The rule that lawmaking is built on deals contains an important exception: Compromise sometimes starts with conflict.

Senate President Doug White did a slow burn for months over the failure of House Republicans to pass a bill limiting personal injury lawsuits. Fed up, he traded his usually collegial approach last week for a legislative bombshell to force the issue.

Without warning, he announced at midday Wednesday that it would be the Senate's last day in session and he intended to finish by midnight. Lawmakers would have had to start over next year on any leftover proposals.

It was take it or leave it for a variety of pending bills, including the lawsuit legislation.

It appeared to work. Both the House and Senate passed the lawsuit bill early Thursday and sent it to Gov. Bob Taft, who will sign it.

''If I took this step and it all fell apart, I was willing to take the heat,'' said White, a southern Ohio Republican leaving office this month because of term limits. ''I was absolutely, firmly convinced that it took that kind of an action.''

At stake was a bill that limits the ability of Ohioans injured by workplace accidents, car crashes or defective products to recover financial damages.

Businesses have long sought caps on jury awards meant to punish companies for causing injuries and for awards compensating accident victims for their pain and suffering.

Companies argue that insurance premiums are rising because insurance companies are wary of being hit with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

Trial lawyers and unions say the caps are unconstitutional because they deny Ohioans their right to a trial by jury. The Ohio Supreme Court threw out similar caps in 1999.

The Senate wanted caps on jury verdicts; the House favored no caps and instead would give judges more authority to raise or lower awards.

White's maneuver led to a compromise that caps pain-and-suffering awards at between $350,000 and $500,000 for less severe injuries but does not limit verdicts for the most severely injured Ohioans, such as those who lose a limb.

In turn, the House removed the ability for judges to increase an award. House Speaker Larry Householder also ditched last-minute language that would have prevented insurance companies from requiring injured accident victims to repay money they received from financial settlements, regardless of whether the settlements cover all of their expenses.

Householder acknowledged it wasn't fair to place that proposal before the Senate with just days left in the session.

But he denied that House Republicans lost a staring contest with the Senate, pointing to the compromise over caps and other provisions.

''It would be hard for you to come up with the conclusion that the House caved,'' said Householder, a Republican from Glenford in southeastern Ohio also leaving because of term limits.

It wasn't the first power play White tried over the lawsuit bill. In May, he tacked the bill onto a proposal preventing obese people from suing fast-food restaurants over their weight or other health problems.

Since the House already had passed the obesity bill, adding the jury caps to it and sending the legislation back to the House was a way to force the issue before lawmakers. The ploy failed.

Even in the heat of the Wednesday's battle, however, White showed he was willing to bend. After word circulated that he wanted to be done by midnight, House members closely watched the clock to move the bill in time.

Yet White mysteriously lost his watch, a fact he pointed out as midnight approached. Afterward, at an impromptu 2:30 a.m. Thursday news conference, he announced he'd found it again.

''It was in my office all the time,'' White said.

Andrew Welsh-Huggins is the statehouse correspondent for The Ohio Associated Press.