States With Caps on Pain & Suffering Damages

By the FigureMyTax Editorial Team · How we calculate

Georgia had a malpractice damages cap — until its own Supreme Court struck it down on a genuinely different constitutional theory than most states that have done the same.

A cap built on the jury's own role

Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery v. Nestlehutt (2010) struck down Georgia's $350,000 medical malpractice noneconomic damages cap, but not on equal protection grounds the way many other states have. The Georgia Supreme Court instead held that reducing a jury's own damages finding to the statutory cap nullified the jury's constitutional role — violating the Georgia Constitution's guarantee of the right to a jury trial.

A meaningfully different theory than most states

States like Florida struck down similar caps on equal protection grounds, finding the cap arbitrarily distinguished between types of injury victims. Georgia's reasoning is structurally different: it isn't about who the cap treats unfairly, but about whether a legislature can override a jury's factual finding at all. That distinction matters because it leaves even less room for a legislature to craft a cap that survives — any cap that overrides a jury's noneconomic damages finding runs into the same jury-trial problem, regardless of how the cap is structured.

Retroactive, and extended to wrongful death

The ruling applies retroactively, and the Georgia Supreme Court later reaffirmed it specifically in the wrongful death context in Clark v. Leigh — confirming the no-cap rule covers both ordinary personal injury and wrongful death claims alike.

Official sources

• O.C.G.A. §51-12-33

This is general information, not legal advice, and the state comparisons above are illustrative, not an exhaustive survey. Confirm the current rule in any state with a licensed attorney there.