Glossary

Damage cap

A statutory ceiling on part of an award — usually non-economic damages, sometimes only in medical malpractice.

Caps vary in almost every dimension: what they limit, which claims they cover, whether they are a flat figure or a formula, and whether they rise with inflation or on a fixed schedule. Two traps recur. First, a cap can be struck down and still be printed: Florida's medical malpractice cap remains on the legislature's own site with no annotation, years after the state supreme court held it unconstitutional. Second, a cap described everywhere as limiting non-economic damages may in fact limit total damages — Virginia's medical malpractice ceiling is on the total amount recoverable, which is a materially different thing. A cap that escalates should never be stored as this year's number, because it is silently wrong every January.

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