New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled her 2022-2023 Executive Budget in late 2021, which includes a more than $10 billion, multi-year investment in the state’s healthcare system. It also contains two proposals that would affect the medical liability community. The governor’s budget proposal would fund healthcare initiatives aimed at modernizing the state’s emergency medical services, […]

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed House Bill 11 late last year after a special legislative session that addressed ambiguities in the state’s recently overhauled Medical Malpractice Act (MMA). The last-minute fix averted a New Mexico medical liability insurance crisis that threatened to force some independent physicians and medical practices to stop seeing patients […]

Almost two years after the U.S. government declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, federal courts are beginning to narrow the application of the Public Readiness & Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act. The Trump Administration invoked the act via emergency declaration in early 2020 to shield providers of pandemic countermeasures from civil liability. A recent, precedent-setting federal […]

The Arizona courts made two decisions in August 2021 affirming the constitutionality of medical professional liability tort reforms that require expert testimony and preclude statements of apology by healthcare providers from being used as evidence of liability. In Sampson v. Surgery Center of Peoria, LLC, the Supreme Court of Arizona held that “a jury in […]

Our Take: Caps on noneconomic damages help limit the amount of megaverdicts that we’ve been seeing increase in regularity all over the country. Megaverdicts add an extra layer to how malpractice insurance companies and their underwriters determine how much a physician pays for malpractice insurance coverage. Megaverdicts typically are any verdicts that exceed $50 million […]

The Oregon Supreme Court last month invalidated statutory limits on noneconomic damages for personal injury claims. The high court ruled that the cap enacted by the legislature in 1987 violates the legal remedy clause of the Oregon Constitution. The decision affirmed an appeals court’s reversal of a trial court ruling on an award for a […]

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month announced a proposal for strengthening the oversight of physicians and other medical professionals to better protect patients as part of his State of the State agenda. Cuomo proposed a comprehensive set of reforms to ensure that the Department of Health’s Office of Professional Medical Conduct has adequate and […]

Arguments in favor of and against New Mexico’s medical malpractice compensatory damage cap were made last month, and now the question as to whether it is constitutional rests in the hands of five justices on the state’s Supreme Court. The compensatory cap limits economic and noneconomic damages, but not medical costs or punitive damages, to […]

The Utah Supreme Court last month declared a portion of the state’s pre-litigation medical malpractice review panel process under the Utah Health Care Malpractice Act unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers doctrine. The Utah Legislature passed the Health Care Malpractice Act in 1976 to curb the perceived cost increases in malpractice insurance in […]