Feb. 8, 2014

Orange County trial lawyers install officers, target MICRA

In a rousing speech, consumer advocate and insurance reformer Harvey Rosenfield urged members of the Orange County Trial Lawyers Association to join the campaign against California's decades-old cap on medical malpractice damages. "We can win against truly tremendous odds, but every one of us has to be in the fight," Rosenfield said during the association's annual installation dinner Saturday. Trial lawyers statewide, along with Rosenfield's Consumer Watchdog group and others, are backing an initiative for the November ballot that would raise the $250,000 cap on malpractice pain-and-suffering damages to $1 million and index it to inflation. Rosenfield said the 1975 law known as MICRA, which imposed the cap, "has caused untold injury and death" to malpractice victims. He called on the tort plaintiffs' bar to work for the initiative and against the insurance companies and doctors' associations that oppose it. "Tomorrow, I'm going to wake up ready to go after the bastards, and I hope you are, too." The OCTLA's new president, Casey R. Johnson of Aitken Aitken Cohn, told the dinner guests that his theme for the year will be "OC Justice: Access and Accountability." His main priorities will be working to protect funding for the courts and the MICRA initiative, he said. "That law has been in place as long as I've been on the planet, and it outrages me." - Don J. DeBenedictis