Courtroom Views is reporting that an Oakland jury awarded a total of $13.5 million in punitive damages against two defendants last Friday, January 7.  The jury had previously awarded $4 million in compensatory damages.

The case, Bankhead v. Allied Packing, is a personal injury action based on exposure to asbestos.  The two defendants who got hit with punitive damages are ArvinMeritor and Pneumo Abex.

Asbestos plaintiffs rarely recover punitive damages, because their claims usually involve conduct that happened decades ago, when little information was known about the dangers of asbestos.  That makes it very difficult to prove that defendants acted with malice, or that there is some need to punish and deter.  But when plaintiffs do manage to get a punitive damages claim to a jury in these cases, they can ring up some huge numbers.  Like $200 million, for example.  That award got a lost of press coverage, but it didn’t last very long. 

The Supreme Court’s on-line docket for Wal-Mart v. Dukes indicates that oral argument will take place on March 29, 2011.

Wal-Mart’s cert. petition (via SCOTUSblog)

Related posts:


Cert. granted in Dukes v. Wal-Mart; review limited to first question plus new issue added by the Court

Wal-Mart v. Dukes cert. petition redistributed for Dec. 3 conference

Wal-Mart v. Dukes cert. petition up for consideration next week

Cert. Petition in Wal-Mart v. Dukes raises class certification issues that may impact whether punitive damages are subject to class treatment

Ninth Circuit’s Dukes v. Wal-Mart decision addresses class certification of punitive damages claims

The ABA Journal reports that two law professors won a large jury verdict against West Publishing, including compensatory damages of $90,000 each and punitive damages of $2.5 million each.  That’s a ratio of nearly 28 to 1.

The ABA Journal story says the professors, who authored a West treatise on criminal procedure, asked for a pay increase to continue providing the annual updates for the treatise.  They claim West refused to increase their pay but continued to list them as the authors of the updates, even though the work was performed by others and was below their standards.

If I were one of these professors, I wouldn’t be spending my millions just yet.  This doesn’t sound like the type of misconduct that could come close to supporting such a high ratio of punitive to compensatory damages.  Even if this case involves intentional misconduct (and I don’t know whether it does), it doesn’t seem to implicate the other indicia of reprehensibility such as physical harm, or preying upon a financial vulnerable victim.  It sounds more like a garden variety fraud case with purely economic damages, for which a low single-digit ratio would be the maximum.  I’d be very surprised if the punitive damages could survive post-trial and appellate review. 

Three Geeks and a Law Blog has links to the complaint, the verdict form, and the judgment.

Boston.com reports that a jury has awarded $81 million in punitive damages, on top of $50 million in compensatory damages, to the estate of Marie Evans, a lifelong smoker who began smoking at age 13.  The jury also awarded $21 million in compensatory damages to Evans’ son. 

This award tops the recent $72 million punitive damages award in the Florida smoker litigation.  The Boston.com article says the compensatory damages award alone is believed to be the largest such award ever delivered by a jury in a wrongful death lawsuit against a tobacco company, and the largest total award standing today. Prior juries have awarded much higher punitive damages awards, but none of them survived appeal.