Posted: June 13, 2014

California’s $250,000 cap on medical malpractice verdicts is going before the voters on the November ballot after opponents gathered more than 840,000 signatures on a petition seeking to change the state law.
The initiative is being led by Bob Pack, whose two young children were killed in 2003 when they were run down by a drunken and drug-impaired driver. The driver had legally obtained hundreds of Vicodin pills from many different doctors. Pack then tried to sue the doctors for prescribing the medication but he was turned away by several law firms. He was that because of the cap, the cost of litigation would far exceed what he could recover. 
The current state cap on medical malpractice verdicts in California would be increased to $1.1 million if the measure is enacted. It would also require doctors to check patients’ drug histories in a statewide database before they could dispense potentially dangerous medications.
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