A variety of state statutes and legal concepts have limited damages in personal injury cases. 

The Supreme Court of Florida has backed the ruling made by a lower court that caps on non-economic damages (in the case of medical malpractice) violate the Equal Protections Clause of the states constitution.

This decision was made after a lawsuit was brought by a woman who suffered a complication after surgery at North Broward Hospital District.

During intubation in the administration of anesthesia, the patient's oesophagus was allegedly perforated and – despite complaining of chest pain – her condition was not fully discovered until the next day when she had to undergo emergency surgery to repair her esophagus.  However, the complaint stated that she had never regained her full health and she was awarded $4 million in non-economic damages by a jury.

Non-economic damages are injury damages for various types of pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life damages.  They are unlike economic damages in that a jury does not base a plaintiff’s non-economic damage awards on past losses and future calculations but makes a more subjective evaluation.

In the case of the Florida plaintiff, the trial court had issued a final written judgment that limited the non-economic damages by the caps defined in the Florida Statutes, which resulted in the award being reduced by about $2 million. Added to that, the court ruled that a further $1.3 million should be taken off the amount as the hospital's share of liability was capped at $100,000.

These caps were originally put into place to reduce the cost of malpractice insurance, but the Supreme Court justices wrote that putting the caps in place did not prove that insurance premiums were reduced and drew the conclusion that the caps were illogical “......because of the arbitrary reduction of compensation without regard to the severity of the injury does not bear a rational relationship to the Legislature's stated interest on addressing the medical malpractice crisis.”   The court also concluded that the statutory caps were unreasonable and arbitrarily limited rewards for those who were grievously injured by medical negligence.

Justice Ricky Polston disagreed and stated that the Legislature did what it had to do to ensure the quality and availability of health care for the residents of Florida. He also stated that if the policy of caps on non-economic damages affected insurance premiums, it was immaterial and concluded by saying that it was not the place of the majority in the court to change a statute or policy that it did not like and wrote that doing so “improperly interjects the judiciary into a legislative function.”

Many states have non-economic damage caps for medical malpractice cases and a smaller number, less than a quarter, of states have in place non-economic damage caps for any personal injury claim. However, the damage cap laws all make exceptions, either permitting a higher damage cap or eliminating it, for cases involving death and serious injury such as the loss of a limb or organ.