Nicholas C. Rowley

The call came in on a Saturday evening in March 2019. Rowley, a medical malpractice lawyer, was at home in Ojai. A fellow plaintiffs' lawyer in Iowa wanted his help--immediately. By Monday, thanks to a speedy flight on his private plane, Rowley was in Des Moines as lead trial lawyer, picking a jury to hear the case of a retired tractor factory worker who underwent debilitating prostate cancer surgery before learning he didn't have cancer.

"The man never had an erection again," Rowley said. By the end of the week a Polk County, Iowa, jury had awarded the man and his wife $12.25 million. Huitt v. The Iowa Clinic, LACL139726 (Polk Co. Dist. Ct., filed Dec. 10, 2017).

Rowley points out that in California the case would have been subject to the state's $250,000 cap on medical malpractice non-economic damage awards, a law that's been on the books since 1975. That's why he's promoting a state ballot initiative to change the law, which he calls "the most regressive medical negligence law in U.S. history."

The proposed replacement, known as the Fairness for Injured Patients Act, calls for indexing the cap to inflation, which would raise it to nearly $1.2 million at current rates. Rowley said he's already sunk $5 million into the campaign, which obtained more than enough signatures--some 988,000--to qualify it for the November 2020 ballot. In May, proponents said they'd delay their effort until 2022 to avoid overwhelming voters during a year when they said coronavirus fears could distort the election.

"It's been more than 45 years since voters had their civil rights taken away by this bad law," Rowley said. "I'm happy to spend money on this, money I've been blessed to earn." He added that a decade ago his infant son died due to a medical malpractice blunder.

"I didn't sue. I didn't want to put my family through it, and I didn't need the money. The cap is so low it becomes an injustice."

A 2014 referendum to raise the cap failed badly, rejected by two-thirds of the electorate. Rowley said that campaign was flawed by unwise attacks on doctors, including a requirement they undergo drug testing. "It was a bad idea that appeared to be sneaky and tricky and made trial lawyers look greedy and bad. We need to be fully honest with people," he said.

Rowley has also filed pro bono complaints for declaratory and injunctive relief over the law, the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975. In one of them, he wrote that MICRA "was motivated by medical malpractice insurance companies and their lobbyists who invented the cap and convinced politicians to whom they had contributed money." Mosley v. Becerra, 20ATCV12669 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed April 1, 2020).

"I'm promoting the ballot initiative, filing these declaratory relief actions and pressuring politicians in Sacramento over MICRA," he said. "We have to get this fixed."

-- John Roemer