Medical liability: Florida voters speak, but no one listens

A voter-approved amendment would have ensured patients a greater share of damages and cut the number of nonmeritorious lawsuits. But the state Supreme Court rejected it.

Editorial. Nov. 20, 2006.

Florida voters spoke loud and clear at the ballot box in 2004: They wanted a constitutional amendment that guaranteed plaintiffs in medical liability cases a minimum percentage of an award or settlement by limiting the amount lawyers can take.

Disappointingly -- and harmful to the state's health care system -- the Florida Supreme Court ignored what 63% of Florida voters enacted.

Floridians two years ago said yes to a constitutional guarantee that plaintiffs receive at least 70% of the first $250,000 awarded in a medical liability case and 90% of anything exceeding that -- after the lawyers first receive their reasonable and customary expenses. Voters understood that the measure they passed, Amendment 3, would help contain health care costs in a state besieged by rising medical liability insurance premiums that are driving doctors out of business or out of state. Patients at the ballot box also knew it was a tort reform step to help give them better access to doctors.

But the Supreme Court in September said they would not draft new rules to reflect those changes. It also said it was OK for lawyers to ask patients to sign away the constitutional right that guarantees them a larger portion of settlements or jury awards.

It was a bad decision for health care in Florida.

Amendment 3 is good for health care because it ensures injured patients a greater share of damages awarded in cases with merit and it compels lawyers to absorb more of the risk involved with filing lawsuits without merit, said the American Medical Association/State Medical Societies Litigation Center in a court brief it filed along with the Mississippi State Medical Assn.