From the LA Times:
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From Newsday.com:
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Bregante v. Steinberg: Unpublished Opinion Affirms Trial Court’s Decision Not to Award Punitive Damages
The California Court of Appeal (Sixth District) issued this unpublished opinion affirming a trial court’s decision not to award punitive damages after a bench trial.
In affirming the trial court’s decision, the Court of Appeal noted that, under California law, “even where the plaintiff prevails in a case where punitive damages are permissible, the plaintiff ‘is never entitled to them. The granting or withholding of the award of punitive damages is wholly within the control of the [the trier of fact]….’” (Citing Brewer v. Second Baptist Church of Los Angeles (1948) 32 Cal.2d 791, 801.)
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Kozicki v. Craig: Unpublished Opinion Reduces $100,000 Punitive Damages Award to $3,600
The California Court of Appeal (Fourth District, Division One) issued this unpublished opinion reducing a punitive damages award in an appeal from a default judgment. The court concluded that the record would not support a punitive damages award more than $3,600 – – six times the compensatory damages of $600. The court did not invoke the U. S. Supreme Court’s statement in State Farm v. Campbell that the ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages can exceed single digits in cases involving “unusually small” compensatory damages.
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USAA Settles Appeal From $3.5 Million Punitive Damages Award
Last April we blogged about a $3.5 million punitive damages award against USAA in an insurance bad faith case in San Diego. The case generated a fair amount of publicity because the plaintiff was a Marine captain serving in Iraq. USAA appealed from the judgment, but the online docket reveals that a notice of settlement was filed on February 20.
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Blanks v. Seyfarth Shaw: $15 Million Punitive Damages Award Reversed
The California Court of Appeal (Second District, Division Three) issued this published opinion last week, reversing a $15 million punitive damages award in a legal malpractice action brought by Tae Bo creator Bill Blanks against the law firm Seyfarth Shaw and one if its partners, William Lancaster.
The opinion doesn’t contain any analysis of punitive damages issues per se, because the court found that the entire judgment had to be reversed due to instructional errors committed by the trial court during the liability phase of the trial. Nevertheless, we thought the opinion merited a brief mention here because the $15 million punitive damages award was one of the largest punitive awards generated by the California courts in 2005, and the total verdict was the 7th largest that year.
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Editorial Touts Deterrent Effect of Punitive Damages
The South Carolina legislature is considering a proposal to cap punitive damages at $250,000. This editorial in the Greeneville Times criticizes that proposal, arguing that punitive damages are necessary to deter corporations from distributing products that a dangerous to the public.
The editorial cites the salmonella contamination scandal involving Peanut Corporation of America (in neighboring Georgia) as an example of the sort of corporate behavior that punitive damages deter. That seems like an odd example. Georgia law allows punitive damages, and has no cap on punitive damages in products liability cases. In other words, the Peanut Corporation of America was exposed to claims for punitive damages up to the maximum amounts permitted by the Due Process Clause. Indeed, someone has already sued PCA for punitive damages. Apparently, the possibility of a large punitive damages award did nothing to deter PCA from shipping tainted products. Does that example really support the editorial’s argument?
Whenever a state considers imposing caps on punitive damages, opponents tout the deterrent value of punitive damages and argue that the state will become more dangerous for consumers if the cap is adopted. Someday, someone will conduct a study comparing the states that have adopted caps (or have outlawed punitive damages altogether) with the states that haven’t, to determine whether citizens in the uncapped states really are safer.
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Tobacco Plaintiffs Recover $5 Million in Punitive Damages
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.
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Tobacco Plaintiffs Seek $100 Million in Punitive Damages
The plaintiffs in Hess v. Philip Morris, which we blogged about last week, have asked the jury to award $30 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages.
As readers of this blog know, punitive damages awards of that size rarely survive appeal. But it’s possible that the plaintiffs are asking for such a large number because they know, as the Cal Biz Lit blog has pointed out, that statistical studies show that a large request for punitive damages is the most significant predictor of a large punitive damages award. So the plaintiffs may not get $100 million, but they’ll get more than they would have gotten if they had asked for something less.
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Utah District Court’s Order Reducing $63 Million Punitive Damages Award Now Available
As a follow-up to last week’s post about the District of Utah opinion that cut a $63 million punitive damages award to $3.6 million (for a 1-to-1 ratio with the compensatory damages), here’s a link to the copy of the opinion. The punitive damages discussion begins on page 15. The Westlaw citation is 2009 WL 361267.
In addition to the ratio analysis, the opinion is interesting because it highlights a significant difference between Utah law and California law. Unlike California, Utah does not require plaintiffs to present evidence of the defendant’s financial condition as a prerequisite to obtaining a punitive damages award. Accordingly, the district court here rejected the defendants’ argument that the plaintiffs failed to introduce sufficient evidence of the defendants’ financial condition, even though that argument likely would have succeeded in California.
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Utah District Court Cuts $63 Million Punitive Damages Award to $3.6 Million
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell has dramatically reduced a jury’s punitive damages award in a lawsuit between two rival insurance companies. The jury awarded $63 million in punitive damages but Judge Campbell, in response to the defendant’s post-trial motions, reduced the punitive damages to $3.6 million, equal to the amount of the jury’s award of compensatory damages.
As we have observed, a greater number of courts have been limiting punitive damages to a one-to-one ratio recently, at least in cases involving substantial compensatory damages awards. I have written a short paper on this topic which will be published by the Washington Legal Foundation later this month.