Stakeholders in the decades-long battle over California’s noneconomic damages cap for medical liability jury verdicts announced they have reached a compromise between healthcare, legal and consumer advocates on legislation to modernize the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA). Signed into law in 1975, MICRA established a $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards for things like […]

The 2022 Q3 #1 State Update can be found here. Missouri Considers Shrinking its Personal Injury Statute of Limitations Legislators in both chambers of the Missouri General Assembly are currently debating bills to shrink the state’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims from five to two years. Only Maine and South Dakota have longer […]

A growing number of state medical boards have been pushing back against the minority of healthcare professionals spreading dangerous COVID-19 disinformation and prescribing unproven coronavirus treatments. They are increasingly meeting resistance from conservative lawmakers. “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension […]

Iowa House Advances Bill with Hard Noneconomic Damage Cap The Labor Committee of the Iowa House of Representatives advanced legislation recently intended to combat the state’s worker shortage by reforming unemployment and tort laws. The bill is divided into two sections: one relates to unemployment insurance and the other would create a $1 million hard […]

The Florida Supreme Court approved earlier this year an amendment to the state’s rule of appellate procedure, a change that opponents say could block punitive damages in liability lawsuits. In a 6-1 decision, the justices adopted a rule change that permits a party to seek immediate appellate review of an order granting or denying a […]

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled her 2022-2023 Executive Budget in late 2021, which includes a more than $10 billion, multi-year investment in the state’s healthcare system. It also contains two proposals that would affect the medical liability community. The governor’s budget proposal would fund healthcare initiatives aimed at modernizing the state’s emergency medical services, […]

In response to concerns about the viability of medical practices in the state, New Mexico’s Medical Malpractice Act (MMA) underwent significant changes that were designed to prevent a crisis in medical liability insurance. A last-minute fix to the MMA, signed by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, averted an impending insurance crisis that threatened to disrupt services […]

Almost two years after the U.S. government declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, federal courts are beginning to narrow the application of the Public Readiness & Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. The Trump Administration invoked the act via emergency declaration in early 2020 to shield providers of pandemic countermeasures from civil liability. A recent, precedent-setting federal […]

The Arizona courts made two decisions in August 2021 affirming the constitutionality of medical professional liability tort reforms that require expert testimony and preclude statements of apology by healthcare providers from being used as evidence of liability. In Sampson v. Surgery Center of Peoria, LLC, the Supreme Court of Arizona held that “a jury in […]