A bill floated by Texas state lawmakers that would cap certain damages in personal injury lawsuits would prove devastating to sexual assault victims as it "penalizes" those who try to move on with their lives, according to an attorney who specializes in such cases.

If enacted, H.B. 4806 would put a $1 million cap on past and future mental or emotional pain or anguish in wrongful death actions, as well as personal injury cases that primarily caused mental anguish.

The bill also proposes a $250,000 cap on injury cases that primarily caused bodily injury and includes provisions regarding prejudgment interest and a trial court's duty to keep awards for noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering in line with verdicts in similar cases.

The bill defines mental anguish as distress that "causes a substantial disruption in a person's daily routine," which is problematic, according to Michelle Simpson Tuegel of the Simpson Tuegel Law Firm in Dallas.

"That that was a big red flag for me, because sexual assault trauma is not cookie cutter; it is individualized to each person, and it doesn't always look the same," she said. "[The definition] also penalizes the victim or the survivor."

Tuegel said many of her clients are trying to proceed with their lives and hold it together on the exterior.

"We want them to go to work, we want them to take care of their children, we want them to get medical care," she said. "But if they show that they're doing some things that are part of their daily routine, suddenly their anguish doesn't qualify as emotional pain?"

The plaintiffs' attorney specializes in sexual assault cases and represented victims of the disgraced doctors Larry Nassar, formerly of Michigan State University, and George Tyndall, formerly with the University of Southern California.

Juries are savvy enough to determine a sexual assault victim's mental anguish, Tuegel said. In one of her past cases, a Houston jury awarded a woman $44 million against Hilton despite the hotel chain's attorneys trying to use the fact that the woman was active and started a yoga business as evidence that she was not emotionally distressed.

"The jury didn't hold that against her," she said. "They didn't think she wasn't damaged because she went to work. What this definition is saying to victims and plaintiffs is, 'Don't go to work or you're not going to fit in the definition of mental anguish.' Does that make sense?"

Indeed, if passed, the bill could prompt plaintiffs' attorneys to advise their clients to not carry on with their lives normally or, even worse, force plaintiffs' counsel working on contingency to take on only the least-risky cases, which could leave many legitimate victims without legal redress, Tuegel added.

However, proponents of the bill, which saw heavy debate in the Texas Senate in late March, assert that it would quell so-called nuclear verdicts that they claim have exploded in the last decade or so. Between 2009 and 2023, Texas has had more than 200 verdicts totaling $45 billion, according to Baker Donelson.

"Nuclear verdicts have direct impacts on consumer prices (they increase insurance premiums), leading some businesses to reconsider whether operating in Texas is worth the risk of litigation for simple negligence, somehow spun into a story of corporate greed and malfeasance," said Kimberly Chojnacki of Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC in a recent client alert.

While the plaintiffs' bar argues that pain and suffering damages should be left to juries to decide, Chojnacki said, they are also the same ones who are improperly manipulating juries.

"This position completely disregards the psychological and emotional manipulation plaintiffs' attorneys have developed over the years and deployed with great success, all at the expense of the broader public, who is left paying the verdict through increased consumer prices and insurance premiums," she said in the client note.

But supersized verdicts are sometimes one of the only ways to achieve meaningful policy change at the corporate and institutional level, according to Tuegel.

If you're not in a high-profile case such as USA Gymnastics or the USC gynecology case with hundreds of victims, the defendant will fight tooth and nail and refuse to settle, let alone agree to internal policy changes and safeguards, which leads to jury trials and sometimes a nuclear verdict, the plaintiffs' attorney said.

"When they refuse to make those policy changes, we go and get those big verdicts and that makes them start to change their policies," she said. "But when our legislators take that away, it also takes away our ability to pressure [defendants] and effectuate change with these verdicts."

--Editing by Andrew Cohen.