According to a report on Voxy.co.nz, the high court of New Zealand recently heard arguments in a case involving the standards for imposing punitive damages under that country’s law. Plaintiff Susan Couch sued the New Zealand Department of Corrections on claims arising out of serious injuries sustained at the hands of a prison inmate who was granted parole and proceeded on a highly publicized rampage known as the Mt Wellington-Panmure RSA killings. Couch claims the department acted with “outrageous and flagrant” disregard for her safety. The court will address whether Couch’s claim for exemplary damages can go forward on that basis, without any allegation that the defendant made a conscious decision to act wrongfully.

New Zealand has a no-fault accident compensation system, and the Deputy Solicitor-General John Pike reportedly argued to the court that allowing punitive damages could undermine the compensation system under the circumstances presented in Couch’s case.

Signs of efforts to expand the availability of punitive damages around the globe could be viewed as an unwelcome American export. This blog has reported previously (e.g., here, here, here and here) on other foreign jurisdictions’ attempts to refine their punitive damages jurisprudence, and on attitudes toward U.S. punitive damages. As noted by Professor Helmut Koziol (the author of a Louisiana Law Review article we’ve described), the American system of punitive damages “cause[s] continential Europeans to shake their heads.”

The Daily Herald has a story about an Illinois appellate opinion vacating a $25 million punitive damages award because the plaintiff died. Apparently, Illinois law differs from California law on this point. In California, when a plaintiff dies, the plaintiff’s estate can recover punitive damages, although the plaintiff’s heirs cannot recover punitive damages in a wrongful death action. (See Code Civ. Proc., §§ 377.34 [authorizing in a survival action the recovery of damages “the decedent sustained or incurred before death, including any penalties or punitive or exemplary damages”], 377.61 [precluding in a wrongful death action “damages recoverable under Section 377.34”].) Last year we blogged about a case in which a federal district court vacated a $5 million punitive damages award that was improperly awarded on a wrongful death claim.

As we’ve noted in prior posts, a series of individual trials are taking place in Florida in which smokers and their families are seeking punitive damages from tobacco companies. These trials are the fallout from the Florida Supreme Court’s reversal of a $145 billion punitive damages award in a tobacco class action. The plaintiffs won the first two individual trials, but according to AmLaw Litigation Daily, round three has gone to the defendants.

Point of Law has commentary about this litigation here.

As reported by the Burlington Free Press, the Vermont Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in an appeal by the state’s Roman Catholic Diocese from a judgment awarding $8.7 million to a former altar boy who was molested by a priest in the 1970’s. The judgment included $7.75 million in punitive damages.

According to the story, the diocese is arguing that the trial court committed instructional error by allowing the jury to award punitive damages without making a finding of “bad motive” on the part of the diocese. The plaintiff contends that the trial court correctly instructed the jury that they could award punitive damages for “reckless” conduct.

As we mentioned in a previous post, the Vermont diocese is also facing a separate award of $3.4 million in another case involving the same priest. At the time of that verdict, there were 19 other pending abuse cases involving the same priest, who has not yet been stripped of his priesthood.

Sorry about the bad pun. I just couldn’t help myself.

This post relates to Tellez v. Dole, a case we blogged about last year. In Tellez, Nicaraguan banana workers sued Dole Food Company in California state court, seeking punitive damages because they allegedly became sterile when they were exposed to the agricultural chemical DBCP on Nicaraguan banana farms nearly 30 years ago. A jury awarded nearly $6 million to the plaintiffs, including $2.5 million in punitive damages. L.A. Superior Court judge Victoria Chaney vacated the punitive damages award and the Dole appealed from the remainder of the award. (See the court of appeal’s on-line docket here.)

The National Law Journal is now reporting that Judge Chaney is threatening to dismiss other similar cases brought by the same plaintiffs’ lawyers, amid allegations of fraud by the plaintiffs and their counsel. Judge Chaney’s order refers to evidence that some plaintiffs never even worked on a banana farm, employment documents that were falsified, and a Nicaraguan radio broadcast on which the lead plaintiffs’ lawyer told listeners not to cooperate in the case.

This isn’t the first time that banana litigation has backfired for plaintiffs’ lawyers here in L.A. As readers of this blog will recall, prominent L.A. trial lawyers Tommy Girardi and Walter Lack got themselves into hot water for their ethical lapses in related litigation, resulting in the Ninth Circuit’s appointment of a special prosecutor to pursue disciplinary action against them.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the jury in the Maryland gas-leak lawsuit against Exxon Mobil ruled for the plaintiffs, awarding $150 million in compensatory damages but no punitive damages. The plaintiffs had asked for billions, but they’ll have to make do with $150 million. It seems entirely likely that their outlandish request was nothing more than a strategic ploy designed to make a sum like $150 million seem modest by comparison.

The Baltimore Sun story reports that Exxon had already agreed to pay $38 million to clean up the spill, and agreed to pay a $4 million penalty to the state of Maryland, the largest environmental penalty ever paid to the state.

The Baltimore Sun reports that the jury has reached a verdict in a Baltimore lawsuit in which the plaintiffs are seeking “several billion dollars” in compensatory and punitive damages from Exxon Mobil Corp. The verdict will be read at 9 am tomorrow.

The plaintiffs are 300 residents of Jacksonville Maryland who allege that 26,000 gallons of gasoline seeped into that city’s groundwater from a leaking pipe in 2006. They contend that Exxon officials knew leak-detection equipment was inadequate. Exxon says it accepts responsibility for cleaning up the spill but did not commit fraud or act with intentional malice or negligence. The jury began deliberating February 27 after a 19-week trial.

The California Court of Appeal (Sixth District) issued this published opinion ruling that a trial court erred in dismissing a plaintiff’s punitive damages claims on summary judgment.

The primary issue in this case–whether the plaintiff had a viable claim for breach of contract on a third-party beneficiary theory–is outside the scope of this blog. But the opinion also contains a brief discussion of some punitive damages issues.

First, the opinion concludes that the trial court properly rejected the plaintiff’s claim for punitive damages for breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The court noted that in California, insurers are the only defendants who can be liable for tort damages for bad faith breach of contract.

Second, the opinion concludes that the trial court erred in dismissing plaintiffs’ claims for punitive damages for wrongful eviction, trespass, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court said plaintiff should be able to seek punitive damages on those claims because she presented evidence that the defendant landlord evicted her despite concerns about the legality of the eviction and the impact on the plaintiff. The court said that evidence could support a finding that the defendant acted in “conscious disregard” of the plaintiff’s rights within the meaning of California’s punitive damages statute, Civil Code section 3294.

From the LA Times:

Man who was falsely accused of murder wins $1.1 million in compensatory damages and $150,000 in punitive damages

From Mercury News.com:

Woman who was exposed to genital herpes by 77-year-old man wins $5 million in compensatory damages and $2.75 million in punitive damages

From Newsday.com:

Female police officer wins $1 million in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages for sexual discrimination

Bloomberg reports that the jury in the Hess retrial awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, a far cry from the $130 million the plaintiffs requested. Altria Group, Inc., the parent company of Philip Morris, says it will appeal.