Michigan Tort Reform
In the early 1980s, Michigan legislators
had become worried about the state's medical malpractice liability climate, which
was beginning to limit its citizens' access to healthcare. Medical malpractice claims
in the state had grown from 10 per 100 doctors in 1979 to 25 per 100 by 1985—an
increase of 150 percent in just six years. From 1970 to 1984, the Detroit metro-area
had seen its malpractice filings jump 1,100 percent.
Medical malpractice insurance costs had also doubled in the period 1980 to 1984,
growing even faster for the riskier specialties. Michigan doctors took notice. Forty-two
percent of Michigan family physicians reported that they had ceased delivering babies
or reduced the number they delivered, and an even higher percentage of such doctors
reported that they had cut back on surgery and treating patients likely to require
intensive care. In response, the state's legislature passed statutes that addressed
the following:
Venue Reform
The Michigan legislature found that plaintiffs’ lawyers were shopping their cases
to forums they deemed “friendly,” even when their location had little relationship
to the case. It therefore passed a law requiring cases to be filed in the county
where the alleged injury occurred or where the defendant is located.
Joint-and-Several Liability
Lawmakers were concerned that plaintiffs' attorneys were suing parties with deep
pockets but little connection to a plaintiff’s injury. As a consequence, defendants
that juries determined to be as little as 5 percent at fault were being stuck with
100 percent of the damages. The new law reformed the doctrine of “joint-and-several
liability,” as it applied to areas of tort law other than products liability, by
limiting a defendant’s damage payouts to its share of responsibility; special protections
of government bodies were also enacted to cover cases in which a plaintiff was judged
to be partially at fault.
Expert Testimony
For medical malpractice cases in particular, the 1986 law imposed more stringent
standards on expert-witness testimony, which the state legislature concluded was
being used to bring scientifically dubious cases.
Non-Economic Damage Caps
Because the legislature found that a large and increasing share of the payouts in
medical malpractice suits went for non-economic damages such as “pain and suffering,”
the new law capped them at $225,000 per case, though it provided for certain exceptions.
By 1993, the Michigan legislature had determined that the existing medical malpractice
reforms needed to be strengthened, passing a new round of measures. These measures
dealt with:
Evidence and Disclosure
In expanding the 1986 medical-malpractice reforms, the 1993 legislature revised
expert-witness requirements and mandated that parties to a lawsuit give greater
access to each other’s medical records.
Non-economic Damages
The 1993 reform package also extended the cap on non-economic damages to include
all malpractice cases, though it raised the cap to $280,000 (or $500,000, depending
on the category of defendant).
"Michigan's carefully designed tort reforms do not deny a truly injured patient
from just compensation," said Sophie J. Womack, MD, a Detroit neonatalogist who
serves as president of the Wayne County Medical Society
of Southeast Michigan and as a member of the Michigan
State Medical Society board of directors. "The reforms have helped reduce
the 'lottery mentality' of each mal-occurrence, or bad outcome, from becoming a
lawsuit."
Since the Michigan tort reforms went into effect in 1994, each component of the
legislation has withstood constitutional challenges from the trial bar, which has
slowly bolstered insurance industry confidence and resulted in this year's double-digit
premium decrease. By contrast, tort reforms in neighboring Illinois were overturned
in November of 2007, prompting the Illinois State Medical
Society to issue a news release stating that the "verdict could derail health
care access."
Previously, many Michigan physicians who practiced in high-risk specialties such
as obstetrics, neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery often left for states where lawsuits
were not as frequent and jury awards were not as high. Michigan is now a more favorable
place to practice than many neighboring states, and the state's medical society
anticipates an increase in applications to practice in the state as well as improved
access to healthcare for its citizens.
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