Rashidi

In professional negligence actions against health care providers, recovery of noneconomic damages is capped at $250,000. (Civ. Code, § 3333.2, enacted as part of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (MICRA).) In any action, liability for noneconomic damages is several only, so that defendants pay in proportion to their share of fault. (§ 1431.2, part of the Fair Responsibility Act of 1986, enacted by passage of Prop. 51.)

Here we consider whether a jury’s award of noneconomic damages, reduced by the court to $250,000 under MICRA, may be further diminished by setting off the amount of a pretrial settlement attributable to noneconomic losses, even when the defendant who went to trial failed to establish the comparative fault of the settling defendant. The Court of Appeal held that such a further reduction is required by the MICRA cap.

We disagree. It would be anomalous to allow a defendant to obtain a setoff against damages for which he is solely liable. Neither the text nor the history of section 3333.2 reflects such an intent. Rather, the Legislature sought to address the problem of unpredictable jury awards. The limitation on noneconomic damages restrains…