This morning, a divided Ohio Supreme Court remanded a $1.55M
defamation judgment entered against an employer which a jury found had defamed
a nurse who had been involved with a union organization effort. Wayt v. DHSC, L.L.C., Slip Opinion No. 2018-Ohio-4822. The Court found that the jury’s $800K
compensatory damages award was subject to the $250K non-economic damages cap
under Ohio Revised Code §2315.18 because its prior precedent had found
defamation to be a personal injury.
According to the Court’s opinion, the plaintiff nurse was fired by
her hospital employer for neglecting her duties and falsifying a medical record.
The head of nursing then reported the
plaintiff to the Board of Nursing for patient neglect. The plaintiff was unable to find another
nursing job. In the meantime, a nursing
union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB asserting that the
defendant hospital had violated the NLRA by refusing to bargain with it and had terminated
the plaintiff because of her involvement with the union. After an ALJ ruled in
favor of the union, the NLRB successfully petitioned a federal court to order
the reinstatement of the plaintiff to her former job at the hospital and the
hospital to retract the complaint made to the Nursing Board about the
plaintiff. Nonetheless, one of the
plaintiff’s co-workers stated to other nursing that the court order did not
make the plaintiff a good nurse or mean that she deserved reinstatement.
The plaintiff filed a defamation action against the hospital. A jury awarded her $800K in compensatory
damages and $750K in punitive damages.
The hospital sought to have the damages reduced under Ohio’s tort reform
act, but was denied by both the trial and appellate courts. The Ohio Supreme Court agreed only to decide
the hospital’s appeal of the amount of compensatory damages. In particular: whether the cap in R.C.
2315.18 that applies to tort actions seeking noneconomic loss as a result of an
alleged injury or loss to person or property also applies to defamation.
The Court initially appeared to agree that injuries to reputation
are different than personal injuries.
R.C. 2315.18(A)(7) provides: “ ‘Tort action’ means a civil action
for damages for injury or loss to person or property.” R.C. 2315.18(B)(2) provides that the maximum
noneconomic damages that can be awarded to a plaintiff in a tort action is,
barring certain exceptions that do not apply here, $ 250,000.
{¶ 17} Property “means real and personal property.” R.C. 1.59(E).
The term “property” as used in R.C. 2315.18(A)(7) does not include reputation,
and neither party argues to the contrary.
The plaintiff asserted that the Ohio Constitution recognizes the four
separate types of injuries. Article I, Section 16 of the Ohio Constitution, provides
that courts shall be open to redress injuries to “land, goods, person, or
reputation.”
That being said, the Court’s majority held that its decision was
not resolved by the plain meaning of the statute because
We have held for 90 years,
however, that defamation is an injury to a person. See Smith
v. Buck, 119 Ohio St. 101, 162 N.E. 382 (1928), paragraph two of the
syllabus.
. . . .
We hold that
under the plain language of R.C. 2315.18(A)(7), defamation is a “civil action
for damages for injury or loss to person.”
This holding, as explained above, is in accord with prior decisions of
this court and several other courts that were interpreting similar
language. We see no reason to overturn
the well-established precedent that defamation is a “personal injury” according
to the plain meaning of the term.
. . .
Assuming
arguendo only that the court must look to the canons of statutory construction
to determine what the legislature intended by using the phrase “injury or loss
to person or property,” the result in this case would be the same. It is well established that the legislature
is presumed to have full knowledge of prior judicial decisions. . . . Moreover,
the legislature could easily have drafted the statute to prevent the holding
from that case from affecting the outcome of this case; the legislature merely
needed to add “defamation” to the list of actions enumerated in R.C.
2315.18(A)(7) to which the caps do not apply.
In addition, the Court declined the plaintiff’s invitation to only
apply the damages cap to negligence cases.
NOTICE: This summary is designed merely to inform and alert you of
recent legal developments. It does not constitute legal advice and does not
apply to any particular situation because different facts could lead to
different results. Information here can be changed or amended without
notice. Readers should not act upon this information without legal advice. If
you have any questions about anything you have read, you should consult with or
retain an employment attorney.
