The December 2008 edition of the Florida Bar Journal contains an article entitled “Why Punitive Damages and Criminal Sentences Are Reviewed Differently and What It Means to Your Appeal.” The article is written by Jonathan D. Colan, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Appellate Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and an adjunct professor of issues in appellate law at the University of Miami School of Law. I could not find any online link for the article, but it can be found on Westlaw at 82-DEC FLBJ 30.

For those who are interested in further comparisons between punitive damages and criminal law, you might want to check out Professor Chris Green‘s article “Punishing Corporations: The Food Chain Schizophrenia in Punitive Damages and Criminal Law.” Prof. Green was a commenter at this site before we decided to disable the comments feature so we wouldn’t have to moderate all the crackpot comments (not from Prof. Green, of course, whose comments were always thoughtful and on point).