How am I offloading costs? If the customer suffers $20,000 in damages because his car breaks down, I pay him $20,000. If he suffers $21,000 because his car breaks down and he it somehow costs him $1000 to go get another one, then I pay him $21,000. He pays no costs; they are all paid by me.
If you go to restaurant and you order a steak, and you get chicken instead, do you ask that the steak be replaced with chicken, or do you ask that it be replaced, and that you be paid punitive damages? What if the restaurant hired an inexperienced waiter, knowing that he would make mistakes, but figuring that the cost of the meals sent back would be less than the difference in wages? Must businesses take every precaution to avoid mistakes, even if the cost of the mistake is less than the remedy?
I did not say that they are receiving punitive damages; I said that they are receiving damages of a punitive nature. Your own cite agrees: “Statutory damages are meant to send a message and to ‘sting’ or make it hurt!” You can call this whatever you want, but the only essential difference is nomenclature.
The problem with the argument is you’re assuming that there are constitutional limitations on fines and punishments in criminal cases, but not on punitive damages in civil cases. That’s not the case.
Punitive damages aren’t awarded just because the plaintiff asks for them in his complaint. Actual damages are what is necessary to make the aggrieved party whole; punitives are only warranted in a situation where the tortfeasor has engaged in “outrageous, malicious, or otherwise morally culpable conduct” makes them necessary to punish and deter. Special emphasis is placed on the principle that punitive damages may not be disproportionally greater than the gravity and severity of the misconduct in issue and the injury sustained, and the imposition of “grossly excessive” punitive damages on a tortfeasor violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. BMW of N. Am, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559 (1996).
The hypothetical just couldn’t happen. No competent judge is going to say that punitive damages assessed against a private citizen amounting ten times actual damages for an action involving the moral culpability of a criminal misdeameanor are constitutionally permissable.
No, I’m aware that civil cases have their own limitations. The criminal limitations, however, don’t apply to them.
Isn’t “outrageous, malicious, or otherwise morally culpable conduct” another way of saying “an act which is a crime, or, if there is no law against it, should be illegal”? (That’s another issue: to seek punitive damages, need there be a specific law broken?) And isn’t seeking punishment for criminal acts properly handled by the criminal justice system?
I am quite certain that there are cases in which a judge has assesed $1 in actual damages, and considerably more in punitive damages. In the infamous McD coffee lawsuit, actual damages were $200,000. Punitive damages were $2.7M. In a recent tobacco suit, actual damages were $5.5M. Punitive damages were $3 billion. Granted, those two were reduced on appeal, but it shows that it’s not inconceivable.