What a Texas malpractice case is really worth

Texas law puts a ceiling on part of what you can recover in a medical malpractice case. It's one of the most important — and most misunderstood — facts about these claims. Understand it, and you understand why so many firms turn malpractice cases away, and why the right firm fights anyway.

Two kinds of damages

Malpractice damages come in two buckets:

• Economic damages — hard, countable losses: medical bills, future care, lost wages, lost earning capacity.
• Non-economic damages — pain, suffering, disfigurement, loss of quality of life.

What's capped — and what isn't

Texas caps non-economic damages. The widely-cited limit is $250,000 against a physician or individual provider, with additional limited caps that can apply to hospitals and other institutions. Those numbers come from the state's 2003 tort-reform law and have stayed flat ever since.

Your pain and suffering is capped. Your medical bills and lost income are not.

Here's the part that matters: economic damages are generally not capped. If negligence left you with a lifetime of medical care, lost your ability to work, or took a family's breadwinner, those very real losses can far exceed the cap on pain and suffering — and they're where serious malpractice cases are built.

Why this scares off other firms

Malpractice cases are expensive to prove — expert witnesses alone can cost a fortune — and the cap on non-economic damages means the math has to work. A lot of lawyers won't take that risk. We will, because we'd rather build the economic case carefully and go the distance than tell an injured patient "sorry, not worth it."