Jurors in a medical malpractice trial last week thought they were awarding $759,000 in damages to a Eudora woman who had the wrong ovary removed in a 2002 surgery.

In reality, Amy C. Miller will receive a fraction of that money. A little-known Kansas law that caps the amount of “noneconomic” damages awarded in personal-injury lawsuits will take a bite of at least $150,000 – and, if defense attorneys have their way, as much as $325,000 – out of the jury’s award.

The so-called “tort-cap” law, touted by insurance and business interests as a way to cut down on excessive jury verdicts, has been on the books in Kansas since 1988. The law specifically says that judges aren’t allowed to tell jurors about it during trial.

“It’s all a part of that big effort toward tort reform,” said Trey Meyer, one of Miller’s attorneys, who said he couldn’t discuss details of Miller’s award. “To me, the system has its own checks and balances and we don’t need the tort caps. Our policymakers see that differently.”

There is no cap under Kansas law on the amount of money jurors can award for economic loss – for example, medical bills or lost wages. In Miller’s case, that was about $184,000.

But for “noneconomic” damages – pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement, mental anguish – the law says that awards can’t be higher than $250,000.

In Miller’s case, jurors awarded her $400,000 for pain and suffering. That amount automatically will be reduced to $250,000 because of the cap.

In addition, attorneys for Miller’s former physician, Carolyn Johnson, will argue that the $175,000 the jury awarded for Miller’s “impairment of services as a spouse” should fall under the category of noneconomic loss and should be struck from the award.

Miller said Thursday that she knew about the cap going into trial, but declined to comment further.

Rep. Michael O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, supported putting the cap on jury awards 20 years ago in the Legislature. At the time, he said, jury awards for pain and suffering were unpredictable – in a similar case, one jury might award thousands of dollars, and another might award millions.

“The theory is that this is not something that is really capable of calculation,” he said.

As a result, he said, malpractice insurance was unaffordable or unavailable for doctors.

“You have to have risk that you can evaluate and quantify so that you can set a premium that’s affordable to somebody who has to carry the insurance,” he said. “We do allow juries to put numbers on it. We just cap it so it doesn’t get out of hand – so that in a particularly sympathetic case, you don’t have a runaway verdict and break the bank on one case.”

The flip side of that argument is that the cap itself is arbitrary.

“I can certainly tell you that we have seen many cases where, in our opinion, $250,000 doesn’t remotely begin to compensate a plaintiff for their losses,” Meyer said.

O’Neal pointed out that, despite the cap, other features of the system are beneficial to plaintiffs. For example, he said, a plaintiff who had $100,000 in health care costs can receive the full amount, even if he or she only paid a fraction of that money out of pocket and the rest was covered by insurance.

“There is a balancing,” O’Neal said. “There are some things that are very pro-plaintiff in the system. There are things that are pro-defendant in the system, and it’s worked pretty well over the last decades.”

The award Miller ultimately receives will be paid partly through the state’s Health Care Stabilization Fund – a pool of money from surcharges paid by health care providers – and partly through private insurance. But the case is far from settled.

“Given the way the evidence came in, as long as there’s a judgment against us, we’re very likely to appeal,” said Bruce Keplinger, one of Johnson’s attorneys.