Why San Diego Medical Malpractice Victims Can't Find a Lawyer--A Lesson in MICRA
A very good article appeared today on the anewscafe.com website explaining a common plight of California and San Diego medical malpractice victim: they can't find lawyers to take their legitimate injury cases!
The reason, pure and simple, is the California legislature artificially capped damages in medical malpractice cases more than 30 years ago when it enacted the Medical Injury Compensation Act of 1975 ("MICRA") which capped "general damages" (typically called "pain and suffering") at $250,000.
Given that the California Medical Board requires all doctors to publicly report all settlements and judgments over $25,000 and the generally stingy and aggressive nature of insurance companies to drive down claims, almost all medical malpractice cases go to trial. This means that it is very expensive--lawyers representing patients typically spend over $100,000 per case--and time consuming. Moreover, in order for the case to be worth pursuing, it must be a "cap" case (meaning that the jury will definitely award $250,000 if the doctor is found liable).
The practical effect of this law and the marketplace is that injured patients without "cap" cases find it nearly impossible to find a lawyer to help them even when their case has merit.
The Jurewitz Law Group, itself, is extremely selective about which medical malpractice cases it will accept. We typically refer 95% of prospective medical malpractice clients to other firms for a variety of reasons, including that the client does not have a "cap" case.
We hope that this economic reality changes soon. While $250,000 may have been an appropriate damage cap in 1975, it is not today in 2009 after factoring inflation. Injured patients with less than a "cap" case deserve justice just as much as those with "cap" cases.
