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Abstract

This Note analyzes the decision made by the Missouri Supreme Court in Watts v. Lester E. Cox Medical Centers.  In this case, the Missouri Supreme Court had to determine whether a cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases provided by Missouri Statute section 538.210 violated the Missouri Constitution’s right to trial by jury.  The majority opinion in Watts declared that the cap on noneconomic damages provided by section 538.210 violated Missouri’s constitutional right to trial by jury.  In doing so, the court reasoned that medical malpractice cases were subject to the right to trial by jury when the Missouri Constitution was adopted.  The court then held that once the right to trial by jury attaches, the plaintiff in a medical malpractice case is entitled to the full benefit of the right and that this right could not be altered by the legislature.  The court then asserted the plaintiff’s right to trial was impermissibly altered by the legislature through section 538.210’s limit on noneconomic damages because the determination of damages was a task that falls solely within the province of the jury.  To limit the amount a plaintiff can recover in noneconomic damages impermissibly took the job of determining the damages away from the jury.

This Note analyzes the decision in Watts and argues that the Missouri Supreme Court was correct in its holding that the cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases provided for in section 538.210 violates the Missouri Constitution’s right to trial by jury.  Before analyzing the decision in Watts, this Note explains the history of the right to trial as guaranteed in Article I, Section 22(a) of the Missouri Constitution and analyzes the prior case law on section 538.210, including Adams By and Through Adams v. Children’s Mercy Hospital and Sanders v. Ahmed.  After presenting this background information and the court’s decision in Watts, this Note then argues that the decision in Watts was appropriate, as the cap on noneconomic damages in section 538.210 does violate the right to trial by jury and did not lower medical malpractice insurance premiums as it was designed to do.  Instead, the cap has the effect of discriminating against seriously injured medical malpractice victims.

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