Cowboys star Ron Springs joins fight for plaintiffs' rights

The Constitution guarantees due process and a trial by jury. For years, greedy insurance companies have been seeking to shield themselves from accountability by getting legislators to place caps on the amounts juries can award in malpractice and other suits.

With their deep pockets, the insurance and hospital lobbies have managed to push laws instituting such caps through state legislatures.

But hundreds of plaintiffs have been fighting back, demanding that the Constitution be honored, and state legislatures take “hands off” of the power of the courts to award what they determine to be fair awards. Now, former Dallas Cowboys star Ron Springs has joined the fight.

A malpractice suit had been filed on behalf of Springs by his wife, Adriane. It alleges anesthesiologist Joyce Abraham and plastic surgeon David Godat were negligent in a 2007 cyst removal procedure in which Springs suffered a severe reaction to anesthesia, resulting in cardiac arrest. Springs, though revived after the incident, remains in a comatose state.

Predictably, the defendants refute the claims. But it’s not about them

“This odious Texas law must be challenged,” said Les Weisbrod of Miller Curtis & Weisbrod LLC, in a release.

The constitutional challenge alleges the Texas cap violates the petition clause of the First Amendment, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, the right to a jury trial clause of the Seventh Amendment, and the due process, equal protection and privileges and immunities clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

What will be the outcome? Stay tuned…