A $20 Million Verdict Reduced to $250,000: Ohio's Damage Caps and the Brandt v. Pompa Case

Published April 8, 2021 · Ohio Appeals Courts

A Cuyahoga County jury heard what Roy Pompa did to Amanda Brandt when she was 11 and 12 years old, and what it did to the rest of her life. The jurors decided that her suffering after April 2005 was worth $20 million. A judge then reduced that figure to $250,000, as Ohio law required him to do.

On March 18, 2021, the Eighth District Court of Appeals affirmed. Brandt v. Pompa, 2021-Ohio-845. If you want to understand how Ohio's cap on noneconomic damages works, and why survivors and their advocates are still fighting it, this is the case to read.

What happened to Amanda Brandt

Ms. Brandt was a friend of one of Pompa's daughters and often stayed overnight at the family's home. Pompa drugged her drinks and sexually abused her repeatedly in 2004 and 2005, and recorded some of the abuse. He was convicted of dozens of offenses against many children and sentenced to life in prison.

In 2018, Ms. Brandt sued him. At trial she described constant nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder, severe anxiety in crowds, years of counseling that continues today, a period of addiction and homelessness, and a suicide attempt. She also described rebuilding: six years of sobriety, a marriage, two young children, part-time work, and plans for a career in real estate. A clinical psychologist testified that her PTSD resulted from the abuse and would continue for a significant time.

The jury awarded:

• $14 million for noneconomic damages before April 2005, when Ohio's cap took effect;
• $20 million for noneconomic damages after that date; and
• $100 million in punitive damages.

The trial court applied the cap to the $20 million and reduced it to $250,000. The appeal addressed only that reduction.

How the cap works

Ohio's tort-reform law, R.C. 2315.18, took effect in April 2005. It divides compensatory damages into two kinds:

• Economic damages, such as medical bills, counseling costs, and lost wages. These are not capped.
• Noneconomic damages, meaning pain, suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and similar harms. Under R.C. 2315.18(B)(2), these are limited to the greater of $250,000 or three times economic loss, up to $350,000 per plaintiff and $500,000 per occurrence.

The cap does not apply under R.C. 2315.18(B)(3) when the injured person suffers permanent and substantial physical deformity, loss of use of a limb, loss of a bodily organ system, or a permanent physical functional injury that prevents the person from caring for herself. Notice the word every exception shares: physical. Our guide chapter on what your case is worth walks through the cap and its exceptions in more detail.

For a child sexual-abuse survivor, the math is brutal. Economic loss is often modest compared with the lifelong psychological harm, so the "three times economic loss" formula rarely lifts the limit above $250,000. And because the harm is psychological, the exceptions almost never apply.

What the Eighth District decided

Ms. Brandt argued that applying the cap to her violated her rights under the Ohio Constitution to a jury trial, to open courts and a remedy, to due process, and to equal protection. She also asked the court to hold that Arbino v. Johnson & Johnson, 116 Ohio St.3d 468, 2007-Ohio-6948, the 2007 decision upholding the cap on its face, was wrongly decided.

The court, in an opinion by Judge Keough joined by Judges Laster Mays and Kilbane, rejected each argument. The central reason was precedent. In Simpkins v. Grace Brethren Church of Delaware, Ohio, 149 Ohio St.3d 307, 2016-Ohio-8118, the Supreme Court of Ohio upheld the cap as applied to a teenager raped by her pastor. I wrote about that decision in a December 2016 post. The Eighth District found Ms. Brandt's arguments to be the same ones Simpkins rejected, and it explained that an intermediate appeals court has "no authority to modify, much less overrule, any decision of the Ohio Supreme Court."

On due process, the court considered whether her injuries met the "extreme qualifications" that Simpkins said the exceptions require. It acknowledged that she "suffered real and debilitating mental health issues" and continues to suffer. But it pointed to her marriage, her children, and her work as evidence that she can care for herself, and it pointed to defense cross-examination suggesting that some of her later struggles might have other causes. Calling the evidence "equivocal," it held the cap applied.

The court also noted something important for what comes next: to preserve an issue for review by the Supreme Court of Ohio, a litigant must first present it to the court of appeals. Ms. Brandt has done that, and further review is expected to be sought.

Why this matters, and who it hurts

A jury that heard every word of the evidence valued Ms. Brandt's post-2005 suffering at $20 million. The law reduced it by more than 98 percent. That is not a technicality; it is a policy choice that falls hardest on the people whose injuries are most severe and least visible.

The cap does not distinguish between a careless driver and a man who drugged and abused a child. It does not distinguish between a sore back that heals and a lifetime of nightmares. Courts have upheld it because the legislature drew its line at physical injury. Whether that line can survive as applied to the most egregious intentional crimes against children is now a question for the Supreme Court of Ohio, if it agrees to hear the case.

What remains for survivors and seriously injured people

The cap is real, but it is not the whole case.

• Economic damages are unlimited. Every dollar of past and future counseling, medication, treatment, and lost earning capacity is recoverable in full. Careful work with treating professionals and economists raises both the recovery and the "three times economic loss" ceiling.
• Punitive damages are separate. They punish conduct rather than compensate harm and are governed by a different statute.
• Damages before April 2005 were not capped. The jury's $14 million award for that period was not reduced in this appeal.
• Physical injuries may qualify for the exceptions. We discussed how to build that record in our post on the catastrophic-injury exception, and how a Cleveland truck-crash verdict survived the cap in the Torres case.
• Every responsible party counts. Institutions, employers, and property owners who enabled an abuser each carry separate exposure and often separate insurance.

Brandt also shows how hard the defense will work to attribute harm to other causes. Thorough, consistent treatment records and a complete history given to every provider are what make causation testimony unshakable.

What this means for you

If you survived abuse or suffered a catastrophic injury, you deserve a lawyer who understands the cap, its exceptions, and the constitutional fight still going on around it. Our personal injury practice builds every case with the cap in mind from the first meeting.