Opinion ID: 2557538
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dua.

Text: The Majority opinion relies heavily on Dua to bolster its conclusion that the Maryland Constitution protects against the legislative impairment of the recovery of any amount of damages associated with causes of action. See id. It seizes upon the Dua Court's description of the statute there as one that abrogates the plaintiffs' rights to particular sum[s] of money. ... Dua, 370 Md. at 642, 805 A.2d at 1083. Seemingly, the Majority opinion equates particular sum[s] of money with the unliquidated damages claims Longtin sought at the time the Legislature amended the damages cap in the LGTCA. The Majority does so wrongly. [13] In Dua, we confronted consolidated cases where two plaintiffs sought to recover particular sum[s] of money already paid to two creditors. When the plaintiffs made the payments, however, the creditors did not have a right to demand or receive the money. Dua, 370 Md. at 611-16, 805 A.2d at 1066-68. In a sense, then, the plaintiffs were pursuing replevin-type actions to recover wrongfully relinquished and unreturned liquidated amounts of money, i.e., property. Subsequent to the wrongful payments, the Legislature passed laws purporting to grant to those creditors retrospectively a right to the money. The Legislature was not limiting, however, the amount of damages the aggrieved plaintiffs could recover from the creditors, over and above their already-paid sums of money. Rather, it purported to eliminate the heart of the dispute  the plaintiffs' right to brings claims to recover their already-paid, known sums. It was, in other words, taking the [property] of one man, held [previously] by a good legal title, i.e., the money paid by the plaintiffs, and giving it to another, who the law has said had none, i.e., the creditors. Thistle, 10 Md. at 145. In the present case, the heart of the dispute was the underlying torts of false arrest/imprisonment, malicious prosecution, etc. By limiting, through the LGTCA, the amount of possible damages Longtin could recover, the Legislature was not affecting his ability to bring and pursue his claims in the first instance. As we stated in a related context, punitive damages: [T]he limitation upon recoverable noneconomic tort damages under § 11-108 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article does not amount to a restriction upon access to the courts. ... The plaintiffs' cause of action based on negligence was not abolished by § 11-108. Instead, § 11-108 simply modifies the law of damages to be applied in tort cases. Murphy v. Edmonds, 325 Md. 342, 366, 601 A.2d 102, 114 (1992) (emphasis added). [14]