In this unpublished opinion, the California Court of Appeal (Fifth District) affirmed a $15 million punitive damages award and held that the defendant forfeited some of its arguments by failing to respond to the plaintiff’s demands for financial information.
The underlying facts of the case involve a patient in a memory care facility. A staffer at the facility escorted the patient to the dining area and discovered about 90 minutes later that the patient was missing from the facility. He was found lying outside the facility with injuries to knees and elbow. He ultimately underwent multiple surgeries for his injuries and died about five months after the incident.
His heirs sued the facility for negligence and elder abuse and obtained a jury verdict for $149,000 in economic damages, $8 million in noneconomic damages, and $15 million in punitive damages. Half of the noneconomic damages—$4 million—represented the decedent’s own pain and suffering. The trial court reduced that amount to $250,000 under the applicable MICRA cap, Civil Code section 3333.2, subdivision (b).
The defendant appealed and argued, among other things, that the punitive damages award should be vacated because the plaintiffs failed to introduce meaningful evidence of the defendant’s financial condition, as required under California law. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument, finding that the defendant forfeited its right to raise this issue because the defendant failed to respond adequately to the plaintiff’s request for financial information.
Prior to trial, the plaintiff served two notices on the defendant under Code of Civil Procedure section 1987, requesting that a corporate representative appear at trial and produce financial records. The defendant objected to the first notice but did not object to the second. If the defendant had objected, then the defendant would have been excused from complying with the notice unless the plaintiff filed a motion to compel and obtained a court order for the production of the records. But because the defendant failed to object, the defendant was obligated to produce the documents at trial and, having failed to make an adequate production, forfeited its right to complain that the financial condition evidence was insufficient, or that the award was excessive in relation to the evidence presented.
The defendant also argued that the $15 million award was excessive. The defendant argued that the award was 37.6 times greater than the compensatory damages as reduced by the trial court. The Court of Appeal rejected this argument too, concluding that the award should be compared to the jury’s verdict, not to the net compensatory damages award after application of the MICRA cap, because the jury’s award represented the actual harm caused by the defendant’s conduct, even if some of that harm is legally noncompensable.
