Colorado justices consider limits on judge power over jury damage awards.
A newborn girl suffered permanent injury when doctors didn’t move quickly enough to treat a spreading infection. Her parents took the hospital to court, seeking medical damages. The jury awarded them over $27 million after hearing the evidence, most of it going toward future care for their daughter. But under Colorado law, there’s usually a $1 million limit in these kinds of lawsuits. There is a way around it, but only if the judge finds a strong enough reason. In this case, the judge did.
Still, even after deciding the cap didn’t apply, questions remained. Could the judge leave the jury’s award alone, or could it be cut back anyway? And if judges can lower the award, could they also raise it? These are the issues the Colorado Supreme Court is now trying to sort out.
State law allows judges to lift the $1 million cap in rare cases, but it doesn’t explain what comes next. The court is being asked whether judges should follow the jury’s decision or come up with a new amount based on their own thinking. Some judges say they should step in only if the jury went way too far. Others think they can change the number more freely.
In the case of the injured child, the trial judge sided with the family. He believed the evidence supported the full amount in medical damages the jury decided on and said that if he had to choose between following the law or the jury, he was sticking with the jury. A panel of appeals court judges mostly agreed. They said the trial judge didn’t have to use the jury’s number, but he could if he thought it made sense. Because the judge backed the jury’s decision with facts from the trial, the appeals court didn’t change anything.
The hospital, Banner Health, didn’t let it go. They took the case to the state’s highest court. Their lawyers argued that once the cap is lifted, the judge should act like a second jury and look at the number again—this time with more concern for fairness to doctors and hospitals. They said this approach would protect health care costs from getting out of control.
But several justices didn’t buy it. They asked why the law would let juries decide if their word didn’t count in the end. One justice wondered what’s even the point of having a trial if the judge is going to start from scratch later. Others said there’s nothing in the law that clearly gives judges the power to ignore a jury’s decision after good cause has been found. One judge brought up the idea that if judges can cut the number, then maybe they should also be allowed to raise it if medical care is more expensive than expected.
The parents’ lawyer said if lawmakers wanted a whole new trial just to set the dollar amount, they should’ve written that into the law. Since they didn’t, courts shouldn’t act like that’s what the law says.
The justices didn’t issue a ruling yet, but their questions showed concern about giving judges too much power once a jury has spoken. The outcome will matter not just for this family but for others in Colorado who might face similar fights after being hurt in a hospital. The case is still pending.
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