Verdicts

Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal has asked the Florida Supreme Court to decide whether attorney fees in an unusual medical malpractice case should remain severely limited by a law passed specifically for the benefit of that case's plaintiff.

The case involved a 1997 birth injury that resulted in severe brain damage to the child. In 1999, law firm Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley took the case after several other law firms passed on it, presumably because the injury occurred at a public hospital, and Florida law limits recovery from public hospitals to $200,000 in medical malpractice cases. The case went to trial, where a jury awarded the child $28.3 million and his parents $2.3 million. Searcy and Denney and other lobbyists then convinced the state legislature to pass a private relief act that exempted the injured child and his family from the damages cap. Legislators added something to the bill, however, before passing it into law: a $100,000 cap on attorney and lobbyist fees. If the State Supreme Court decides to hear the issue of whether that litigation and lobbying cap is constitutional, its resolution is expected to take at least a year. “If this [provision] is allowed to stand, no wrongfully injured victim of medical malpractice in a special-district hospital will ever be able to get a lawyer to represent them,” Christian Searcy, president and CEO of Searcy Denney, told reporters for the Daily Business Review. He added, “They have a hard enough time already.”