Missouri's Senate this week will debate changes to the state's civil lawsuits rules.
"We're going to spend all week on it," Majority Leader Ron Richard announced at the end of last Thursday's session, "day, afternoon and evening until we get some things passed."
A decade ago, the "tort reform" issue was an ongoing legislative battle.
Republicans, backed by business and medical interests, said the state's "legal climate" made business and financial planning uncertain and forced doctors to move to other states where they could practice with less fear of financial troubles caused by frivolous lawsuits.
Then-Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, twice vetoed bills before Republican Matt Blunt signed a reforms bill after he took over the governor's office in 2005.
A key provision in 2005 was placing a firm cap on non-economic damage awards.
Back in 1986, Missouri lawmakers agreed that, in cases involving malpractice claims, there should be a $350,000 limit on the non-economic damages awarded to plaintiffs winning their case, but they included an annual inflation factor.
The 2005 law reset the damages cap at $350,000 - with no inflation factor.
In late 2006, Deborah Watts sued Springfield-based Cox Medical Centers for malpractice after her son was born with brain damage.
The jury set her economic damages, which don't have caps and are based on present and estimated future medical costs, at $3.371 million - and also awarded her $1.45 million in non-economic damages to pay for things like pain and suffering. But Circuit Judge Dan. J. Conklin reduced that to $350,000 as required by the 2005 law.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in 2012, on a 4-3 vote, that the cap violated the constitutional right to have a jury decide the damages - and said that right was rooted in English common law, not just the Missouri Constitution's Bill of Rights promise "That the right of trial by jury as heretofore enjoyed shall remain inviolate."
State Sen. Dan Brown, R-Rolla, would remove the English common law backdrop "as it relates to claims arising out of the rendering of or failure to render health care services by a health care provider."
Brown's Senate Bill 239 then adds a "statutory cause of action for damages against a health care provider for personal injury or death" and specifies that the "elements of such cause of action are that the health care provider failed to use that degree of skill and learning ordinarily used under the same or similar circumstances by similarly situated health care providers and that such failure proximately caused injury or death."
The high court last September ruled unanimously that the lawmakers' 2005 cap on punitive damage awards also violated plaintiffs' rights.
"Because the right to a jury trial in 1820 included the right to have a jury determine the amount of punitive damages in an action for fraud," Judge Patricia Breckenridge wrote for the court, "(the) cap on punitive damages awards is unconstitutional because the statute imposes a legislative limit on the jury's assessment of punitive damages when such limits did not exist in 1820."
The Washington Legal Foundation (www.tortreform.com) reported last fall that the Missouri court's "holding is an extreme outlier. Virtually every other state court that has considered the constitutionality of punitive damages caps has held that such laws do not violate the jury trial right because the jury's fact-finding function is preserved."
Richard over the years has complained about court rulings that have overturned parts of the 2005 law.
He told reporters last week: "We do have an over-reaching Supreme Court and court system.
"And it is my intent to do everything in my power to pass tort reform. ... We're going to spend significant time in the next two weeks to get this passed."
Another bill that could be debated this week is Sen. Mike Kehoe's proposal to modify the role of expert witnesses in court cases.
Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, would rewrite the current state law with language allowing an expert witness to offer opinions only under certain conditions.
And Kehoe's Senate Bill 233 would add language not included in the current statute, that an expert witness in a criminal case "must not state an opinion about whether the defendant did or did not have a mental state or condition that constitutes an element of the crime charged or of a defense."
If lawmakers agree, those matters would be left for the judge or jury to decide.