Melisa Arbino v. Johnson & Johnson et al., Case no. 2006-1212
U.S. District Court, Northern District
ISSUES: Do provisions of S.B. 80, a “tort reform” bill enacted by the Ohio General Assembly in 2004, unconstitutionally limit the rights of plaintiffs in personal injury lawsuits to obtain a complete remedy for their injuries and to have a jury determine the amounts of noneconomic and punitive damages to which they are entitled?
BACKGROUND: S.B. 80, legislation enacted by the General Assembly in 2004 which took effect in April 2005, imposes caps on certain types of money damages that Ohio courts may award to successful plaintiffs in civil lawsuits.
One provision of the bill limits the amount of “noneconomic damages” that may be awarded to a plaintiff in a personal injury suit (i.e. damages for intangible injuries such as pain and suffering, loss of consortium, disfigurement, mental anguish, etc.) to the greater of $250,000 or three times the amount of “economic damages” awarded to the same plaintiff based on the same injuries, up to an absolute maximum of $350,000. The bill makes an exception to these limits for plaintiffs who suffer permanent disability or the loss of a limb or bodily organ system. Other provisions of the bill prohibit Ohio courts from awarding a plaintiff punitive damages that exceed two times the amount of his or her compensatory damages from the same defendant, and further reduce the maximum punitive damages that may be awarded to a current plaintiff by the amounts of any punitive damages previously awarded against the defendant in other lawsuits based on the same tortious conduct.
In this case, an Ohio woman, Melisa Arbino, filed a product liability lawsuit against the Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Co. in federal district court to recover damages for a series of blood clots and other continuing medical problems Arbino suffered in 2005 after using a hormonal birth control product known as the Ortho Evra Birth Control Patch. During pretrial proceedings in federal district court, Arbino filed a motion for summary judgment asking the court to declare that provisions of S.B. 80 imposing caps on the potential amounts of noneconomic and punitive damages she could recover from Johnson & Johnson were unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable. While that motion was pending, Arbino's case was consolidated with those of dozens of other plaintiffs asserting claims against Johnson & Johnson based on medical problems allegedly caused by the Evra birth control patch.
After initially scheduling oral argument on Arbino's summary judgment motion, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio postponed argument and submitted four “certified questions of state law” to the Supreme Court of Ohio. The Justices have agreed to answer three of the certified questions, which ask whether three specific Revised Code sections adopted or amended as part of S.B. 80 are unconstitutional because they violate plaintiffs' rights to trial by jury, to a remedy at law for their injuries and to due process and equal protection of the laws. The certified questions also cover claims by the plaintiffs that S.B. 80 violates the constitutional separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of state government, and violates the provision of the Ohio Constitution that limits the content of a legislative enactment to a “single subject.”
Attorneys for Arbino point to 1991 and 1999 decisions in which the Supreme Court of Ohio struck down as unconstitutional caps on noneconomic damages and other limitations on personal injury awards that were included in previous “tort reform” bills enacted by the General Assembly. They argue that there is no material difference between the damage caps imposed by S.B. 80 and the caps that were held unconstitutional in the Court's earlier decisions, and assert that the current Court is obliged to affirm its previous rulings under the doctrine of stare decisis (to “let stand” rulings on legal issues that a court has previously decided).
The plaintiffs argue that the fundamental constitutional right to trial by jury has historically been held to encompass not only having a jury decide which side has prevailed in a trial, but also allowing jurors to determine how much the prevailing party is entitled to recover in damages. They contend that the caps imposed on noneconomic and punitive damages by H.B. 80 are arbitrary numbers imposed by the legislature with no connection to the injuries suffered by individual plaintiffs. As such, they assert, the caps deprive Arbino and other personal injury claimants of their right to have a jury determine the types and amounts of compensation that are appropriate under the specific facts of their individual cases. They also argue that the H.B. 80 caps violate the constitutional right of citizens to equal protection of the law because they allow plaintiffs whose injuries are relatively small to collect 100 percent of the damages they have suffered, while restricting the recovery of those who have suffered much more severe injuries to a lesser percentage of their noneconomic damages.
Their position is supported by amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs submitted to the Court by the Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers and multiple state and national consumer and plaintiff-oriented interest groups.
Attorneys for Johnson & Johnson, supported by amicus briefs submitted by the State of Ohio, the Ohio Association of Civil Trial Attorneys and multiple business and industry associations, urge the Court to uphold the constitutionality of S.B. 80. They note that courts analyzing enactments of the legislature are required to begin with a strong presumption that statutes are constitutional, and to place a heavy burden of proof on parties seeking to invalidate an act of the legislature. With regard to the 1991 and 1999 Supreme Court decisions that held previous tort reform measures unconstitutional, they argue that H.B. 80 was specifically designed to address concerns expressed by the Court in earlier decisions regarding unequal treatment of those plaintiffs with the most severe injuries. They point to specific language in the current statute that was not included in prior tort reform bills that exempts plaintiffs who have suffered loss of a limb or permanent disability from the cap on noneconomic damages.
They argue that the legislative purpose underlying S.B. 80 was to rein in the high costs of civil lawsuit awards in order to protect the state's economy and the financial and employment security of all Ohioans. Because the bill's caps on noneconomic and punitive damage awards allow reasonable recovery for all but the most severely injured plaintiffs, and exempt victims of catastrophic injuries from the caps, they argue that the statutory scheme must be upheld as constitutional because there is a clear “rational basis” for its limitations on personal injury damage awards.