The California legislature enacted the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) in 1975 with the intent of curbing a perceived increase in medical malpractice insurance premiums and health care costs. MICRA sought to achieve this by erecting a number of obstacles for plaintiffs in medical malpractice actions, the most well-known being a $250K cap on plaintiffs’ non-economic damages.
More than forty years later, health care costs have not slowed but innumerable victims of medical negligence have been denied just compensation. Though MICRA has been applied broadly to various acts and omissions only minimally related to the rendering of professional medical services, there are some fact patterns and theories of liability which may circumvent MICRA’s limitations and permit the recovery of full compensatory damages.
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