NICA

The court refused to reconsider an April ruling by a three-judge panel that cleared the way for the lawsuit against the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previouslty rejected arguments that NICA should be shielded from the whistleblower lawsuit because of sovereign immunity.

Lawmakers voted to give $150,000 stipends to parents whose children were once enrolled in the NICA state program but had been dropped when the children succumbed to their birth injuries.

The House and Senate proposals deal with the Neurological Injury Compensation Association, or NICA, that was set up in the 1980s to pay for the care of infants with neurologial injuries.