Nine years ago, doctors and hospitals got a big win in the Texas Supreme Court with Rose v. Doctors Hospital, a case upholding the constitutionality of medical malpractice damage caps in wrongful-death cases.

Rose signaled the turn of the high court from a plaintiffs’ playground to what would become plaintiffs’ purgatory by the middle part of the decade. Now as the court searches for the middle ground as it enters the 21st century, the damage caps at issue in Rose are again center stage.