Guest commentary by Paula Sweeney, Howie & Sweeney, Dallas

As a lawyer who represents patients injured by medical malpractice, I see firsthand the injustice inflicted on Texas families by the legislative mandates enacted after heavy-handed lobbying by the insurance and medical industries.

It is heart-wrenching to explain to a retired person, who has been sentenced to an early death by an avoidable medical mistake, that the cost of taking his case to a jury will exceed the value the Texas Legislature placed on his life. Families facing this scenario have great difficulty believing that the powers of judges and juries to consider the value of medical malpractice cases on an individual basis have been taken away.

The strict limit the Texas Legislature placed on “non-economic damages” — which include, among others, such things as the loss of a limb, blindness, living with continual pain or disfigurement, never being able to hug your child, or living in a wheelchair — are unfair to all, but they strike particularly hard at Texans whose worth does not include a high wage-earning capacity.

A colleague of mine recently interviewed a woman with terminal lung cancer that had been obvious on an X-ray taken in the early stage of the disease, but missed by the professionals responsible for reading the X-ray. The woman was stunned to learn that almost all of her damages would fall under the definition of “non-economic” and be subject to a total recovery of $250,000, out of which would come all expenses involved in fighting the insurance company’s platoon of lawyers. Once again, the potential recovery would be less than the expense of pursuing the claim.

Similarly, an Austin lawyer is struggling to assist a family whose mother, a nursing home resident, was raped by an employee at the facility. Once again, almost all of the losses fall under “non-economic” and make the case a very difficult one to pursue.

Unfortunately, the same legislators who decided that Texas families’ legal rights were expendable did nothing to require that powerful insurance companies pass any savings on to doctors and patients.

In a post-mortem hearing to examine the status of the Legislature’s overhaul of the justice system, the Texas commissioner of insurance admitted that the majority of doctors in the state had seen no reduction in their insurance rates.

What a shame that important legal rights Texas families have had for years have been relinquished, especially when the insurance companies’ pricing, practices and stock market losses created most of the problems in the cost of medical malpractice insurance to begin with.

As time goes by, even more devastated Texas families will find themselves sitting in a lawyer’s office finding out the cold, hard truth about so-called “tort reform.”

The voices of Texas families who learn the Legislature shifted power from judges and juries to politicians may turn out to be loud and effective messengers to future sessions of the Texas Legislature.

As lawyers who represent people, we hope that is the case.

Paula Sweeney is past president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.