The U.S. Supreme Court has placed Exxon v. Grefer on its April 18 conference list, according to the court’s online docket for that case. As we mentioned in a prior post, this case involves a $112 million punitive damages award and involves the following issues (as framed by Exxon’s cert. petition):

1. Whether the Court of Appeal on remand denied due process when it continued to punish ExxonMobil for harm to nonparties, left intact a punitive damages award without finding that ExxonMobil’s conduct was reprehensible as it affected plaintiffs, and held that the jury could “consider the harm suffered by both parties and non-parties regardless of the type or similarity of harm suffered.”

2. Whether, contrary to the decisions of other federal and state appellate courts, a court may remedy a concededly tainted punitive damages trial by affirming the maximum punitive damages award due process permits, rather than by ordering a new trial.

3. Whether due process permits punitive damages twice the amount of compensatory damages in a case of economic injury when compensatory damages are $56 million and plaintiffs’ actual harm is no greater than $1.5 million.