A reasonableness-only state for ordinary injury fees
Compare West Virginia to a state like New York, which applies a hard statutory sliding scale to medical malpractice attorney fees specifically. West Virginia has no equivalent figure for either ordinary personal injury or malpractice claims — the fee simply must be reasonable under Rule 1.5, assessed case by case. A 2019 bill that would have created a malpractice-specific sliding-scale cap never passed.
A real damages cap, but no fee cap to match
West Virginia does cap noneconomic malpractice damages under a two-tier structure, currently near $375,000 at the base and $750,000 at the higher tier. That damages question says nothing about what the attorney can charge on whatever is actually recovered — the two questions are governed by entirely separate rules, one statutory with inflation adjustment, the other judicially enforced case by case.
A genuine exception, in a different category entirely
West Virginia does impose a real statutory fee cap — but only for workers' compensation claims, capped at 20% of the award and further limited by a calculation tied to 208 weeks of benefits. Workers' compensation operates through a separate administrative benefit system rather than ordinary tort litigation, and the legislature has chosen to regulate attorney compensation there by specific statute. That exception doesn't extend to personal injury or medical malpractice contingency fees, which remain governed solely by Rule 1.5.
Two separate things that sound related but aren't
It's worth being clear that the malpractice damages cap limits what a plaintiff can recover from the provider. The attorney's own percentage fee remains governed entirely by Rule 1.5's reasonableness standard, untouched by the cap — and enforced, as a real disciplinary case shows, against fees that don't reflect genuine risk.