Ohio Lawmakers Move to Raise 20-Year-Old Caps on Pain-and-Suffering Damages

Published October 22, 2025 · New Laws

Think about what your rent, your groceries, or a new car cost in 2005. That is the year the General Assembly set the limits that still govern how much an injured Ohioan can recover for pain, suffering, and a ruined quality of life. Everything else has gotten more expensive since then. The caps have not moved a dollar.

That may finally change. Two bills now pending in the Ohio General Assembly, House Bill 447 and Senate Bill 292, would raise Ohio's caps on noneconomic damages for the first time since they were enacted and tie them to inflation going forward. Neither bill has passed either chamber, and there is no guarantee either will. But anyone with a serious injury claim should understand what the caps do today and what these bills would change.

What the caps do now

Ohio law divides damages into two kinds. Economic damages are the measurable financial losses: medical bills, lost wages, future care. There is no cap on those. Noneconomic damages are everything else: pain, suffering, disfigurement, mental anguish, and the loss of the ability to live the life you had.

Under R.C. 2315.18(B)(2), noneconomic damages in most injury cases are capped at the greater of $250,000 or three times the plaintiff's economic loss, up to $350,000 per plaintiff and $500,000 per occurrence. The cap does not apply to the most catastrophic injuries, such as permanent and substantial deformity, loss of use of a limb, or loss of a bodily organ system. R.C. 2315.18(B)(3).

Medical-malpractice cases have their own, stricter statute, R.C. 2323.43. It uses the same $250,000 to $350,000 structure for most cases and, even for catastrophic injuries, caps noneconomic damages at $500,000 per plaintiff.

The jury is never told about these limits. It hears the evidence and returns a verdict, and the judge then cuts the award to fit the cap. The Supreme Court of Ohio upheld the general cap against a facial challenge in Arbino v. Johnson & Johnson, 116 Ohio St.3d 468, 2007-Ohio-6948. It also made clear that whether the specific dollar figures best serve the public is a policy question "not for us to decide." That question belongs to the legislature, which is what makes these bills significant.

Two decades of inflation

The dollar figures in R.C. 2315.18 were set in 2005, and those in the malpractice statute in 2003. None has ever been adjusted. In August, the Tenth District Court of Appeals noted in Lyon v. Riverside Methodist Hosp., 2025-Ohio-2991, that the 2003 malpractice cap of $500,000 is worth only about $286,000 in today's dollars, using federal inflation data. That is a loss of more than 40 percent of its value. A badly injured person today is, in real terms, allowed far less than the legislature allowed when it wrote the law.

What House Bill 447 and Senate Bill 292 would do

House Bill 447 was introduced on September 15, 2025, by Rep. Brian Stewart and referred to the House Judiciary Committee on October 1. Senate Bill 292, sponsored by Sen. Louis W. Blessing III, was introduced on October 14 and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee the next day. Both bills amend the same seven sections of the Revised Code. According to the Legislative Service Commission's analysis of House Bill 447, the bill would:

• Raise the general noneconomic cap from $250,000 to $415,000, the per-plaintiff maximum from $350,000 to $580,000, and the per-occurrence maximum from $500,000 to $830,000. These figures apply to ordinary injury cases and to medical-malpractice cases.
• Remove the cap for catastrophic medical injuries. Malpractice victims with permanent and substantial deformity, loss of use of a limb, loss of a bodily organ system, or an injury that permanently prevents independent self-care would face no limit on noneconomic damages. Today those patients are capped at $500,000.
• Raise the limit in claims against governments. The $250,000 limit on non-economic damages in claims against cities, counties, and other political subdivisions (R.C. 2744.05) and state universities (R.C. 3345.40) would rise to $415,000.
• Raise the punitive-damages limit for small employers and individuals from $350,000 to $580,000 (R.C. 2315.21(D)(2)(b)).
• Index every cap to inflation. Each January, the Ohio Department of Taxation would adjust the figures based on the Consumer Price Index. The first adjustment would come in the January after the bill has been in effect for a year.

Why the malpractice change matters most

This year, two Ohio appeals courts refused to apply the $500,000 malpractice cap to catastrophically injured patients. We covered both: a Cleveland patient who lost an eye, and a Columbus patient left with permanent neurological damage. In each case the courts found it arbitrary to force the most severely injured patients to give up most of what a jury awarded.

Those rulings apply only to the cases before them, and each required a costly constitutional fight built on a detailed record. House Bill 447 would solve the problem directly by treating catastrophically injured malpractice victims the way Ohio already treats catastrophically injured crash victims.

Who would benefit

The people most affected by today's caps are those with serious injuries that do not fit neatly into the catastrophic categories: chronic pain after a herniated disc, a traumatic brain injury that leaves someone able to live alone but unable to work as before, a severe fracture with lasting limitations. Under current law, many of those claims run into a $250,000 to $350,000 ceiling on noneconomic damages no matter what a jury decides. Our guide chapter on what your case is worth explains how the cap and its exceptions work in practice.

People hurt by government vehicles or on public property would also see a higher limit. Our page on claims against the government explains those cases.

Where things stand

As of today, House Bill 447 sits in the House Judiciary Committee and Senate Bill 292 has just been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Neither has passed either chamber. If either becomes law, its effective date and the cases it applies to will depend on the final text. Until then, the current caps govern every Ohio case. We will report on any progress.

What this means for you

Do not wait for the legislature. If you have a serious injury claim, the questions that matter now are whether your injury qualifies for an exception to the cap, how your economic losses are documented (which raises the cap in many cases), and whether a constitutional challenge is available on your facts. Those decisions are made early, while the medical record is being built.