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A key change proposed in Susie’s Law replaces the word “intentionally” with “recklessly” in describing acts of cruelty to animals.

It removes the “I didn’t mean to do it” defense, and it ought to pass. After all, someone who leaves an animal without food and water, for example, should be held accountable for that reckless act of cruelty.

While that common-sense measure waits for legislative action, another bill earned quick passage in the Senate and has moved to the House. In some ways, it takes the opposite approach, but in regard to medical malpractice. It requires proof of intent or otherwise egregious behavior to win a case against a health care provider who mishandles a medical emergency.

To collect damages, a plaintiff would have to show that the provider’s actions “constituted gross negligence, wanton conduct, or intentional wrongdoing.”

That would set a much higher legal threshold than the current standard of “ordinary negligence.”

Ordinary negligence is a failure to exercise reasonable care. Gross negligence is conduct so careless that even someone with no medical training would recognize it as dangerous, according to legal definitions.

It’s a standard so strict that opponents of this bill say it would give emergency room doctors and others providing urgent care virtual immunity from malpractice claims.

The law should recognize the special challenges of emergency care, where doctors must make split-second, life-saving decisions, often without the benefit of a patient’s medical history and without the opportunity to conduct tests or consult specialists. But this proposal goes far beyond any allowance for that. Complete medical incompetence would not rise to the level of gross negligence.

Furthermore, the bill limits awards to $500,000 for “noneconomic damages,” which include pain and suffering, emotional distress and even physical impairment and disfigurement.

While this measure has been pushed by Republican legislators as a means of holding down medical malpractice insurance costs, two former conservative N.C. Supreme Court justices, I. Beverly Lake Jr. and Edward Thomas Brady, sharply criticized it on constitutional grounds.

“North Carolina citizens have a ‘sacred and inviolable’ right to have a jury determine the amount of compensatory damages, including non-economic damages, under our Constitution,” Lake wrote to bill sponsors. That constitutional right cannot be limited by legislation, the retired chief justice said, citing several court cases on the point.

“I ask you to remember the importance of the right to a civil jury and the right our citizens have to full compensation when they have been injured through the negligent acts of another,” Brady added.

The law should not require a finding of intent in animal cruelty cases, and much less so when a person is harmed by medical malpractice.