COLUMBUS, Ohio (Legal Newsline) - A narrow majority on the Ohio Supreme Court declared the state’s $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages unconstitutional in the case of a victim of childhood sexual abuse, in a decision opposed by a variety of organizations as well as Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.
Amanda Brandt sued Roy Pompa for abusing her as a child, for which Pompa was convicted. A civil jury awarded her $134 million in damages, including $100 million in punitive damages and $20 million in damages for pain and suffering after the $240,000 cap on such damages went into effect on April 5, 2005.
A trial court threw out the $20 million in post-cap damages and the court of appeals affirmed, citing a Ohio Supreme Court decision from 2016 upholding the damages cap in another child sexual abuse case.
That precedent wasn’t enough to keep the state’s high court from reversing the ruling in Brandt’s case in a Dec. 16 decision. Saying it was ruling on the facts presented by her case alone, a majority led by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor held the cap was arbitrary and denied Brandt her rights to due process under the Ohio Constitution.
The Ohio General Assembly made previous attempts to limit noneconomic damages but they were struck down as unconstitutional until the Ohio Supreme Court upheld R.C. 2315.18 in 2007. In that decision, the court ruled that legislators had balanced the constitutional rights of plaintiffs against the need to rein in excessive damages verdicts. It held noneconomic damages were inherently subjective and the law contained adequate protections for people who suffered physical injuries.
Instead of making a facial challenge, Brandt challenged the law as applied in her specific case. She was successful, as the majority waved away its 2013 decision in another sexual-abuse case as a plurality where only two justices asserted the views cited by the appeals court to uphold the damages cap. In Brandt’s case, applying the cap would be “arbitrary and unreasonable,” the majority concluded.
“What we now know, given Brandt’s case, is that some who fit within this category—those `whose pain and suffering is traumatic, extensive, and chronic,’ —are subject to limited recovery simply because their injuries are psychological, as opposed to physical, in nature,” the majority ruled.
The case drew a number of briefs from groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Ohio Association of Civil Trial Attorneys, who urged the court to uphold the cap.
Justices Sharon Kennedy and Patrick Fischer wrote lengthy dissents, with Justice Patrick DeWine joining Kennedy. Justice Kennedy accused the majority of using rational-basis review, under which courts are supposed to defer to the legislature, to effectively strike down a law that was passed with ample factual and policy justification.
“It is not our job as members of the judicial branch to overreach and invade the province of the General Assembly,” Kennedy wrote. “Bad facts make bad law, as it does today.”
Justice Fischer said the majority ignored the “deeply-rooted presumption” that laws are constitutional, which he said is “vital to maintaining separation of powers.”