ATRA URGES HIGH COURT TO COMPLETE 'TRIPLE PLAY,' UPHOLD MARYLAND'S LIMITS ON NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES

Files Brief in Last of Three Related Cases

Washington, DC, January 15, 2010 -- The American Tort Reform Association today joined in filing an amicus brief (posted here) with the Maryland Court of Appeals, again urging the court to uphold the state’s statutory limit on lawsuit awards for non-economic damages. The state’s high court has already upheld the limit in two separate but related cases.

“The tirelessly creative personal injury bar in Maryland has tried for years, from various angles of attack, to erode or eliminate the state’s perfectly reasonable limit on non-economic damages,” explained ATRA president Tiger Joyce. “Some lower courts have wobbled, but the high court has thus far stood strong in upholding the limit, which provides the state’s civil justice system with some predictability when it comes to otherwise arbitrary and subjective awards for pain and suffering.

“Expanding liability and encouraging more lawsuits, especially as the economy continues to struggle, can only hurt those Marylanders who are seeking jobs and access to affordable health care,” Joyce continued. “So our latest brief urges the Court of Appeals to complete an important ‘triple play’ by again upholding limits on non-economic damages” in DRD Pool Service, Inc., v. Thomas Freed, et al., a case in which a jury awarded $2 million to each of the parents of a child who inexplicably drowned in a pool with no witnesses.

Noting the most recently decided of two similar cases, Joyce reported, “Earlier this week, the high court unanimously overturned a Montgomery County Circuit Court decision that effectively would have allowed personal injury lawyers to sidestep the limit in every medical malpractice case by unilaterally waiving arbitration.” The decision reaffirmed that the limit applies to all malpractice claims, not just those that first go to arbitration (see Lockshin v. Semsker).

In the third related case, Green v. N.B.S. Inc., Maryland’s high court last year rejected yet another attempt to circumvent the state’s limit on non-economic damages when plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the limit only applied in common law personal injury actions and not in consumer protection or other statutory claims. ATRA had filed an amicus brief in that case, as well.

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The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) is the only national organization dedicated exclusively to tort and liability reform through public education and the enactment of legislation. ATRA's membership includes non profits, small and large companies, as well as state and national trade, business, and professional associations.