Court Opinion

ID: 9733509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 17:09:29.894153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:42.116721
License: Public Domain

CHASANOW, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority contends that the right to full recovery for pain, suffering, disfigurement, and other noneconomic dam*379ages from the person whose tortious acts caused such injuries is not an “important personal right.” I respectfully dissent. Under Maryland Code (1974, 1989 Repl.Vol.), Courts & Judicial Proceedings Article, § 11-108 (hereinafter “the cap”), noneconomic damages are defined to include “pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, loss of consortium, or other non-pecuniary injury.” It seems to me that the right to recover full and fair compensation from a tortfeasor is an important personal right, and any limitation on that right should be subject to “heightened” or “intermediate” scrutiny. Further, in my opinion, legislation limiting recovery of noneconomic damages might survive such heightened scrutiny if applied in medical malpractice cases, but it should not survive heightened scrutiny in motor vehicle tort actions or other tort actions where there has been no clearly established need for such legislation.
The legislature had three choices when dealing with non-economic damages. It could have 1) eliminated them altogether; 2) proportionately reduced every plaintiff’s noneconomic damages; or 3) reduced the damages of those people who suffer noneconomic damages over $350,000. It chose the third course and, thereby, deprived some, but not all, plaintiffs of the right to recover their full noneconomic damages from the tortfeasors who caused their injuries. The most severely injured will have their damages reduced, whereas less seriously injured plaintiffs will recover their entire noneconomic damages.
There is a sad, even tragic, aspect of the class of tort victims who will be most significantly affected by the cap. It is obvious that those whose noneconomic damages will be greatest and who will lose the most by the cap will be those whose injuries are the most severe as well as those who must endure their injuries for the longest period of time. Infants with paralyzed or severed arms or legs, young children hideously and permanently scarred or disfigured, youngsters with injuries that will cause them permanent excruciating and unremitting pain and who can be expected *380to suffer from these injuries over the full seventy-plus years of their probable lifetimes will be the ones with the highest noneconomic damages and, therefore, the ones most affected by the cap. Disregarding the somewhat offsetting effects of inflation and investment income, $350,000 in noneconomic damages could amount to less than $5,000 per year for such tragically injured children, and these child victims will not even have the same loss of earnings damages that most adults would have.
The defendants do not contend that the cap was a legislative decision that $350,000 represented the maximum reasonable amount of damages that should be awarded for noneconomic injuries. To so construe the statute would mean that the legislature was saying that juries are incapable of rendering fair verdicts for noneconomic damages; if so, the cap may violate Article 23 of the Maryland Constitution, which guarantees civil litigants the right to a jury trial. If the cap is intended to be, in effect, a legislatively imposed remittitur, it may even violate the doctrine of separation of powers. See Sofie v. Fibreboard Corp., 112 Wash.2d 636, 771 P.2d 711, 720-21 (1989). Defendants agree with the Court of Special Appeals determination that “[t]he ‘object’ of § 11-108(b) is the increase in availability and affordability of liability insurance in Maryland.” Edmonds v. Murphy, 83 Md.App. 133, 162, 573 A.2d 853, 867 (1990).
In order to reduce insurance premiums and increase the availability of insurance, the legislature shifted the economic burden from liability insurance carriers and tortfeasors to the horribly injured and maimed victims whose noneconomic damages exceed $350,000. The legislature clearly has the power to change or modify the common law, but in doing so, it must be mindful of the constitutional rights of those affected by the changes. Since the cap statute impacts on some, but not all, tort victims, it raises an equal protection issue. How do we examine this legislation? Do we give it a passing glance under the rational basis test, look at it *381under the magnifying glass of heightened scrutiny, or closely examine it under the microscope of strict scrutiny?
Professor Tribe noted that the emergence of the heightened, intermediate level of review was a judicial response to the growing awareness that the
“all-or-nothing choice between minimum rationality and strict scrutiny ill-suits the broad range of situations arising under the equal protection clause, many of which are best dealt with neither through the virtual rubber-stamp of truly minimal review nor through the virtual deathblow of truly strict scrutiny, but through methods more sensitive to risks of injustice than the former and yet less blind to the needs of governmental flexibility than the latter.”
Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 16-32, at 1609-10 (2d ed. 1988). A number of scholarly articles have advocated a heightened scrutiny analysis of damage caps. See, e.g., Mary Ann Willis, Limitation on Recovery of Damages; Medical Malpractice Cases: A Violation of Equal Protection?, 54 U.Cin.L.Rev. 1329-51 (Spr.1986); Gail Harper, Which Equal Protection Standard for Medical Malpractice Legislation, 8 Hastings Const. L.Q. 125-52 (Pall 1980).
I believe that Maryland should join the ranks of those states that have recognized that the right of people to be compensated fully for their injuries “certainly is amply important and substantial to justify the invocation of at least the heightened, intermediate test instead of the minimum rationality test.” Richardson v. Carnegie Library Restaurant, Inc., 107 N.M. 688, 763 P.2d 1153, 1163 (1988). See also Sibley v. Bd. of Sup’rs of Louisiana State U., 477 So.2d 1094, 1107-09 (La.1985) (damage cap subject to heightened scrutiny review); Brannigan v. Usitalo, 587 A.2d 1232 (N.H.1991) (cap on noneconomic damages in all personal injury actions which “precluded only the most seriously injured victims ... from receiving full compensation for their injuries” violated equal protection under heightened scrutiny review); Condemarin v. University *382Hosp., 775 P.2d 348, 353-56 (Utah 1989) (court used heightened scrutiny because deference under minimum scrutiny “is inappropriate when dealing with a fundamental principle of American law that victims of wrongful or negligent acts should be compensated to the extent that they have been harmed”).
In Attorney General v. Waldron, 289 Md. 683, 426 A.2d 929 (1981), we stated that:
“[Wjhen important personal rights, not yet held to merit strict scrutiny but deserving of more protection than a perfunctory review would accord, are affected by a legislative classification, a court should engage in a review consonant with the importance of the personal right involved.”
289 Md. at 713, 426 A.2d at 946. At issue was the judicial pension statute which provided that a full-time judge who retires and elects to receive a judicial pension may not thereafter practice law for compensation. This Court held that the right of a judge who was receiving a pension to resume the practice of law is an “important personal right” subject to heightened or intermediate scrutiny. We further determined that the statute violated the “equal protection component contained in both Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution.” 289 Md. at 729, 426 A.2d at 954.
If Judge Waldron’s right to resume the practice of law after accepting a pension as a retired judge is an “important personal right,” I believe a maimed, disfigured, or pain-racked victim’s right to recover full compensation, as assessed by a judge or jury, against the person whose tortious act caused their injury is at least as important a personal right.
In Waldron we also noted:
“Although the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment and the equal protection principle embodied in Article 24 are ‘in pari materia,’ and decisions applying *383one provision are persuasive authority in cases involving the other, we reiterate that each provision is independent, and a violation of one is not necessarily a violation of the other.”
289 Md. at 714, 426 A.2d at 946. We further stated that “because the State equal protection principle is possessed of independent animation, in other circumstances the application of Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights may require a result at variance with the Supreme Court’s application of the fourteenth amendment’s equal protection clause.” 289 Md. at 714 n. 20, 426 A.2d at 946 n. 20.
Part of the “independent animation” of this State’s equal protection principle in Article 24 can be found in Article 19 of our Constitution, which provides in pertinent part that every person “for any injury done to him in his person or property, ought to have remedy by the course of the Law of the land, and ought to have justice and right ... fully without any denial ... according to the Law of the land.” I believe Article 19, if nothing else, makes it clear that, in Maryland, the right to a “remedy ... fully without any denial” is significant enough to be included in our constitutional guarantees and is, at minimum, such an “important personal right” that any unequal limitation on that right should be subject to “intermediate scrutiny.”
Some states have held constitutional provisions like Article 19 preclude statutory caps on damages without an alternate remedy or commensurate benefit. See, e.g., Lucas v. U.S., 757 S.W.2d 687, 690-91 (Tex.1988); Kansas Malpractice Victims v. Bell, 243 Kan. 333, 757 P.2d 251 (1988). I agree with the majority that these cases go too far, but it would seem that the Constitution’s recognition of a right to a “remedy ... fully without any denial” implies that, in Maryland, that right is an “important personal right” and its unequal deprivation is therefore deserving of heightened scrutiny.
The legislature did not treat all plaintiffs the same when deciding to limit noneconomic damages. In my opinion, they should not have treated all liability insurers the same. *384There was clear evidence that there was a crisis in the availability and affordability of medical malpractice liability insurance. See Report of the Joint Executive/Legislative Task Force on Medical Malpractice Insurance (1985). No one has demonstrated there was a crisis, or that the cap would solve any crisis, in the availability and affordability of automobile liability insurance. The Minority Report, Governor’s Task Force on Liability Insurance (1985) summarized the testimony before the Task Force and concluded:
“[T]his Task Force has heard no testimony that claims experience or verdicts are the reasons for affordability and availability of insurance. Indeed, there has been no testimony as to the amount of insurance premium that could be saved even if all of the recommendations of this Task Force were adopted. In short, the testimony developed by this Task Force does not justify the drastic changes and the elimination of rights of innocent people and perhaps, more importantly, no testimony that even if these changes were adopted, would the problems be solved.” (Emphasis in original).
Id. at 48-49. Unquestionably automobile insurance rates are high, but they are equally high in other states; yet few other states limit the right of automobile accident victims to recover in full their noneconomic damages. I recognize that limiting noneconomic damages of only medical malpractice plaintiffs is a further form of unequal treatment. But the information contained in the Report of the Joint Executive/Legislative Task Force in Medical Malpractice Insurance (1985) may justify such legislation even under the heightened scrutiny analysis and especially under the majority’s rational basis analysis. Most of the cap statutes that have withstood constitutional challenges are caps on medical malpractice recovery.
In my opinion, defendants have failed to prove that Judge Murphy was incorrect in his determination that Courts & Judicial Proceedings Art., § 11-108 did not meet the heightened scrutiny test and that it was a denial of equal protection for this motor vehicle tort victim to be deprived of *385$160,000 of the noneconomic damages assessed by the jury. It is ironic that this accident occurred when plaintiffs car was struck by a tractor-trailer on an interstate highway. The defendant corporation has offices in several states. We do not know in which state the defendant’s tractor-trailer was registered or in which state the liability insurance policy for this truck was written. Plaintiff’s loss of a portion of her noneconomic damages may, for all we know, have no effect on Maryland insurance rates or availability, but may only provide an unanticipated windfall to a national insurer who wrote an out-of-state insurance policy, but was fortunate enough to have its insured’s negligence occur in Maryland.
Judge GOUDY has authorized me to state that he joins in this dissenting opinion.