On November 3, 2009, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued the newest in a line of often convoluted and controversial decisions coming out of the country’s courts addressing the propriety and reasonableness of certain punitive damages awards.

In Goff v. Elmo Greer & Sons Constr. Co., Inc., the plaintiff landowners brought suit against the defendant road construction contractor as a result of the defendant’s activities and use of their land during a road-widening project. The plaintiffs claimed that during the project there were often large oil deposits in the area where the defendant staged its equipment, and that the area was being used to store tires, batteries, vehicle parts, oil drums, and various other items. When questioned about the condition of the area, the defendant’s personnel allegedly told the plaintiffs “not to worry about it” and “we’ll clean it up.” At the conclusion of the project, the defendant removed its equipment from the property and compacted, graded, and seeded the fill area. The landowners were convinced that the defendant had buried tires and other materials on their property, so they arranged for part of the area to be excavated. During this excavation, tires, including one that was eight feet tall and weighed at least a ton, and steel pipes were found buried eight to nine feet deep under a layer of compacted rocks.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs sought compensatory damages in the amount of $500,000 and $1 million in punitive damages. At trial, the jury heard a number of witnesses testify that given the circumstances, it would have had to have been an intentional act for the tires unearthed in the fill area to have been buried as they were. Following the trial, the jury awarded the plaintiffs just over $18,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages. The case was eventually appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court.