Ohio Supreme Court allows jury function to be gutted

In a shocking and disheartening opinion, the Ohio Supreme Court recently allowed a law to stand that caps pain and suffering awards at $250,000.

For the first time in our state's history, the opinion allows the jury's fact-finding function to be invaded despite the Ohio Constitution's requirement that a right to a trial by jury shall be inviolate.

So, even if a jury determines after hearing all the facts of a case that someone may live with pain the rest of their lives - or that they'll never be able to run again, or walk without a limp - and that pain is worth more than $250,000, the award is automatically reduced. How does the right to a trial by jury remain inviolate if a jury's findings can be ignored if the award is deemed excessive by the insurance-industry controlled General Assembly?

 I was so appalled by the Court's decision that I wrote an op-ed piece for the Toledo Blade that I'd direct you toward if you have an interest in seeing how one of our basic constitutional rights has been stripped. Below, I've included a small portion of the column.

"In Ohio, the constitutional right to trial by jury has always been interpreted to mean that judges and the government won't be able to invade the jury's fact-finding function.

That's why jurors are there, right? To hear the facts of each individual case and decide what they think is fair. Now, though, jurors can spend days or weeks hearing the facts of a case, reach a difficult decision that the injured person should be awarded a sum to compensate for the pain an accident has caused, only to have that decision gutted by a judge if the sum exceeds $250,000.

How does the right to a trial by jury remain inviolate if a law requires judges to violate the decisions a jury reaches? We should probably now read the constitution to say: The right to a jury shall be inviolate, provided it doesn't cost an insurance company too much money.

The right to have a jury determine the facts of a case has been the backbone of our legal system for hundreds of years. It serves as a check against a judge who might be corrupt or for some reason influenced by one side or the other.

It's a concept as old as our country and traces its roots to the Magna Carta. As the court's majority notes, Thomas Jefferson viewed jury trials as 'the only anchor, ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.' "