Thailand News Today reports (in a blog post authored by Chaiporn Supvoranid, a partner at Baker & McKenzie), that Thailand has passed a law known as the “Consumer Cases Act” which “introduces several new concepts into the Thai legal system such as punitive damages . . . .” This seems to cut against the trend reported elsewhere that foreign jurisdictions are generally hostile to U.S.-style punitive damages.
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San Diego Jury Awards $40 Million in Punitive Damages for Crash of Marine Helicopter
According to the San Diego Union Tribune, a jury today awarded $15.2 million in compensatory damages and $40.4 million in punitive damages against San Diego Gas & Electric Company in a case involving a helicopter crash that killed four Marines.
In the 2004 crash, the Marines’ UH-1N (Huey) helicopter collided with a 130-foot utility tower located on Camp Pendleton. The plaintiffs claimed that SDG&E was negligent for not installing safety lights on the tower. SDG&E says the tower had been on the base for 25 years and they would have installed lights if the Marine Corps had asked. They contend the crash was the result of errors by the crew and they plan to appeal.
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Off Topic: “Motion to Strike Hunger”
Please pardon this interruption from our usual punitive damages programming, but it’s for a good cause. You may not have heard, but September 2008 is national Hunger Action Month. From September 15 to September 30, our firm (Horvitz & Levy) is sponsoring a “Motion to Strike Hunger” food drive to benefit the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which provides food to over one million people in Los Angeles County who are struggling to feed their families.
We invite our Los Angeles area readers to join us by doing any of the following :(1) signing up to hold a food drive at your firm or business from September 15 to September 30 (it’s very easy – – just sign up here and the food bank will deliver collection barrels and pick up the donations at the end of the food drive)
(2) scheduling your own volunteer day
and/or (3) making a cash donation.
The firm that donates the most pounds of food per capita will earn the title of “Most Generous Movant.” (This is an appeal to litigators who enjoy the thrill of competition but, of course, the good feeling of giving is its own reward.)
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Wal-Mart Settles With Adidas In Case With Potential for Major Punitive Damages
According to Bloomberg.com, Adidas and Wal-Mart have settled a lawsuit in which Adidas contended that Wal-Mart infringed on Adidas’s trademark by copying its distinctive three-stripe sneaker design. As we previously reported, Adidas had boldly predicted it would obtain a huge punitive damages award in this case. The prediction wasn’t all that far fetched, since Adidas recently won $137 million in punitive damages in the same court in a nearly identical lawsuit against Collective Brands, the parent company of Payless Shoes.Both parties may have been motivated to settle in part because the state of Oregon (where this case was pending) claims 60 percent of all punitive damages awards. Indeed, Oregon stepped forward to claim its share of Adidas’ big win against Payless. As previous experience has shown, if an Oregon plaintiff wins a big punitive damages award, the parties will have difficulty settling without giving the state its cut. As a result, parties in Oregon (and other states with similar statutes) have an added incentive to settle before trial if they think a major punitive damages award is possible.
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The First Batch of Merits Briefs in Williams III Available Online
Philip Morris and its amici have filed the first batch of briefs on the merits in Philip Morris v. Williams (Williams III). (Click here for our prior post about the grant of certiorari in Williams III. The post contains the issued presented.)
Links (via the ABA):
Philip Morris’s opening brief on the merits.
Amicus brief of Pacific Legal Foundation in support of petitioner.
Amicus brief of National Association of Manufacturers in support of petitioner.
Amicus brief of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in support of petitioner.
Amicus brief of Associated Oregon Industries in support of petitioner.
Amicus brief of Washington Legal Foundation in support of petitioner.
Amicus brief of Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in support of neither party.
Note on terminology: I have been referring to this case as Williams II, even though it’s actually the third time the case has been before the Supreme Court. The first time around the Court simply GVR’d the case without an opinion. The second time around the Court issued an opinion. To me, it makes sense to call the first opinion Williams I and call this case Williams II, since it will generate the second Supreme Court opinion. But several of the briefs linked above refer to the first Supreme Court opinion as Williams II and this case as Williams III. To minimize confusion, I’ll adopt that same terminology from now on.
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Video Interview With Gov. Palin on Exxon Valdez Decision
Following up on the posts below, here’s a video interview with Governor Palin about the Supreme Court’s opinion reducing the punitive damages in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker.
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VP Candidate Palin Was Eligible to Participate in Exxon Valdez Class
This post on the Blog of Legal Times reports that Senator McCain’s running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, was eligible to join the plaintiff class in the Exxon Valdez case. Her husband, Todd Palin was a commercial fisherman at the time of the Valdez spill. They were eligible to join the class but they declined to file claims by last February’s deadline.
Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher, who represented the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court, says that Gov. Palin was always strongly supportive of the plaintiffs’ quest for punitive damages. Fisher observes, however, that “the Justices Sen. McCain likes” were not as supportive.
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The Presidential Race, and Views on Punitive Damages
Interesting that Slate faulted Obama for not bashing SCOTUS over the “activist” Exxon Valdez decision, saying, “Obama spent the final days of the Supreme Court term celebrating conservative constitutional outcomes rather than calling out dubious conservative methodology. Who was better situated to chide the court’s conservatives for what sure seems to be an activist ruling that saved Exxon $2 billion in damages stemming from the Valdez oil spill?”
Meanwhile, McCain’s newly announced running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, did express disappointment with the Exxon Valdez decision, reportedly saying that the court “gutted the jury’s decision on punitive damages” and undercut one of the principal deterrents for marine shipping accidents in Alaska. Without apparently identifying any flaw in the court’s legal analyis (which, as an interpretation of federal common law was well within their purview, and would hardly seem the type of “activist” treatment of statutes or state law that judges are often accused of), Palin was also reported as complaining, “It is tragic that so many Alaska fishermen and their families have had their lives put on hold waiting for this decision” and, “My heart goes out to those affected, especially the families of the thousands of Alaskans who passed away while waiting for justice.”
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Lu v. Qi: California Court of Appeal Grants Rehearing and Affirms a Punitive Damages Award It Had Previously Reversed
Here’s something you don’t see every day. Or even every year. It’s not often that the California Court of Appeal grants a petition for rehearing and completely changes directions from its original opinion. But that’s exactly what happened in this case. Last month, the Second Appellate District, Division Five, issued an unpublished opinion reversing a $180,000 punitive damages award because the plaintiff failed to present meaningful evidence of the defendant’s net worth. (See our prior post discussing that decision.)
Yesterday, the court issued a new opinion affirming the punitive damages award in its entirety. Here’s what happened: the defendant had filed separate appeals, both from the judgment and from a subsequent order denying the defendant’s motion to vacate the judgment. In the original opinion, the Court of Appeal concluded that the motion to vacate the judgment was untimely, and therefore the defendant was entitled to no relief on its appeal from the denial of that motion. But the court nevertheless granted relief on the defendant’s appeal from the judgment itself. The Court of Appeal never noticed, however, that the appeal from the judgment was untimely. The plaintiff raised that issue on rehearing and the court, realizing its mistake, granted rehearing and issued a new opinion. Thus, the court ended up affirming an $180,000 punitive damages award that would have been reversed if the defendant had not blown (a) the deadline for appealing from the judgment and (b) the deadline for filing a post-judgment motion to vacate.
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Forthcoming Law Review Article: “How Should Punitive Damages Work?”
Professor Dan Markel of Florida State University College of Law has posted on SSRN a draft of his forthcoming law review article “How Should Punitive Damages Work?” As he describes in his post on Prawfsblog, the article is part of a three-part series that he intends to assemble into a book, tentatively titled “The Punitive Damages Mess: How to Fix It.”
In this installment, he explains that there are three main goals of punitive damages: (1) to vindicate a public interest in retribution (which he calls “retributive damages”), (2) to vindicate a plaintiff’s private interest in redress for harms to his/her dignity (which he calls “aggravated damages”), and (3) to provide cost-internalization of harmful conduct (“deterrence damages”). He suggests that it’s a mistake to include all these different concepts under the umbrella of punitive damages. He says each form of damages should be assessed separately, with defendants enjoying different procedural protections depending on the type of damages at issue. It’s an intriguing idea, but unfortunately we aren’t likely to see that level of sophistication from actual policy makers anytime soon.
