The “Constitutionality” of “Damage Caps” in Maryland
Published .
What a damage cap limits
A “damage cap” is a statutory limit on the amount a court may enter for specified categories of damages, even if a jury’s verdict is higher. Maryland has a general cap on noneconomic damages in many personal injury and wrongful-death actions and a separate cap for health-care malpractice claims. The applicable statute, limit, and calculation depend on the claim, when it arose, and—in wrongful-death cases—the number and status of claimants.
Maryland has different caps for different claims
The general statute, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 11-108, covers noneconomic damages such as pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, and loss of consortium. It also defines noneconomic damages for wrongful death. Punitive damages are excluded from that definition. The cap increases on a statutory schedule, and a different formula applies in wrongful-death cases with multiple beneficiaries. For medical malpractice causes of action arising on or after January 1, 2005, § 11-108 does not govern; the separate health-care-malpractice cap in § 3-2A-09 applies. Its limits also change by year and include special rules aggregating claims from the same medical injury and for multiple wrongful-death claimants. These statutes do not cap every component of every award, and they should not be conflated with governmental-liability caps or other statutory limits.
Constitutional challenges in Maryland
Constitutional challenges have argued that a cap violates equal protection, the right to a jury trial, or the right of access to courts and a remedy for injury. The Supreme Court of Maryland has upheld the general cap against those challenges, applying rational-basis review. It has explained that the jury still determines liability and the facts, while the cap changes the governing law of damages and the court applies the statutory limit after the verdict. Later decisions have reaffirmed that precedent. Maryland appellate decisions have also rejected equal-protection challenges to the separate medical-malpractice cap, applying the same constitutional reasoning.
What the current law means in practice
That is the current Maryland appellate framework: the caps remain in force and have repeatedly survived constitutional attack. This does not mean that every cap applies to every defendant, cause of action, or verdict. A case may present questions about which statute controls, when the cause accrued, whether the claim is medical malpractice, how damages are classified, how separate claims are aggregated, and how a wrongful-death formula operates. A constitutional argument should be assessed against the controlling precedent and preserved where appropriate, but a trial court remains bound by appellate decisions unless a higher court or the legislature changes the law.
Related Maryland Cases and Authorities
Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. §§ 11-108, 3-2A-09; Murphy v. Edmonds, 325 Md. 342, 354–75, 601 A.2d 102 (1992); Oaks v. Connors, 339 Md. 24, 37–38, 660 A.2d 423 (1995); DRD Pool Service, Inc. v. Freed, 416 Md. 46, 64–69, 5 A.3d 45 (2010); Burks v. Allen, 238 Md. App. 418, 434–39, 192 A.3d 847 (2018).