Ted Frank has this post at Overlawyered.com, discussing a case in which a drunk driver caused a head-on collision and then managed to parlay that into a $16 million judgment against his insurance company, including $10.5 million in punitive damages. Earlier this week, the Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment.

KansasCity.com reports that the insurer for Collective Brands (the company that owns and operates Payless Shoes) has filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Kansas to establish that Adidas’ $305 million judgment against Payless is not covered by insurance. (View our prior posts about this litigation here.) The insurer, American Guarantee & Liability Insurance Co., contends that the judgment is not covered because the policy excludes coverage for intentional acts. The lawsuit also contends that Kansas law governs, and that punitive damages are uninsurable in Kansas. (The judgment includes a $137 million punitive damages award.)

New York’s intermediate appellate court (New York Supreme Court, First Department Appellate Division) issued an opinion yesterday holding that smokers are barred from recovering punitive damages in New York. (Fabiano v. Philip Morris Inc., 2008 NY Slip Op 06353.)

In a unanimous opinion, the court reasoned that “punitive damages claims are quintessentially and exclusively public in their ultimate orientation and purpose,” and the public interest in punitive damages was “previously and appropriately represented by the State Attorney General” in a 1998 settlement brought on behalf of all of the people of the New York.

The Associated Press is reporting that a Los Angeles County jury returned a defense verdict in a case against Johnson & Johnson, in which the plaintiffs claimed that Children’s Motrin nearly killed their daughter and caused her to become blind.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, well-known L.A. lawyer Browne Greene, sought over $1 billion in damages: $14 million in actual damages, $103 million for pain and suffering and $950 million in punitive damages. The jury found that Motrin presented substantial risks, but the jury rejected the plaintiffs’ failure-to-warn claim. One of the jurors spoke to the press and said the girl’s mother failed to follow directions on the label by giving Samantha Children’s Motrin after the girl woke up with puffy eyes. “It said on the label, any new symptoms call the doctor, and she didn’t do that,” the juror said.

Today’s edition of the Daily Journal has this story (subscription required) by staff writer Laura Ernde on the California Supreme Court’s grant of review in Buell-Wilson v. Ford Motor Co.

FoxNews is reporting that federal district judge William R. Wilson of the Eastern District of Arkansas has granted a motion for judgment as a matter of law, vacating the $27 million punitive damages award against Wyeth and Upjohn in a lawsuit over hormone replacement drugs Premarin and Prempro. Wyeth says it still plans to appeal the $2.75 million compensatory damages award.

Newsvine.com is reporting that Joe Manchin, the governor of West Virginia, has filed an amicus brief in the West Virginia Supreme Court supporting DuPont’s petition for review in a case involving a $196.2 million punitive damages award.

The lead plaintiffs’ lawyer, Michael Papantonio, is calling the Gov. Manchin’s action unprecedented. I have to admit, I’ve never heard of a sitting governor asking his own state’s supreme court to take up a particular case.

Papatonio is probably overstating his case a bit, however, when he says that Gov. Manchin’s action shows how much the deck is stacked against the little guys in West Virginia who are trying to take on corporate America. Perhaps Papantanio, a Florida lawyer, is unaware of the history of punitive damages litigation in West Virginia. This is the state that brought us the TXO case ($19,000 in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages), the state whose litigation climate is consistently ranked last or second-to-last in surveys of corporate counsel, the state that leads the nation in high jury verdicts and punitive damages awards, the state whose Supreme Court recently declined to even review a case involving a $270 million punitive damages award, and the state that recently allowed a reverse-bifurcation procedure in two separate cases, under which a jury will decide punitive damages before even deciding liability or compensatory damages. If anything, the deck seems stacked in favor of plaintiffs’ lawyers, not against them.

Before we launched this blog, I wouldn’t have thought that the topic of punitive damages had a lot of humor potential. But in the past six months we’ve stumbled across a few instances of punitive-damages-related humor, including this cartoon and this set of dinner plates commemorating notable punitive damages cases. (At least I hope those were supposed to be funny.) And now, to add to the collection, is this Jerky Boys prank phone call posted on YouTube. Those of you familiar with the Jerky Boys may be wondering if this is safe for work. Surprisingly, it is.

Directorship Magazine has released its annual “State Litigation Guide,” which it describes as “The annual boardroom guide to the litigation climates in all 50 states.” Among other things, the guide focuses on each state’s propensity for imposing large amounts of punitive damages.

According to the survey, the 10 best states are:

1. Tennessee
2. Utah
3. Indiana
4. Ohio
5. North Dakota
6. North Carolina
7. Nebraska
8. Virginia
9. Michigan
10. South Dakota

The 10 worst states are:

1. Illinois
2. West Virginia
3. Rhode Island
4. Pennsylvania
5. California
6. Florida
7. Montana
8. New York
9. Maryland
10. Alabama

West Virginia businesses will no doubt be pleased that their state is only the second worst, which is actually an improvement over other similar studies.

Hat tip: TortsProf Blog.

A few months ago, an Alabama jury awarded $40 million in compensatory damages and $175 million in punitive damages against AstraZeneca (the maker of Nexium and Crestor). Today, the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that the trial judge in that case has reduced the punitive damages down to $120 million, but left the rest of the award intact. That brings the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages down to three-to-one, but AstraZeneca will undoubtedly argue on appeal that the maximum amount of punitive damages is $40 million, citing the language in State Farm v. Campbell that supports the imposition of a one-to-one limit in cases with “substantial” compensatory damages.