Ohio
The Columbus Dispatch
An Ohio Supreme Court ruling reducing damages a jury awarded to a child raped by her church pastor is a sickening miscarriage of justice: But the fault lies not with the justices, whose job is to determine whether laws are constitutional, not second-guess laws. Instead, this is a case of the Ohio legislature using too broad a brush.
It’s hard to believe that the General Assembly and Gov. Bob Taft intended to protect a predator when they enacted tort reform in 2005. The law aimed to curb frivolous lawsuits and runaway jury awards over things such as defective medications, unsafe cars and slip-and-fall accidents — massive civil damages that Republican lawmakers and the insurance industry said were chasing businesses out of Ohio, hurting the economy.
At the time, minority Democratic House members introduced a bill to exempt sexual-abuse victims from the damages cap, but that never passed.
Now is a good time to revisit this amendment.
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