Court papers show Abbott had incurred $82,811.85 in medical expenses a year after the accident, and he claimed two months of lost wages from a job that was supposed to start paying him not long after he was injured. He had future medical costs to pay, but most of the settlement came from noneconomic losses for pain and suffering and mental anguish, said Abbott’s former lawyer, Don Riddle of Houston.
“The strength of this case was in the intangibles — the noneconomic items,” said Riddle, who has been critical of Abbott’s pro-tort reform stance.
Not long after Abbott’s accident, sentiment against trial lawyers and large jury verdicts swept through Texas politics, which helped propel Republicans into dominance and laid the groundwork for new lawsuit restrictions.
In 1995, the Legislature capped punitive damages stemming from noneconomic losses at $750,000. Lawmakers also erected hurdles for plaintiffs who try to collect from multiple defendants.
Meanwhile, the conservative Texas Supreme Court, on which Abbott served from 1996 to 2001, began adopting tighter standards for losses that involved pain and suffering and mental anguish.
Then in 2003, the Legislature capped noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases at $250,000, a move that Abbott supported. That means when the medical equivalent of a freak tree accident happens in an emergency room today, people who sue the doctors face a limit on the amount of noneconomic damages they can receive. That limit is frozen in statute at $250,000 and does not have any built-in increases for the rising cost of living. Nuances in the law can lead to higher awards in wrongful death cases or when more than one health care institution is involved.
Abbott said the medical malpractice reforms were needed to keep doctors from leaving Texas over a flood of meritless lawsuits, and he says it worked. Critics say the reforms were meant to help insurance companies and cite a university study casting doubt on the benefits claimed by tort reform proponents.
There are no such caps in nonmedical liability lawsuits, like the one Abbott filed in 1985, and punitive damages were not alleged in Abbott’s case — though his lawyer says that could have happened if it had gone to trial.
Abbot just cut the legs of the majority of folks that are injured... that's medical liability don't ya' know...
Abbot's a fascist shit.. here's to his early demise.
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