Everyone has heard about the infamous McDonald's scalding hot coffee case. It's a complete oddity, but insurance company lobbyists always trot it out as if it's the norm. The caps enacted in Ohio are far more likely to affect the average man or woman unfortunate enough to get into an auto accident.

Here's the nightmare situation that could happen to you or a family member. You're driving to work when a guy driving a delivery truck takes his mind off the road while talking on a cell phone and plows into your car. Your head hits the window, your ankle is crushed when your car's frame crumples, and your body is snapped back and forth like a rag doll, and your life has been altered forever.

The head trauma leaves you plagued by headaches. Your ankle injury means that every step causes pain to shoot through your leg. Your back hurts so much that getting a real night's sleep is impossible. You can't play ball with your kids anymore or even mow the yard. And the pain doesn't go away after a week, or a month, or even a year. In fact, by the time you get to trial years have gone by and the docs are telling you you'll never run again and your pain will always be with you.

A jury hears your case and awards you the cost of your medical bills that may have to be repaid, and lost wages, and decides - after hearing your testimony, your doctor's testimony, your spouse's testimony, the defense doctor's testimony, and the defense attorney's arguments - that your lifelong pain is worth $500,000. Or $1 million. Or $2 million. Whatever it is, it's not enough to compensate you for what this accident has done to your life and no one - no one - in that courtroom would change positions with you for any amount of money.

That's the point where the judge steps in and reduces the jury's pain and suffering award to $250,000 because that's what the law requires. The jurors heard the facts and struggled to come to a fair decision, only to have their legs cut out from them by a General Assembly that knew nothing about the facts of your case or the impact the accident has had on your life.

And our Supreme Court just blessed this system.

It blessed a system where a jury can hear the specifics of an individual case only to have the decision wiped out by an arbitrary cap the state Legislature's Republican majority came up with to satisfy their chamber of commerce and insurance company campaign contributors.

The court justifies its decision on the thinnest of rationales. See if you can follow its logic: When judges reduce jury awards for pain and suffering, they aren't interfering with a jury's fact-finding function, they're simply applying the law.

What?

Spin that around your head for a while. It never gets any clearer. So, the jurors can do their cute little dance, and we'll pretend to care about what they have to say. But the second they award any money to someone that could actually make an insurance company pay fair compensation, well something simply must be done. Apparently, the right to trial by jury is inviolate, but only up to a point.

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