Oct 9, 2002 3 min read

A California jury last week ordered Philip Morris tobacco company to pay a lung-cancer sufferer $28 billion. Forget for a moment that only a moron could claim after decades of warnings that she didn’t realize smoking could shorten her life and that it’s all the cigarette maker’s fault. Concentrate instead on the amount of damages – $28 billion. That’s about the equivalent of what the nation’s economy would lose if the longshoreman lockout lasts for a month. That’s more than two and half times as much as Pennsylvania expects to receive over the next 25 years from the great tobacco settlement. Or about $10 for every man, woman and child living in America.

If the amount was meant to punish Philip Morris by bankrupting the company and to warn other tobacco peddlers that the price for selling their harmful wares is astronomical, then the jury’s message is heard. But that is not the jury’s role and anyone who doubts that tort reform is sorely needed is acting as moronic as the plaintiff in this case who blames someone else for her deadly choice.

The amount of the verdict will certainly be reduced after years of appeals as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that punitive damages cannot exceed four times the amount of compensatory damages – the actual amount of financial injury a plaintiff has suffered. But the $28 billion price shows that juries, judges and attorneys can no longer be trusted to deliver civil justice in the form of fair and reasonable verdicts. Boundaries must be set.

Outrageous awards and quick but costly settlements by insurance companies fearful of such jury awards if allowed to continue will increasingly add to the costs of products by manufacturers worried about consumer liability claims. And as is happening in Pennsylvania and a handful of other states, physicians will leave for states that have enacted tort reform. The cost of malpractice insurance continues to price doctors out of rural areas, such as Fayette County.

So far this year we have lost two orthopedic surgeons and more recently three obstetricians announced they can no longer afford the insurance necessary to deliver babies. How many more medical specialists can we afford to lose?

A quick fix offered earlier this year by lawmakers to gradually phase out the Medical Professional Liability Catastrophe Loss Fund by 2009 and turn it over to private insurers failed. Physicians must understand that insurance premiums will rise for malpractice insurance and accept nominal increases. But lawmakers must also understand that even doctors can’t afford 250 percent increases as the three obstetricians found with their premium going from $150,000 to $400,000 a year.

The state House on Monday took a step in the right direction by limiting venue shopping.

If passed by the Senate and signed by the governor, plaintiffs will need to file medical malpractice lawsuits in the county where the alleged malpractice occurred. This is to keep attorneys from filing cases in Philadelphia where historically jury verdicts tend to be substantially higher.

This is a practical move that makes sense. Lawmakers shouldn’t stop with this. They must continue to look at the other issues surrounding the rocketing malpractice insurance costs and broaden the scope to other lawsuits as well.

Today doctors are hurting enough to complain or move to escape the pain of crippling premiums. Without complete tort reform, that financially punishes those who bring nuisance suits and limits ludicrous awards such as the California $28 billion verdict, no one is immune from suffering the hardships of increasing liability insurance premiums.