According to this report from the Legal Intelligencer (via Law.com), a Philadelphia jury returned a verdict yesterday awarding $20.5 million, including $15 million in punitive damages, to the parents of an 18-year-old college student who allegedly died from a botched liposuction procedure.
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Trial Court Declines to Overturn $350 Million Verdict Against Dow and Rockwell In “Rocky Flats” Case
According to this report from the Chicago Tribune, Judge John Kane of the federal district court in Denver has denied the post-trial motions filed by Dow Chemical Co. and Rockwell International Corp. in a case involving a $350 million verdict. Judge Kane also ordered the defendants to pay 8 percent interest dating back to 1990, when the suit was filed. The plaintiffs’ attorney says that brings the total to more than $900 million.
The defendants operated a nuclear weapons facility known as “Rocky Flats,” and the plaintiffs are neighboring landowners who claim that contamination from the plant lowered their property values. Earlier press reports indicated that the verdict included $110.8 million in punitive damages against Dow and $89.4 million in punitive damages against Rockwell. Not surprisingly, the Chicago Tribune report says both defendants plan to appeal.
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New Trial Motion Denied in Mark Geragos/Michael Jackson Punitive Damages Case
We previously blogged about a bench trial in which Los Angeles County superior court judge Soussan Bruguera awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and $16 million in punitive damages against defendants who supposedly taped attorney Mark Geragos’s conversations with Michael Jackson on a private airplane the day Jackson surrendered to face child molestation charges. This story on Law.com reports that Judge Bruguera has denied the new trial motions filed by defendants XTraJet Inc. and its owner Jeffrey Borer. Borer’s attorney says he will appeal. XtraJet is apparently bankrupt.
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Oklahoma Jury Hits Shell With $53 Million in Punitive Damages for Underpayment of Royalties
NewsOK.com reports that Shell Oil Co. is mulling an appeal from a $66 million jury verdict, which includes $53 in punitive damages. The plaintiffs claimed that Shell underpaid royalties on an oil-well lease agreement that was originally executed in 1927.
Any appeal will likely involve some discussion of the California Supreme Court’s recent decision in City of Hope v. Genentech, in which the court reversed a $200 million punitive damages award in a case involving underpayment of royalties.
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DISH Network Sues News Corp. for $1.6B, Gets Only $1,500
Reuters is reporting that a federal court jury in Santa Ana awarded DISH Network $1,500 in its piracy suit against NDS, a division of News Corp. DISH claimed that NDS employed a rogue software engineer who systematically broke into DISH’s network, stole software code, and posted information on the Internet to let users unscramble DISH’s signals and receive satellite television for free. DISH asked for $900 million in compensatory damages and another $700 million in punitive damages. The trial lasted a month but the jury deliberated for a single day before awarding $1,500. Missed it by that much.
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Merck & Co. v. Garza: Texas Court of Appeals Overturns Judgment In Vioxx Case Involving $25M Punitive Damages Verdict
The New York Times is reporting that the Fourth Court of Appeals in Texas has reversed a judgment against Merck & Co. arising out of its painkiller Vioxx. The jury in this case had awarded $25 million in punitive damages and $7M in compensatory damages, but the punitive damages award was reduced to $750,000 pursuant to a statutory cap. You can view the full opinion here. (As an aside, I can’t recall another published appellate opinion that cites only one case in the entire opinion.)
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Payless (Collective Brands Inc.) Letter to Shareholders Outlines Arguments Against $137 Million Punitive Award
Last week we blogged about Adidas’s $305 million verdict against Payless for trademark infringement. Today, Payless (actually Collective Brands Inc.) has issued this letter to its shareholders regarding the verdict. The letter sets forth Collective’s various arguments for attacking the verdict, including the fact that the total verdict is roughly 15 times the profits that Payless made on the offending shoes.
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Civil Penalties and Punitive Damages: SEC Backdating Fines Could Provide Some Useful Comparison
As we all know, one of the “guideposts” for evaluating the constitutionality of a punitive damages award is “the disparity between the punitive damages award and the ‘civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable cases.’” (State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Campbell (2003) 538 U.S. 408, 428.) “[A] reviewing court engaged in determining whether an award of punitive damages is excessive should ‘accord “substantial deference” to legislative judgments concerning appropriate sanctions for the conduct at issue.’” (BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore (1996) 517 U.S. 559, 583.)A Cal Law article, Marvell Slapped: $10 Million Fine for Backdating, is potentially relevant to this sometimes overlooked “comparable fines” guidepost. The piece describes a $10 million SEC fine against the Marvell Technology Group as “unusually pricey” in a case involving charges that the company ” regularly backdated options from 2001 to 2004″ and the CEO “picked the dates in hindsight and signed faked meeting minutes to cover her tracks.” The article further notes that other companies with similar backdating problems paid much less than Marvell, and “[o]nly two other companies, Mercury Interactive and Broadcom Corp., have paid higher fines: $28 million and $12 million, respectively.”
When that’s the kind of penalty you get for the kind of conscious, corporate-wide policies of dishonesty at the highest levels of a company, one would think that some of the transgressions made in one-shot transactions or sporadically committed at lower levels of management shouldn’t readily garner the eight-figure punitive awards that juries so commonly return. -
Whittier Law Review Publishes “A Tale of Two Liberals: Departure at Supreme Court Review of Punitive Damages”
The Spring 2008 edition of the Whittier Law Review includes an article by Jenni Khuu Katzer, an attorney with Newmeyer and Dillion, comparing the punitive damages jurisprudence of Justices Breyer and Ginsburg. The article points out that Justice Breyer has consistently supported the imposition of constitutional limits on the amount of punitive damages, while Justice Ginsburg has consistently sided with Justices Scalia and Thomas in opposing such limits. I don’t have a link to the article, but the citation is 29 Whittier L. Rev. 625.
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Yankees Fan Wins Punitive Damages Against Red Sox Fan
I’m an avid baseball fan, so this San Diego Tribune story about the intersection of baseball and punitive damages caught my eye. A Red Sox fan and a Yankees fan got into a bar fight, the Yankees fan punched the Red Sox in the face, then sued him for punitive damages because he injured his hand while beating on the guy. A San Diego jury ruled in favor of the Yankees fan and awarded him $10,000 in punitive damages, apparently reasoning that the Sox fan should be punished because he provoked the plaintiff, even though it was the plaintiff who threw the only punch.
Adding to the bizarre nature of this story, these guys got into a fight while watching a baseball game that did not even involve the Red Sox. They were watching the Yankees lose to the mighty Cleveland Indians. (Did I mention that I’m a Cleveland fan?)