Reply #13: The 250K limit is only on the pain/suffering part of the award. The other

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

parts are not included in the cap.

Let's take lost income. Let's say someone worked and made 50K a year and died due to medical or hospital negligence, and would have been expected to have a 15-20 year work career beyond where they died. Then, including inflation etc. they'd be able to sue for a million or more on top of the 250K for pain and suffering just based on lost income.

Then there are other areas like loss of consort (award due to the fact of lost companionship to spouse) etc. etc.

So to say the whole award is capped at 250K isn't quite accurate.

It's controversial but the idea behind the pain and suffering cap was to prevent arbitrary awards of 30 million or whatever the jury felt like in a given case, where they varied wildly, were huge, and the size of the award often bore no correlation to the damage done in a given case.

Not trying to argue the merits of the 250K cap with you, just trying to correct a misconception.