The Wall Street Journal's Peter Lattman had a great story yesterday about criticism of a recent decision by the nation’s top patent court that the University of California can’t be sued for patent infringement, even though UC regularly files patent lawsuits against others.
"Sovereign immunity came from the king not wanting to be sued by his subjects and it ended up in our jurisprudence," Susan King, a deputy attorney general in California who argued the case, told the WSJ. "It's not fair but it's the current state of the law."
A lower-profile Tuesday headline caught my eye that’s also about sovereign immunity, though less obviously.
Nevada Highway Patrol officer Joshua Corcran killed four people last year when he rear-ended their car while driving 113 mph—not on a call, just in a hurry to get home. Their families will get $50,000 each.
That's probably the most they can get, because Nevada is one of several states that impose limits on how much can be paid out to citizens who are hurt or killed by the government or its officers. Those damage caps also descend from the idea of "sovereign immunity."
The first time I heard the term was on the floor of the Nevada State Senate, where I covered the most recent legislative session for the Associated Press. Corcran’s bloody accident spurred the introduction of a modest proposal: Senate Bill No. 66, which proposed to raise Nevada’s damage caps on tort claims against government entities from $50,000 to $100,000—the first such increase since 1979.
The Las Vegas school district and just about every local Nevada government had opposed the bill, saying that raising the caps would bust their budgets. A Senator from rural Nevada asked the bill's sponsor, a Democrat, if he would consider keeping a lower cap for the rural counties. (It’s common practice in Nevada to pass laws that apply differently to less-populated counties--most famously, of course, the rural counties have legal prostitution)
“I considered that,” said Sen. Terry Care, a Las Vegas attorney. “I don’t know how life could be worth $100,000 in Clark County and life in Lincoln County could only be worth $50,000.”
Care's proposal passed and ultimately became law. The debate was an interesting example of an issue where an issue seemed to break down along certain professional, rather than party lines. The five Republican senators who broke ranks and supported the bill included two attorneys--neither they nor Sen. Care do personal injury work--and a former EMT, who pointed out that $50,000 doesn’t even pay for a typical hospital stay.
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