How does $18 million become $8.8 million?

A jury’s recent $18 million verdict in San Diego, later cut in half by California’s medical malpractice regulations, illustrates changes to a state law that limited payments for more than 50 years.

The case, which seeks compensation for a botched brain surgery that caused a debilitating stroke in an otherwise healthy patient, shows how increases in long-standing caps on “non-economic” damages, and on the fees that attorneys receive if they win, have changed the legal landscape statewide.

These changes are the result of Assembly Bill 35, legislation that took effect in 2023, the same year that Phuong Ho, 54, began experiencing minor discomfort in her head. Medical imaging revealed a tumor growing on her pituitary gland. Told that the mass could eventually grow large enough to impinge upon her nearby optic nerve, she underwent minimally invasive surgery at Sharp Memorial Hospital on Jan. 26, 2023.

Court records indicate that Dr. Sohaib Kureshi, a board-certified neurosurgeon affiliated with several San Diego County health systems, performed the surgery after an ear, nose and throat surgeon dissected the approach path, operating through an incision in Ho’s nasal passage.

Though court records show that there is significant disagreement about how Ho’s injury happened, there is no question that at some point her carotid artery, which passes very near the p...