Ordinarily, a ratio of 25:1 would ring the death knell for a punitive damages award. But just as a 1:1 ratio is not always a safe harbor, a double-digit ratio is not always indicative of a punitive award that exceeds...more
Last week, I posted the first installment of a two-part series on recent excessiveness decisions. In this second installment, I discuss two additional excessiveness decisions....more
Last summer, my colleague C.J. Summers and I posted a report about Saccameno v. U.S. Bank National Association, a Seventh Circuit case in which we had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce of the United...more
2/12/2020
/ Amicus Briefs ,
Breach of Contract ,
Chamber of Commerce ,
Compensatory Damages ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Consumer Bankruptcy ,
Consumer Financial Products ,
Consumer Fraud ,
Consumer Protection Laws ,
Default ,
Denial of Rehearing ,
Excess Policies ,
Loans ,
Mortgages ,
Ocwen ,
Petition For Rehearing ,
Punitive Damages ,
Statutory Violations ,
US Bank National Association
Last October, I reported on the $8 billion punitive verdict returned by a Philadelphia jury against Johnson & Johnson in a case alleging that the company had failed to warn that its antipsychotic drug Risperdal could cause...more
By now, you’ve probably read reports of the $8 billion punitive verdict against Johnson & Johnson in an individual case alleging failure to warn that young men using its antipsychotic drug Risperdal could develop breasts. ...more
Although the Supreme Court identified three guideposts for evaluating whether a punitive award is unconstitutionally excessive 23 years ago in BMW v. Gore and refined those guideposts 16 years ago in State Farm v. Campbell,...more
7/22/2019
/ Amicus Briefs ,
Appeals ,
Breach of Contract ,
Calculation of Damages ,
Chamber of Commerce ,
Clerical Errors ,
Compensatory Damages ,
Constitutional Challenges ,
Consumer Bankruptcy ,
Consumer Protection Laws ,
Default ,
Loans ,
Mortgages ,
Punitive Damages ,
Statutory Violations ,
US Bank National Association
Usually, when a defendant gets a punitive award reduced to the same amount as the compensatory damages, it considers that a victory. But while such a reduction recently saved Johnson & Johnson $15 million, I don’t think that...more
Over the years, we have reported on many cases in which courts adhered to the Supreme Court’s guidance in State Farm (and Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker) that, when compensatory damages are “substantial, a 1:1 ratio of punitive...more
In State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Campbell, the Supreme Court strongly implied that in some cases even a 1:1 ratio of punitive to compensatory damages might be too high. In Torres v. B/E Aerospace, Inc., the...more
Louisiana generally does not permit punitive damages. But if an accident happens on navigable waters, and the plaintiff brings a claim under federal maritime law, a Louisiana jury can award punitive damages, and Louisiana...more
We reported on a bunch of eye-popping punitive awards in 2017. There have been further developments in a number of those cases. Though we may provide more comprehensive discussions of some of those developments, here is a...more
As my colleague Andy Frey and I reported in an earlier post, an Illinois federal jury in July returned a $150 million punitive verdict against AbbVie without awarding the plaintiff any compensatory damages. That verdict is...more
Just about a week after suffering its third punitive award in pelvic-mesh litigation, Johnson & Johnson found itself on the wrong end of a $105 million punitive award—close to 20 times the $5.4 million compensatory award—in...more
St. Louis and Kansas City have long been cross-state baseball rivals. Who can forget the 1985 I-70 World Series?
So it is hardly surprising that on the eve of St. Louis being named by the American Tort Reform Association...more
A couple of months ago, the Kentucky Court of Appeals in Grant Thornton LLP v. Yung cut a trial court’s award of punitive damages from $80 million to $20 million—reducing the punitive/compensatory ratio to 1:1....more
In recent years, St. Louis has done much to earn a place on the American Tort Reform Association’s list of judicial hell holes. Not content to rest on its laurels, the St. Louis circuit court grabbed the headlines again last...more
Courts applying BMW and State Farm often emphasize the Supreme Court’s admonition that the constitutional line is not “marked by a simple mathematical formula”—typically when rejecting a defendant’s argument that the ratio of...more
On June 9, 2016, the California Supreme Court issued its decision in Nickerson v. Stonebridge Life Insurance Co., holding that so-called Brandt fees should be treated as compensatory damages when calculating the ratio of...more
There have been subsequent developments in several cases about which we have posted in recent months.
On April 27, 2016, the California Supreme Court denied review in Casey v. Kaiser Gypsum Co., a case in which the...more
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in BMW of North America. Inc. v. Gore, the first time the Court had ever held that a punitive damages award was unconstitutionally excessive under the Due...more
Lately, we have had many occasions to criticize courts’ analysis of punitive damages issues, so it is nice for a change to be able to report on the Tenth Circuit’s insightful decision in Lompe v. Sunridge Partners. Readers...more
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires procedural fairness in state trials, but that principle seems absent from a recent California Court of Appeal decision upholding a judgment against Kaiser Gypsum...more
About a month ago, we reported on a Delaware trial court decision reducing a $75 million punitive award to $7.5 million in a transvaginal mesh case. Last week, in what we believe to be the first appellate decision in one of...more
In a post a few weeks ago, I reported on a verdict by a federal jury in Atlanta awarding $1 million in compensatory damages and $10 million in punitive damages against the manufacturer of a hip implant. Not to be outdone, on...more
In a post last month, we reported on a district court’s rulings on motions in limine in the first bellwether hip implant trial against Wright Medical Technology Incorporated. The case subsequently went to trial, and last week...more