San Diego County residents who suffer injuries due to the negligence of medical providers in any fashion deserve the right to seek compensation. The law does allow for this regardless of the nature of the medical mistake. Failure to diagnose an illness, an error during a surgery or any action which can be classified as the failure to provide an acknowledged reasonable standard of care are all causes for a medical malpractice claim.
California is one of the states in the country that maintains a limit on the amount of money that can be awarded for non-economic damages in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Voters in the state had the opportunity in November of 2014 to increase the limit from $250,000 to a proposed $1.1 million but the measure failed in the election. Medscape recently noted, however, that this effort to change the state’s existing cap on medical malpractice damages may not be completely lost.
While the ballot measure to raise the cap was lost in early November, the California Supreme Court took on a case in late November that directly addresses the issue again. The outcome of this case could include overturning the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 from which the current damage cap was created. A total of eight other states have had their damage caps overturned in cases heard by their State Supreme Courts and four of those verdicts have happened since 2010.
This information is not intended to provide legal advice but general information about medical malpractice caps in California.
