Jury Awards $3.65 Million to Teen Assault Victim; Ohio's Damage Cap Cuts It to $500,000 (Simpkins v. Grace Brethren)

Published September 9, 2014 · Verdicts & Settlements · Ohio Appeals Courts

Twelve jurors in Delaware County listened to the evidence, deliberated, and decided that a church's negligence in keeping and promoting a pastor with a known history had cost a 15-year-old girl $3.65 million. Then the judge, following a statute he had no power to ignore, reduced her award to $500,000. On August 8, the Fifth District Court of Appeals said the statute is constitutional as applied to her. If you have ever wondered what Ohio's damage caps actually do, this is the case.

The facts and the verdict

The opinion in Simpkins v. Grace Brethren Church of Delaware, 2014-Ohio-3465 (5th Dist.), lays out a painful history. In March 2008, Jessica Simpkins was raped by Brian Williams, the senior pastor at Sunbury Grace Brethren Church. Williams pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual battery and was sentenced to two consecutive four-year prison terms.

Before Sunbury, Williams had been a youth pastor at Grace Brethren Church of Delaware. The evidence at trial was that Delaware Grace learned in the early 1990s that Williams had engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor female connected to another church, learned in 2001 that he had made inappropriate sexual comments to and touched a woman he was counseling, and took no meaningful action either time. In 2004, Williams left to become senior pastor at Sunbury with Delaware Grace's assistance and support.

The jury found Delaware Grace negligent. It specifically found the church was aware of Williams's past behavior, failed to properly investigate and document the two earlier incidents, and as a result Williams was empowered with greater responsibility as a senior pastor. The jury awarded Jessica $1,378.85 in past economic damages, $150,000 in future economic damages, $1,500,000 for past noneconomic damages, and $2,000,000 for future noneconomic damages, a total of $3,651,378.85. It awarded her father $75,000 for loss of consortium.

What the cap did

Noneconomic damages are what the law calls pain, suffering, mental anguish, and the other human losses that do not come with a receipt. For a teenager raped by a trusted pastor, they are nearly the entire injury.

R.C. 2315.18(B)(2) limits noneconomic damages in most Ohio injury cases to the greater of $250,000 or three times the plaintiff's economic damages, with a ceiling of $350,000 per person and $500,000 per occurrence. We walked through the mechanics in our post on Ohio's caps on pain-and-suffering damages. The cap does not apply if the plaintiff suffered one of the "catastrophic" injuries listed in R.C. 2315.18(B)(3): permanent and substantial physical deformity, loss of use of a limb, loss of a bodily organ system, or a permanent physical injury that prevents the person from caring for herself.

On August 5, 2013, the trial court applied the statute. It reduced Jessica's $3.5 million in noneconomic damages to $350,000 and entered judgment for $500,000. The jury was never told about the cap, because the statute forbids it.

The appeal: a cap that fits bodies, not minds

Jessica's lawyers argued that the cap, as applied to her, violated the Ohio Constitution's guarantees of a jury trial, open courts and a remedy, due process, and equal protection. The core of the argument is one that anyone can understand. The statute lifts the cap for permanent physical injuries. It does not lift the cap for permanent psychological injuries, no matter how devastating. A child raped by an authority figure can carry that harm for life, yet because the harm is not a lost limb or a disfigurement, her damages are capped at a fraction of what a jury found.

The Fifth District rejected each argument, relying on the Ohio Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Arbino v. Johnson & Johnson, 116 Ohio St.3d 468, 2007-Ohio-6948, which upheld R.C. 2315.18 against the same constitutional challenges in a product-liability case. The court of appeals reasoned that the jury's fact-finding was not disturbed because the judge applied the cap only after the verdict; that $350,000 plus economic damages is a "meaningful" remedy; and that the General Assembly made a policy choice to lift the cap only for tangible physical injuries, which it considered easier to measure.

The court also looked at Jessica's own evidence. A psychologist testified she has post-traumatic stress disorder and low-grade depression, and she described fear of the dark, anxiety, and trust issues with men. But the court noted she played basketball in high school and college, earned good grades, works full time, and had not sought mental-health treatment since 2008. In the court's view, that evidence did not show an injury whose effects approximate the physical conditions in the statute, so it did not need to decide whether a more severe psychological injury could ever qualify. The court affirmed the liability verdict and the cap, while sending the case back on other issues.

Who the cap hurts most

We will be plain about our view. Caps on noneconomic damages fall hardest on the people a jury would most want to help: children, the elderly, stay-at-home parents, and victims of sexual abuse. These are people whose economic damages are small, because they are not losing a six-figure salary, and whose real injury is to the mind and the spirit. The statute's formula, tied to economic loss and to visible physical injury, treats them as the least valuable plaintiffs in the courthouse.

A truck driver who loses a leg can recover unlimited noneconomic damages. A 15-year-old who loses her sense of safety in the world is limited to $350,000. The Fifth District acknowledged there may be nonphysical injuries whose effects match the statutory list, but it found Jessica's evidence did not reach that threshold. That is a door left ajar, and it tells plaintiffs' lawyers something important.

What this means for you

If you or a family member has been seriously harmed by a church, a school, a youth organization, or any institution that ignored warnings about a dangerous person, the case must be planned around the cap from the first meeting. That means several things.

• Prove the catastrophic exception when it exists. If the injury includes a permanent physical component, or a psychological injury so severe that it prevents independent living, that evidence must be developed through treating providers and experts and presented to the jury in a way that supports a specific finding.
• Document every dollar of economic loss. The cap's formula rises with economic damages, up to the ceiling, and economic damages themselves are never capped. Future counseling, lost earning capacity, and medical care all count.
• Consider punitive damages. The cap in R.C. 2315.18 applies to compensatory noneconomic damages. Where the defendant's conduct shows conscious disregard for the safety of others, punitive damages may be available under a separate statute, as we explained in our post on when punitive damages are available.
• Understand the exceptions. The cap does not apply to wrongful-death claims, which we handle through our wrongful-death practice, and different caps govern medical claims.

The Simpkins jury did its job. The law, as it stands today, took most of its verdict away. Until the General Assembly or the Supreme Court changes that, the only protection an injured person has is a lawyer who knows where the cap bites and builds the case to survive it. Learn more about how we handle serious injury cases.