SANTA FE, N.M. (Legal Newsline) - The New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the state’s $600,000 cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits, rejecting arguments the statute violated the constitutional right to trial.
Lawyers for plaintiff Susan Siebert argued successfully in a lower court that the cap intruded on the New Mexico Constitution’s guarantee that the right to a jury trial is “inviolate” by preventing jurors from awarding her more than $600,000 in punitive damages and recovery for pain and suffering.
The jury awarded her $2.6 million in damages for injuries suffered during a surgical procedure, although the verdict didn’t specify how to allocate the roughly $1.6 million in damages that exceeded Siebert’s claimed $936,000 in medical expenses.
The New Mexico Supreme Court reversed the trial court in a March 15 decision, ruling that the state legislature had the power to regulate how much courts can award in medical malpractice suits. The high court’s holding is in line with similar decisions in at least two dozen states, though others, including Illinois, have ruled damages caps are unconstitutional.
Defendants in the Siebert case asked the trial judge to reduce her award to $1.5 million, consistent with the damages cap. The judge refused, citing the New Mexico Constitution, which says “the right of trial by jury as it heretofore existed shall be secured to all and remain inviolate.” The judge also said the cap might implicate constitutional principles of separation of powers, due process and equal protection, but didn’t base his ruling on those.
The New Mexico Supreme court declined to answer those other constitutional objections, focusing solely on the right to a jury trial.
The defendants argued the medical malpractice cause of action was created by statute after the New Mexico Constitution was adopted in 1912. The Supreme Court rejected that argument, holding that medical malpractice claims are based in common-law principles of negligence. But the court ruled that the cap nevertheless didn’t violate the right to a jury trial since the jury still decided fundamental questions of fact.
The cap doesn’t “does not invade the province of the jury,” the court held. “Rather, this statutory damages cap merely gives legal consequence to the jury’s determination of the amount of the verdict.”
Opponents of the cap argued “inviolate” was a sweeping prohibition that included any limits on a jury’s determination of damages. The Supreme Court disagreed, saying “an inviolate right is not beyond the reach of regulation, so long as that regulation does not substantially impair the core essence of the right.”
The court then laid out a brief history of jury trials in America, starting with the Colonies where juries were seen as an essential brake on the power of the British government, empowered to decide questions of law and defy the preferences of judges through jury nullification. After the Revolution the role of the jury as a bulwark against government power faded, the court said, and by the 20th century its role had crystallized into the “singular function to resolve issues of fact.”
“Though the jury may once have exercised an ability to shape the legal as well as factual resolutions in a civil case, by the time the New Mexico Constitution took effect in 1912, the jury’s role was limited to that of fact-finder,” the court concluded. “Based on this analysis, we conclude that the right to trial by jury is satisfied when evidence is presented to a jury, which then deliberates and returns a verdict based on its factual findings.”