Increasing Virginia Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Damage Cap Proposed in Bill

Virginia lawmakers may be close to approving a plan to steadily increase the state’s limits on damage awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, with a proposed bill that would increase the $2 million limit over the next two decades.

State Delegate David Albo proposed a bill in the commonwealth’s legislature that would increase the Virginia medical malpractice damage cap by $50,000 on July 1, 2012, and by the same amount every year after that until 2031. The bill was introduced after Albo and Delegate Henry Marsh negotiated an agreement between groups representing Virginia doctors and medical malpractice lawyers.

Although it still needs to be passed by the legislature and then signed by Governor Bob McDonnell, experts say that the likelihood of the bill passing into law is high since doctors and attorneys have already signed onto the deal. A cap on Virginia malpractice lawsuits has been in place since the 1970s, when it started out at $750,000. It has been increased over the years until it reached $2 million in 2008.

About 30 states currently have damage caps in some form, but they have been increasingly challenged by plaintiffs with medical malpractice lawsuits in recent years. While proponents of the caps say they help states retain doctors who may fear being driven out of business by high insurance costs and lawsuits, critics have long maintained that the caps are unconstitutional.

State Supreme Courts in Illinois and Georgia have thrown out similar damages caps over the last year, agreeing with the critics by finding that the imposition of caps by the state legislatures violated the plaintiffs’ rights to a trial by jury, since the cap overrode the jury’s judgment on what the compensation for those cases should be.

California was the first state to enact a damage cap in 1975, specifically limiting the non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, as of 2005 ten states capped recoveries specifically on medical malpractice cases and another 22 have caps that are not limited to medical malpractice. About a dozen states also have caps on punitive damages.