In a landmark decision briefed and argued by CCL attorneys, Estate of McCall v. United States, the Florida Supreme Court, 5-2, struck down a non-economic damage cap that applied to wrongful death claims based on medical malpractice as a violation of the state constitution’s equal protection guarantee.  Writing for the majority, Justice R. Fred Lewis accused the Legislature of falsifying a medical malpractice crisis in an attempt to justify a measure that had “the effect of saving a modest amount for many by imposing devastating costs on a few,” and generating an increase in net income of more than 4300 percent for insurance companies that did not translate into premium savings for doctors. The Court concluded that no medical malpractice crisis existed in 2003, when the legislation was enacted, and, even if one did, no crisis exists today.

CCL’s Robert S. Peck and Valerie Nannery represented the Estate of Michelle McCall, a twenty-year-old woman who died after giving birth to a baby boy in 2006,  with Peck arguing the case before the Florida Supreme Court. McCall’s death was the result of a failure to begin a blood transfusion to replace blood lost before the late arrival of an OB-GYN after family practice physicians had induced labor.  As the trial court put it, McCall “bled to death in the presence of all medical staff who were attending her.” The case, tried before a judge by Florida lawyers Henry Courtney, Sarah Courtney-Baigorri, and Stephen Poche, resulted in a verdict of nearly $3 million, which included $2 million in noneconomic damages.  Of the noneconomic damages, $500,000 was designated as compensation for the newborn’s losses of parental companionship, instruction, and guidance and for his mental pain and suffering. An additional $750,000 each was designated as compensation for each of Michelle’s parents for their pain and suffering. However, under the challenged statute, the noneconomic damages were cut in half to $1 million because the statute set a cumulative limit on non-economic damages of $1 million against all practitioners. Agreeing with CCL’s argument, the Florida Supreme Court held that aggregate caps or limitations on noneconomic damages violate the equal protection guarantees under the Florida Constitution when applied without regard to the number of claimants entitled to recovery.

 In striking the cap, the Court not only regarded the alleged malpractice crisis as pretextual but went further and found that the “available evidence fails to establish a rational relationship between a cap on noneconomic damages and alleviation of the purported crisis.” The Court then endorsed a 1988 observation of the Texas Supreme Court that “[i]n the context of persons catastrophically injured by medical negligence, we believe it is unreasonable and arbitrary to limit their recovery in a speculative experiment to determine whether liability insurance rates will decrease.” 

Coverage of the decision may be found in the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times