A California jury awarded $25 million in punitive damages in the civil lawsuit against O.J. Simpson. Compare that to the $60 million in punitives awarded yesterday by a Kentucky jury for a single homicide: “Jury Hits Ragland with $63.3 Million Verdict.” Like OJ, the defendant in this case is a free man. He was convicted of murder, but the Kentucky Supreme Court overturned the conviction and he pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter, receiving a sentence of time served plus three days. He now has to contend with a $63.3 million jury verdict, but at least he’s better off than this guy.
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$250 million in Punitive Damages Awarded Against Cal Franchise Tax Board
The Sacramento Bee reports that a jury in federal district court in Nevada last week awarded not only $138.1 million to Las Vegas inventor Gilbert P. Hyatt for invasion of privacy and emotional distress, but also an additional $250 million in punitive damages against the California Franchise Tax Board. The Tax Board began investigating Hyatt in 1993 in an attempt to get him to pay a multi-million dollar California income tax bill—Hyatt apparently moved from California to Nevada, which has no income tax, right around the time he started cashing in big from a computer-related patent. Hyatt disputed the claimed tax obligation and sued the Tax Board on a variety of intentional tort theories. According to the Sacramento Bee article, Hyatt’s complaint alleged that “board auditors went through his garbage and mailbox, spread the word he was being audited to his business associates, and sent letters containing his Social Security number to third parties that included newspapers and doctors who had never treated Hyatt.”
This case has already gone up once to the US Supreme Court, which ruled Hyatt could sue the California agency in a Nevada court. If the state appeals to the Nevada Supreme Court, it’ll be interesting to see whether the unprecedented $138 million emotional distress award holds up and, if so, whether any of the justices think that award is punishment enough so as to obviate the need for any punitive damages, or at least is sufficiently “substantial” within the meaning of State Farm v. Campbell to warrant reducing the punitive damages to a 1:1 ratio. No offense to Mr. Hyatt but, as a California taxpayer, I have to hope this windfall verdict goes away—there have got to be better ways (maybe something involving the democratic process?) to punish and deter bad behavior by folks within a state agency like the FTB.
[Note: I should add that California’s Government Code section 818 provides, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a public entity is not liable for damages awarded under Section 3294 of the Civil Code or other damages imposed primarily for the sake of example and by way of punishing the defendant.” Nevada apparently doesn’t have a counterpart to that statute. – LP]
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Senator McCain Sought $1 Million in Punitive Damages
My co-blogger Jeremy Rosen has noted that Senator Obama won an appeal involving a modest punitive damages award. Now comes this story from the Associated Press indicating that Senator McCain also had a personal connection to a punitive damages case. According to the story, McCain and his ex-wife Carol filed a lawsuit in 1990 against a property management firm, claiming the firm had mistakenly removed some family treasures from a garage that they shared with an adjacent townhouse. The complaint asked for $1 million in punitive damages. The parties settled the case for an undisclosed amount.
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“Last Term’s High Court Rulings Mostly Pro-Corporation”
Law.com features this story by Adam H. Charnes and James J. Heffernan, Jr. of Kilpatrick Stockton, taking the position that the Supreme Court’s latest term was predominately pro-business. The primary example cited in the story is the punitive damages decision in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker.
The authors’ view conflicts with that of Patricia Ann Millett, a former attorney in the Solicitor General’s office who co-chairs Akin Gump’s Supreme Court practice. In this story, Millett stated that the Court’s last term involved 24 cases involving business concerns, and in those decisions, the Court split almost evenly, ruling in ways that could be described as pro-business in thirteen of the cases, and ruling against business interests in eleven cases.
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Monroe v. Singh: Unpublished Opinion Disallows Punitive Damages In Auto Accident Case
The California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District, issued this unpublished opinion yesterday, affirming a trial court order that granted summary adjudication in favor of the defendant on the plaintiff’s punitive damages claim.The case involved a low speed auto accident. The defendant collided with one car at about 15 to 20 mph and then kept driving, hitting a second car a few seconds later. The driver and passenger of the second car sued and sought punitive damages, but the trial court granted the defendant’s motion for summary adjudication on the punitives claim, finding there was no evidence that the defendant engaged in the sort of “despicable” conduct that could support punitive damages under California law.
The plaintiffs appealed, arguing as a matter of law that anyone involved in a hit-and-run accident is guilty of the sort of despicable conduct. The Court of Appeal disagreed. It emphasized that punitive damages are reserved for only the most egregious misconduct, and are rarely allowed in unintentional tort cases. The court concluded that a “garden-variety hit-and-run incident,” where the defendant was not speeding and was not driving under the influence, could not possibly support a finding of despicable conduct.
Full disclosure: Horvitz & Levy represented the defendant on appeal.
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Utah Jury Awards Punitive Damages of 16 Times the Substantial Compensatory Award
According to news reports here, here, here and here, a Utah jury has awarded plaintiff $3,606,214 in compensatory damages and $60 million in punitive damages against American National Insurance Company. American National plans to appeal, and seems to have a very strong ratio argument especially given the rather substantial compensatory award.
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West Virginia Governor Draws Fire for Intervening in Punitive Damages Case
Last month we blogged about the amicus brief that the Governor of West Virginia filed in support of Dupont’s petition for review to the West Virginia Supreme Court in a case involving a $196.2 million punitive damages award. The New York Times now reports that the governor’s brief has stirred up quite a controversy.
According to the article, questions have been raised about how Governor Manchin came to be involved in this case. He says Dupont provided him with an unsolicited draft of the amicus brief. But a spokesperson for Dupont claims that the governor contacted Dupont and requested that they prepare a draft brief for him. When questioned by plaintiffs’ counsel, the governor’s office said that correspondence between the governor and Dupont had been lost. But now they tell the Times that any correspondence of note has been preserved.
It bears mentioning that the governor’s brief did not actually take sides on the merits of the dispute, but simply asked the West Virginia Supreme Court to review the case. But even without taking a position on the merits, the govenor’s action benefitted only Dupont, since the plaintiffs had prevailed in the trial court.
UPDATE: The West Virginia Record now has a story on this issue: “Gov. Manchin a ‘Puppet’ of Dupont’s, Attorney Says“
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Exxon Valdez Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Comment on Interest Ruling (or Lack Thereof)
The Associated Press has this story on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision not to decide whether the plaintiffs in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker are entitled to interest on their $507 million punitive damages award. (Scroll down to see our blog post on the same topic.) The AP story has several quotes from Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher, who represented the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court. Fisher says the Ninth Circuit has never refused to award interest in any similar case, and he doesn’t expect them to depart from that precedent here.
(Note: the AP story incorrectly states that the plaintiffs are seeking interest dating from the jury’s verdict in 1994, but the plaintiffs have actually requested interest from the date of the judgment, which occurred in September 1996. See the plaintiffs’ request for a Supreme Court ruling on the interest issue.)
Alaska Public Radio also has an audio report on the Exxon Valdez interest issue. In the report, Andrew Ott, an Alaska lawyer representing the plaintiffs, says it isn’t surprising that the Supreme Court declined to decide the interest issue, because it’s a matter of first impression that is more appropriately decided by the lower courts. He suggests that, no matter how the Ninth Circuit rules, the case may again make its way to the Supreme Court, extending the already two-decades-long life of this litigation.
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U.S. Supreme Court Punts on Exxon Valdez Interest Issue
We previously blogged about the dispute between the parties over the interest to be award in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker. Today the Supreme Court issued its final judgment in the case, declining to decide the interest issue.
The Supreme Court’s opinion was silent on the question of interest, so the plaintiffs filed a post-opinion “submission” with the Supreme Court, asking the Supreme Court to clarify that they are entitled to post-judgment interest on the $507 million punitive damages award dating back to the date of the original judgment in September 1996. That would bring the total interest to $488 million, according to the plaintiffs’ calculations.
Exxon responded that the plaintiffs are not entitled to any interest at all. Exxon argued that the Supreme Court should either (1) decide the issue and declare that plaintiffs are not entitled to interest, or (2) remain silent on this issue, which (according to Exxon) would make plain that interest should not run from the date of the original judgment.
The Supreme Court’s judgment declined to decide the interest issue, but it expressly directed the Ninth Circuit “to address the parties’ contentions about respondents’ entitlement to interest on the award remaining, a matter on which this Court declines to rule in the first instance, without prejudice to the position of any party.” So neither party really got what they wanted. The plaintiffs didn’t get their interest award (not yet anyway), and Exxon doesn’t get to argue that the Supreme Court’s silence constitutes a tacit denial of interest.
As always, SCOTUSblog has full coverage.
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Another Celebrity Punitive Damages Case: Richard Dreyfuss Sues His Dad
The Huffington Post is reporting that actor Richard Dreyfuss has sued his father and uncle for punitive damages. Dreyfuss apparently claims that he loaned the defendants $870,000 in 1984, and that they acted with malice and fraud in not repaying him.
And I thought my family gatherings were uncomfortable.