According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The family of an illegal immigrant who died of penile cancer that went untreated during 11 months of detention can sue government doctors for damages, a federal judge has ruled in a decision in which he condemned the defendants’ alleged actions as deceptive and heartless. The claims in Francisco Castaneda’s lawsuit – that government medical staffers and immigration officials brushed off his complaints of severe pain and multiple lesions, told him they saw no need for surgery and finally discharged him rather than having the government pay for treatment – describe conduct that, if proved, ‘is beyond cruel and unusual,’ said U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson of Los Angeles. His ruling, issued late Tuesday, allows Castaneda’s family to sue the doctors for allegedly violating his constitutional rights and ask a jury to award punitive damages. Government lawyers argued that federal law allowed only a suit against the government, with a nonjury trial and a $250,000 limit on damages. . . . ‘The evidence that plaintiff has presented so far – through (government officials’) own records – suggests a strong case for punitive damages because it shows that (their) behavior was callous and misleading,’ the judge said.”

A federal district judge in New York has denied Viacom’s effort to seek punitive damages against Google, holding that common law punitive damages can’t be recovered under the Copyright Act. Last March, Viacom sued online video-sharing site YouTube Inc. and its parent company, Google Inc., saying the companies infringed on Viacom’s copyrights because almost 160,000 unauthorized video clips were available for viewing on YouTube.

Click here for a copy of the district court’s ruling.

There’s something that puzzles me about this story: $40 million verdict for burned heart may be largest in Snohomish County history. It reports on a Washington state verdict that includes an $8.3 million punitive damages award against a California company, Edwards Lifesciences Corp. of Irvine. What’s puzzling is that Washington law generally does not permit punitive damages, except in a few limited circumstances specifically authorized by statute. None of the circumstances would seem to apply here. The press reports about this case have not explained why punitive damages were available in this case. Perhaps the case was tried under California law.

Dole Food Company announced today that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney has dismissed the $2.5 million in punitive damages that a jury awarded against Dole last November.

In Tellez v. Dole, a group of Nicaraguan farm works claimed that Dole acted with malice against them in the use of the agricultural chemical DBCP on contracted banana farms in Nicaragua nearly 30 years ago. The punitive damages claim raised some interesting constitutional issues, since the plaintiffs were foreign nationals seeking punitive damages under California law for acts that occurred in a foreign country. Dole complained that the punitive damages ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in BMW v. Gore that punitive damages cannot be based on acts that were lawful where they occurred. Apparently, Judge Chaney agreed.

As far as I can tell, the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in Goddard v. Farmers Insurance may be the first time the Oregon Supreme Court has ever reduced a punitive damages award as unconstitutionally excessive in the 12 years since the U.S. Supreme Court established the due process constraints on punitive damages in BMW v. Gore. This is quite a surprising turn of events from the court that recently affirmed a $79.5 million punitive damages award after a reversal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition to Williams, here are some other cases in which the Oregon high court has rejected excessiveness arguments:

Parrott v. Carr Chevrolet, Inc., 17 P.3d 473, 487-90 (Or. 2001) (applying BMW v. Gore, but approving an 87:1 ratio in light of the defendant’s “particularly egregious acts”);

Lakin v. Senco Prods., Inc., 987 P.2d 463, 476 (Or. 1999) (affirming $4 million punitive damage award in product liability action)

Oberg v. Honda Motor Co., Ltd., 888 P.2d 8, 14 (Or. 1995) (affirming punitive damages award after U.S. Supreme Court had reversed and remanded for excessiveness review).

Is anyone aware of a case, prior to Goddard, in which the Oregon Supreme Court found a punitive damages award to be unconstitutionally excessive?

The Oregon Supreme Court held yesterday in Goddard v. Farmers Insurance Co. that a $20.7 million punitive damage award against Farmers Insurance was excessive because it was 24 times the compensatory award. The Supreme Court found that a 4 to 1 ratio was the constitutional limit.

We previously blogged here about a Nevada jury’s punitive damage award against Wyeth arising out of one of its drugs. Wyeth has now been hit with a $27 million punitive damage award in Arkansas arising from risks allegedly associated with the same hormone replacement drugs at issue in the Nevada case. The compensatory award was $2.75 million, which seems to put this case on the very high end of the scale of the permitted ratio. Wyeth says it will appeal.

The recent decision in Holdgrafer v. Unocal primarily addressed the impropriety of using the defendant’s dissimilar acts towards nonparties as the basis for punitive damages. But the decision also contained an interesting footnote regarding another type of evidence that cannot be used to support a punitive award: evidence of the defendant’s litigation conduct. In footnote 17 on page 30 of the opinion, the court states that plaintiff’s counsel improperly urged the jury to punish Unocal for its assertion of a statute of limitations defense. The court’s statement is significant because, in our experience, plaintiffs often ask juries to punish defendants not only for their tortious conduct, but also for having the nerve to defend themselves. This opinion rejects that sort of insidious attack on a defendant’s right to have his day in court.

Well-known lawyer Mark Geragos was just awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and $16 million in punitive damages in a lawsuit against the people who supposedly illegally taped his conversations with Michael Jackson the day Jackson surrendered to face child molestation charges.

Update (3/4/2008): The punitive damages were awarded after a bench trial and defendants say they will appeal.

ATRA has prepared a nice chart showing recent state reforms of punitive damages. These state reforms include limits on the ratio between punitive and compensatory damages and a requirement that punitive damages be proven by clear and convincing evidence.