Judge Lee Yeakel set a schedule for briefs and argument in a case challenging the cap on medical-malpractice damages that Texas enacted nearly 20 years ago. In Winnett v. Frank, CCL has joined with Hartley Hampton of Hampton & King to argue that the cap violates the Seventh Amendment's right to trial by jury. 

    At a status conference requested by the parties, Judge Yeakel gave each side an October 20th deadline for opening briefs and a December 3 deadline for reply briefs. The case will be argued in January.

    Texas amended its state constitution to permit the legislature to enact the damage-cap statute. As a result, the only test of its constitutionality available is through the U.S. Constitution. In recent years, the Supreme Court has found that parts of the Bill of Rights that had not been applied to the States are "incorporated," by the Fourteenth Amendment's due-process clause. One of the outlier individual rights that has yet to be applied to the states is the civil jury-trial right. Winnett seeks to correct that oversight and invalidate the damage cap.