Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Law Which Takes Away Basic Rights Of Citizens
Attorney
(866) 735-1102 Ext 645
In a decision issued on Thursday, December 27, the Supreme Court of Ohio upheld limits on the verdicts that jurors in Ohio can return for damages in personal injury lawsuits.
This Ohio law takes away the basic right to a trial by jury that Ohio citizens have relied on for hundreds of years of years. The legislation was passed when the Ohio legislature caved in to big money interests of big manufacturers, insurance companies, and their chief lackey, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This ill advised legislation is proof positive that BIG MONEY not only talks, it screams bloody murder.
Members of the Ohio legislature put the interests of out of state big money corporations, manufacturers, polluters and other wrongdoers ahead of the individual citizens of Ohio who elected them.
Now the Ohio Supreme Court, in the face of strong dissenters, have put it's stamp of approval upon this unfair legislation.
In the decision, the Supreme Court upheld a law the legislature approved in 2004 that limited jury awards for pain and suffering, mental anguish, and other non-economic damages to $350,000 unless a limb or bodily organ was lost.
Also upheld by the court was a cap that limited punitive damages to twice the amount of damages awarded as compensation for injuries.
According to Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, caps on personal injury lawsuit awards over the past 30 years have been rejected by the court, who found aspects of various bills the legislature adopted to be unconstitutional. However, he said that the 2004 legislature fixed those constitutional problems.
The case comes from a lawsuit by a woman who sued Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Co. after suffering blood clots and other medical problems after using a birth control patch the company manufactured.
According to Moyer, caps on personal injury suits are in dispute in many states, but the court's role is to determine constitutionality, not whether they are the best public policy.
Justices Paul Pfeifer and Terrence O'Donnell dissented from the majority opinion.
According to Pfeifer, the caps are unconstitutional because they deprive people who have been injured of the benefits of a trial by jury.
According to O'Donnell, a cap on awards for pain and suffering "substitutes the judgment of the General Assembly for that of a jury."