Kalitan concerned the constitutionality of the per-claimant noneconomic damages caps in personal injury medical malpractice cases contained in section 766.118, Florida Statutes. The Fourth District reversed the trial court and held that the caps were unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Florida Constitution. In the resulting proceedings before the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Justice Reform Institute argued that the caps are constitutional, and that any decision that a per-claimant statutory damages cap violates equal protection would tie the hands of the Legislature and render the constitutionality of other damages caps uncertain.
The Florida Supreme Court disagreed, finding that its prior decision in Estate of McCall v. United States, 134 So. 3d 894 (Fla. 2014)—in which the Court held that the caps on wrongful death noneconomic damages violate equal protection—required the Court to hold that the caps in personal injury cases also violate equal protection. The Court reasoned that the caps on personal injury noneconomic damages are “arbitrary” and do not bear a rational relationship to the Legislature’s stated interest in addressing the medical malpractice crisis, if a crisis ever existed.
In a dissent joined by Justices Canady and Lawson, Justice Polston wrote that the majority had again disregarded prior precedent regarding the rational basis standard, just as it had in McCall. Justice Polston recounted the specific findings made by the Legislature in enacting the damages caps, and observed that the “majority just discards and ignores all of the Legislature’s work and fact-finding. . . . For a majority of this Court to decide that a [medical malpractice] crisis no longer exists, if it ever existed, so it can essentially change a statute and policy it dislikes, improperly interjects the judiciary into a legislative function.”
FJRI represented by Mark K. Delegal and Tiffany A. Roddenbury of Holland & Knight LLP, and William W. Large.