The plaintiff, Jordaan Michael Clarke, underwent successful heart surgery as an infant in 1998 at Oregon Health Sciences University (now Oregon Health and Science University, or OHSU) hospital, but suffered prolonged oxygen deprivation causing permanent and profound brain damage.
His parents sued OHSU and the individuals treating him (several doctors, a respiratory therapist, and a nurse) on his behalf, seeking damages in excess of $17 million: $11,073,506 for lifetime medical and life care, $1,200,000 for lost earning capacity, and $5,000,000 for non-economic damages.
OHSU did not dispute negligence and argued that the statutory liability limits for suits against state agencies applied.
[2][3] In 2006, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's ruling, holding that as to the individual defendants, the combination of applying the damage limits to claims against OHSU and allowing this substitution to supersede Clarke's common law claims against the individual defendants, resulting in an award of less than two percent of Clarke's damages, was not a sufficiently substantial substitution of remedies.
Therefore, the court held, the limits violated a provision in the Oregon Constitution that "every man shall have remedy by due course of law for injury done him in his person, property, or reputation."