Talk:Non-economic damages caps

message: "Even opponents of tort reform such as Tom Baker acknowledge that caps would reduce insurance rates.[3]"
I deleted this for the time being because the citation does not support the sentence, and it seems misleading if not outright false. Tom Baker, as far as I can tell, believes that "savings" from the caps are minuscule, and would not create appreciable reductions in cost for insurance companies. Furthermore, companies do not always transfer lower costs onto consumers. Obvious examples from other areas are cassettes vs CDs, or VHS vs DVD, where the medium with cheaper manufacturing costs is actually priced higher.
Counter-intuitively, it might the case that state's with non-economic damage caps actually have higher medical malpractice insurance premiums than states that do not.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.165.229.88 (talk) 19:39, 1 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Tom Baker's Opinion

message: In response, tort reform supporters note that the misuse of non-economic compensatory damages to punish defendants for negligence torts that the common law has held do not merit punitive damages is precisely the problem.   They sometimes contend that it is very difficult for juries to assign a dollar value to these losses with the guidance they are normally given.   They argue that there is no basis for non-economic damages.  They allege that uncapped non-economic damages will violate principles of equitable justice by being inherently random, because different juries will necessarily come to different results.  Because of the highly charged environment of personal injury trials, there is a risk of unbounded non-economic damages being excessive.  (For example, in Ernst v. Merck, a Texas Vioxx products liability case, the jury issued a verdict of $24 million in non-economic damages for a widow who had been married one year to a 59-year-old produce manager with arterosclerosis.)  They further argue that the purpose of the tort system is deterrence, rather than to act as social insurance, and that uncapped non-economic damages "overdeter," and thus make everyone worse off for the benefit of a handful of attorneys and a handful of sympathetic plaintiffs who succeed in "lottery litigation."  Finally, they note the costs of non-economic damages are eventually passed on in the form of higher prices for goods and services; the fact that individuals do not choose to purchase insurance for "pain and suffering" shows that, ex ante, consumers would be better off if there were not non-economic damages awarded and the price of goods and services were lower.
The writer of this cites nothing.  He./she also said that 'because there is no rational basis for non-economic damages" which I changed slightly to "they argue there is no basis...".
Still this is not substantiated.  Who claims?  Why are there these bald claims with no references?  There is also no discussion about the cases that have gone to the Supreme Court about damages, and ratio of punitive to compensatory damages.  I don't know if this is just ignorance of the complex formulas that have been litigated, or not.  MollyBloom 03:05, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Lack of citations and unsubstantiated claims

message: While it is true this page only represents the U.S. perspective, this is only because (as far as I know) the United States is the only country with these sorts of caps.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noober4000 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Doesn't represent worldwide perspective

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Non-economic damages caps. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130513170449/http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751009 to http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751009
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 06:48, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified