“PAIN AND SUFFERING”: MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CAPS IN MANY STATES LIMIT PAYOUTS FOR PATIENTS WITH LIFELONG INJURIES

ORLANDO, Florida (InvestigateTV) — When Michael Beacham’s daughter, Mattie, was born at Orlando Health in December of 2022, he believed that many medical malpractice lawsuits were frivolous.

“I didn’t understand it. You just hear what you’re told and think, ‘Oh, frivolous lawsuits. People are out just trying to sue everybody,’” Beacham said.

But his opinion changed once tragedy struck his own family and they’d become engaged in legal battles illustrated in legal documents and medical records.

Mattie was healthy after his wife, Allison, gave birth.

“I remember every moment of it, came on out, cried and happy little zesty, zesty little baby,” said Allison, a local TV news anchor..

But Michael, president of California Pizza Kitchens worldwide, said they soon noticed problems. “Every single week the baby wasn’t gaining weight and they said, ‘You need to feed her more and she needs more sunlight,’” he said.

At Mattie’s two-month checkup, her doctor told the family she needed to go to the emergency room.

“He said to me, ‘You are going to be admitted into the E.R.,” Allison recalled. “And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Doctors told the couple that Mattie needed immediate surgery because her life was at risk.

She was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a condition present at birth in which the ducts that drain bile out of the liver are blocked. Left untreated, the condition causes bile to back up, eventually leading to liver failure and death.

Michael said he asked doctors why the condition wasn’t caught sooner. “I said, ‘Why would they ever let us out of the hospital if there was a problem?’ And the doctor said, ‘We’re still trying to figure that out.’ I never forgot that,” he said.

Surgery, transplant and lost fingers

The initial surgery failed, and the Beachams switched hospitals. Weeks later, Mattie’s liver stopped working and she came close to dying.

“She was in a coma. Every organ went into failure,” Michael said.

“How do you ever get back from there?” he said. “And then the chaplains came in and said she won’t make it through the night. And we just stood there and stared at her.”

Allison said the experience remains difficult to discuss. “It’s hard to talk about it again, it’s hard to revisit this,” she said.

Miraculously, Mattie survived, and in September 2023, at 10 months old, she received a liver transplant.

But her earlier medical treatments had cut off circulation in her left hand, and doctors told the Beachams her fingers would eventually die and fall off. Her hand turned black.

“Christmas Day, her first finger was dangling, and she kept putting it in her mouth,” Michael said.

After calling the hospital, he said he was told he had to act immediately because she could choke. “I had to take off my daughter’s finger. I had to cut it off,” he said. “And then the rest, we had to watch over two months, one by one as they fell off.”

Attorney points to early test results

The Beachams contacted attorney Steve Maher to ask whether they should sue Orlando Health.

The Beachams said they are now in arbitration with Orlando Health and have also filed a separate lawsuit against a doctor and nurse involved in their daughter’s care.

Maher said after reviewing Mattie’s medical records, he found a blood test from her third day of life measuring direct bilirubin, a substance whose high levels can indicate biliary atresia in newborns. The family’s legal actions allege Mattie’s result was more than 10 times the laboratory’s normal reference level.

“I go, ‘Oh my gosh, this is an absolute, absolute tragedy,’” Maher said. “That just made it absolutely egregious that it wasn’t followed up on.”

“They had a test that said she had this disease. They never told us,” Michael said.

Orlando Health declined to comment.

The Beachams said they learned another disturbing detail from their attorney - a restriction in Florida law could limit the amount of money the hospital would have to pay for diagnosing Mattie’s condition immediately after birth, when it was easier to treat.

Although the Florida Supreme Court declared overall medical malpractice caps on non-economic damages (often called “pain and suffering”) unconstitutional, a cap remains in one particular situation that currently affects the Beachams’ claims against the hospital.

“We had no idea how the system is kind of been stacked up against people, normal people,” Michael said.

How malpractice damage caps work

In medical malpractice cases, there are generally two kinds of damages an injured person can receive. Economic damages cover costs such as lost wages, medical bills and future medical needs. Non-economic damages, known as “pain and suffering,” cover losses without a price tag, including physical pain, emotional trauma, and permanent disability or disfigurement.

In more than half the states, legislatures have enacted limits, or caps, on how much money someone can receive for pain and suffering, even when they face a lifetime of hardship. Some of those caps are as low as a total of $250,000.

Mike Stinson, vice president of the Medical Professional Liability Association, which represents companies that insure health care providers, said the caps are necessary for market stability.

“Well, we believe it’s very important, as in any line of insurance, to have some stability in the market,” Stinson said.

Stinson said insurers need to be able to predict jury awards for pain and suffering.

“If juries can continually award damages with absolutely no limits whatsoever, non-economic damages, of course, you’re going to have to see a situation where the insurers have to dramatically raise premiums,” he said. “Doctors then have to charge more money in order to pay for those premiums, and it drives up the overall cost of health care.”

New York Law School professor Joanne Doroshow, who runs the Center for Justice and Democracy, which opposes medical malpractice caps, disputed that. “Yeah, that’s not true,” she said.

Doroshow said jury awards have little effect on insurance companies’ finances.

“They make most of their money from their investment income. Right now, they are making huge profits. You look at their numbers, they’re through the roof in terms of their profits,” she said.

Asked why insurers lobby for caps, Doroshow said, “It’s just that they don’t want to pay that money.” Asked if it was about justice or money, she said, “It’s entirely about dollars and cents.”

Doroshow also said juries don’t know about the economic limits. “And let me tell you, juries are not told about these caps. Juries think they’re doing the right thing by awarding full damages,” she said.

Stinson said caps don’t take the decision away from juries. “I don’t think it’s taking anything away from the jury’s ability to decide a case,” he said.

Asked whether caps limit a jury’s ability to decide how much money someone should get, Stinson said: “Yes it does. I’d say it limits it. It doesn’t take away their ability. Just caps how much those damages could be.”

Doroshow questioned that reasoning. “Why is it that we trust a jury to determine if somebody should live or die, but not determine whether a child’s medical malpractice claim is valid? I mean it’s absurd,” she said.

Mattie’s case and the $250,000 cap

Under Florida law, if a hospital or doctor admits liability and offers to go to arbitration, which happens outside of court, non-economic damages are capped at $250,000. If the plaintiff rejects arbitration and goes to trial instead, damages are still capped, but at $350,000.

The Beachams’ attorney said Orlando Health chose arbitration, and those proceedings are ongoing.

“They’re doing that for one reason, and that’s to limit their exposure. That’s to limit the amount of money that they’re going to have to pay,” Maher said.

For Mattie, it’s a devastating outcome, Maher said.

“It’s not going to make a drop in an ocean; $250,000 is nothing over Mattie’s lifetime,” he said

Michael said Mattie faces ongoing medical needs. “She has a lifetime of medical problems coming, and every month is something new,” he said.

Allison said the family faces years of uncertainty. “It’s very scary, so for the rest of her life, she also has to deal with that, in addition to trying to avoid another liver transplant when she gets older,” she said.

Michael also pointed out that the $250,000 cap was implemented in the 1990s.

He said that on Facebook, he publicly challenged Orlando Health administrators. “So, what I will tell you what I, what I suggested to the CEO of Orlando Health if he would be willing to give me $250,000 for his five fingers. Let’s talk about it,” he said.

In that Facebook post, Beacham also told the CEO, “We’ll be coming after your medical malpractice loophole next!”

He said he intends to work to change Florida law.

“If we don’t hold them accountable, it will happen over and over and over again,” Michael Beacham said.

InvestigateTV reached out to the attorneys for the doctor and nurse being sued, by phone and email, but our team did not receive responses.

The Beachams also are pushing to change newborn screening laws.

Florida’s “Mattie’s Law,” which would require hospitals to screen newborns for biliary atresia using the direct bilirubin test already given at birth, passed the state Senate unanimously this year. Micheal says it has not passed the House as of yet, but the governor already funded the tests in the state budget and he expects it to be signed into law in 2027.

The Beachams are working to put a federal law into place as well.