and except for the state of Minnesota, they all reside in the northeast: Connecticut, District of Columbia, Delaware, New Jersey (where only punitive damages are capped), New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Five states have enacted and implemented constitutional provisions that prohibit caps. Not bound by geography, these states tend to be more conservative politically: Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Wyoming.
Unconstitutional Rulings
Currently nine states have had state supreme court rulings where malpractice caps have been ruled unconstitutional.
Ironically enough, there is no one geographical trend among the states, which range from Washington State in the northwest, Kansas, Oklahoma and Illinois in the Midwest to New Hampshire in the northeast.
However, the states tend to skew conservative politically, with Alabama, Georgia and Florida rounding out the nine states.
The implementation of states’ ruling medical malpractice caps unconstitutional goes back three decades as both Alabama and New Hampshire made their rulings in 1991.
Malpractice in 2022
With mid-term elections less than a year away, potential political turnover on both sides of the aisle in state legislatures across the country could influence new medical malpractice laws.
Many political strategists believe that one of the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is an increase of professionals in the medical and health care industry entering politics, as these professions have been elevated in the public sphere.
And as with the current laws, all geographical regions and political spectrums are open to the implementation of medical malpractice laws. There’s no status quo in malpractice laws, so keep a close eye on proposed legislation and regulation, as there is no predicting what laws may get passed, and what state legislatures may pass them.
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