Regardless, it has been ruled that eliminating punitives violates both First and Fourteenth Amendment concerns. I can’t cite the case, but it was in my Remedies hornbook (which I haven’t seen since I moved).
I for one would like to see the case cites if you can dig them up, KellyM. It wouldn’t surprise me to see such rulings made on the basis of state constitutions, but I have never heard of and cannot imagine the federal courts interfering in states rules on punitive damages based on the 1st and 14th Amendments. (In fact, my limited experience with the Open Courts provision of the Texas Constitution leads me to think that punitive damages might be protected from much legislative interference, but that’s almost entirely speculation on my part.)
Izzy, former-Gov. Bush’s tort reform package had little impact on punitive damages that I’m aware of. My state’s elected judiciary (primarily the all-Republican and rather pro-business Supreme Court) clamped down on such awards in the late 80s and early 90s when a bunch of plaintiff-friendly judges were voted out or retired. The standards for punitives never officially changed AFAIK, but the Court and some of the courts of appeals have gotten a lot stricter in reviewing the evidence claimed to support such awards. I actually think they’ve done a heck of a good job on this count, since punitives really are designed to punish only the most egregious behavior and should naturally be rather rare.
My opverall impression is that Bush’s tort reform was a lot more smoke than fire, with the exception of making joint and several liability even harder to obtain than before.
My opinion is that punitive damages should be levied against the guilty entity (manufacturer, corporation, individual, etc). This money should be then applied to issues that have a direct bearing on the original transgression. For example, any punitive damages awarded when Pintos blew up, should be applied to financing burn units in hospitals, retrofitting safety equipment in cars, etc. Let’s face it, corporations are always looking for a shortcut. If they are going to use statistics to decide whether or not to fund safer products, they should be subject to hefty fines when their duplicity is uncovered. I hate to say it, but many consumers have short memories when unethical companies are exposed. Remember the airplane crash in the Everglades a few years ago, when the oxygen canisters exploded? The airline changed its name (sorry, can’t recall) and its now business as usual.
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*Originally posted by KellyM *
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You can’t: [eliminating punitive damages] is unconstitutional (First Amendment right to seek redress of grievances).[/quote**IANAL but I disagree. Punitive damages do not “redress grievances.” They are “smart money.” They’re designed to punish the wrong-doer above and beyond any harm done. KellyM, do you know if there have been SC or state SC decisions overruling laws that prohibit or limit punitive damages?
The SC considered a case just a few years ago claiming that punitive damages themselves are unconstitutional. The grounds IIRC included
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Very large punitive damages are “cruel and unusual punishment.”
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Punitive damages represent ex post facto laws, since the actions for which PDs are awarded are not specified in advance.
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PDs violate due process, since there’s no description of actions for which they can be assesses.
These points make a lot of sense to me, especially in theory. There are no standards. In principle, any amount of money can be taken from an individual or organization for any act that a jury feels should be punished. A jury could make a finding posting glurge deserves punitive damages of $1 million; that judgment would be enforced as long as a judge upheld it.
The SC didn’t agree with me. By a big majority (I think 7 to 2) they ruled that “punitive damages” are not “punishment”, so none of the constitutional protections against unjust punishment could apply. IMHO this decision seemed a stretch, since “punitive” means, “Inflicting or aiming to inflict punishment; punishing.”
Aren’t lawyers great?:rolleyes:
Bread and circuses, friends, bread and circuses. The almost universal experience in the US is that punitive damages are seldom sought, rarely awarded and even more rarely survive post-trial motions. What the few awards that do survive the process do accomplish is allow the deep pocket outfits that are on the paying end to cry about them and hold them up as typical of a legal system unfairly dominated by the scape goat of the moment, the plaintiff’s trial bar. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that the exceptional is the standard. Just as President would have had you think that every single parent getting ADC was a welfare queen, just as Sen. Helms would have you think that the English department at NC State was teaching dirty literature, the deep pockets would have you believe that out of control jury awards are about to destroy the Western economy. It ain’t necessarily so. Remember that the citizens who make up juries are possessed of just about as much common sense and have the same ability to recognize the old flim-flam as you. Judges tend to be pretty smart people who have seen it all before.
december: The SC considered a case just a few years ago claiming that punitive damages themselves are unconstitutional. […] By a big majority (I think 7 to 2) they ruled that “punitive damages” are not “punishment”, so none of the constitutional protections against unjust punishment could apply.
december, do you have any more information about which case you mean? This is an interesting issue, but when I went looking for data I didn’t find a recent SC case that I thought fit your description. From this summary:
So it looks to my non-lawyerly eye as if the Court is indeed scrutinizing punitive damages with a view to their constitutionality, but with respect to the Fourteenth Amendment concerning due process rather than the Eighth (cruel and unusual). And in fact, they seem to have held that there are ways in which punitive damage awards can violate due process, but that doesn’t invalidate the constitutionality of the concept of punitive damages in itself. Which of these cases is the one you were thinking of, and where did “cruel and unusual punishment” come into it?
(And SG, I tend to agree with you that at least some of the fuss about abuses of civil suits is basically a PR maneuver. There’s a very interesting book out on this topic by the delightfully named Carl T. Bogus, titled with refreshing forthrightness Why Lawsuits are Good for America: Disciplined Democracy, Big Business, and the Common Law. He finds that, as you point out, whimsical claims and huge awards may make headlines, but they are not at all representative of liability suits in general.)
I think it may have been the Pacific Mutual Life case that I was remembering. IIFC the SC held that Due Process was satisfied because a judge had the power to review the award and overturn it. I though that reasoning was feeble, for a nation that prides itself on having a government of laws, not men.
I think the problem with lawsuit mania is that our legal system is set up on precedence quite a bit (AFAIK) and so once one lawsuit succeeds, there is a few points in favor for people who would like to press similar suits.
Lawyers may want to correct me on this, however.
I think the punative damages do indeed act as an “encouragement” to sue, but I think that is sort of the point to keep businesses on their toes.
december: I think it may have been the Pacific Mutual Life case that I was remembering. IIFC the SC held that Due Process was satisfied because a judge had the power to review the award and overturn it. I though that reasoning was feeble, for a nation that prides itself on having a government of laws, not men.
? Feeble? How so? I mean, it seems to me that according to your reasoning, one could also argue that all punishments violate due process or are ex post facto if their severity is left up to the discretion of a judge or jury rather than being spelled out by the law in advance. Surely even a “government of laws” has to rely on men and women to interpret and apply the laws.
A question on punitive awards not going to the plaintiff:
Would the lawyer still take his 1/3rd off the top? If not, how are little guys going to ba able to get a lawyer to take the case?
OK, try this example from around 20 - 25 years ago. State Farm Insurance Company sold a Homeowner’s policy with an earthquake exclusion. The policy said that it dod not cover damage to to an earthquake. The policyholder’s home was destroyed by an earthquake, and he sued for coverage. The trial court created a brand new doctrine, “concurrent causation,” which IIRC reasoned that the damage to the home was caused not only by the earthquake by by construction flaws, which WERE covered. On the basis of this novel doctrine, the homeowner got paid.
Oh, I forgot to mention, the jury awarded half a million dollars punitive damamges against State Farm for the horrendous, disgusting evil of failing to pay for earthquake damages on a policy that excluded earthquake damage.
There is nothing even remotely novel about concurrent causation (a/ka/ “overdetermined causation”), december. The concept goes back at least a hundred years that I know of, and probably quite a lot further back than that.
Well, I learn something new every day on this web site.
To my knowledge, this was the first time the doctrine had been applied to an earthquake exclusion in property insurance. I had never previously heard of it in my insurance studies. I did pass one exam on law and regulation during my actuarial training, but of course IANAL.
Do you know, Minty, whether this doctrine had been used in property insurance cases before this State Farm case, or was it brought over from some other part of the law?
I don’t really know veryt much about insurance law in particular, december, so it’s possible that this was one of the first times it was applied to an insurance contract. But since you’re working with an exclusionary clause in the contract, the primary question must have been whether the damage was caused by the excluded force. Causation, of course, has a long history in both criminal and tort law, and both recognize that it’s possible for injury to result from more than one cause. Since the plaintiff’s argument in your case appears to have been that the damage to the house would not have occurred without the shoddy construction, and the evidence presumably supported that hypothesis, it’s probably rational for the jury and the court to decided that the proximate cause was the insured construction faults rather than the uninsured hurricane. Maybe even both, in which case it’s even more of a contract interpretation problem. Out of such weirdness is Oliver Wendell Holmes made. 
Simply make it illegal for plaintiff **or plaintiff’s attorneys **to collect any portion of any punitive damages, and watch the deep pockets suddenly go shallow.
The other major improvement is to empower the bailiffs, upon direction by the jury foreman, to repeatedly smack plaintiffs upside the head, and scream “COFFEE IS SUPPOSED TO BE HOT, YOU MORON!”
Regards,
Shodan
From the OP:
Plenty of people have responded to this. However, the OP also said:
Not everyone has addressed this. It seems to me it would have the desired effect. Are there any drawbacks to awarding punitive damages to someone other than the plaintiff?
Please look for it, as I would be quite interested in seeing it, given how the first amendment 1) protects the right to seek redress of grievances from the government, not from another citizen, as in a civil lawsuit, and 2) A protected right to seek the redress of grievances does not imply a right to actually have said grievances redressed, with punitive damages for instance.
Sure, there are. I can now set up the EnderW24 society to help underpriviledged Enders across the world. You want to start setting up criteria on where the money should go, what charities are optimal, and by what standards they’re being judged? Who oversees this?
In fact, I’m willing to believe that juries will be MORE likely to give out punitive judgments in this case. “oh, it’s going to a charity? DAMN YOU BIG CORPORATION, YOU’RE GOING DOWN!”
As funny as this is, I still wonder just how many people out there enjoy drinking coffee hot enough to give you third degree burns (which the coffee in the McDonalds case did)… I’m sure if the woman had actually drunk the stuff she’d be in a lot of pain to this day…
A lot of people seem confused about my OP, which admittedly wasn’t phrased very well. I didn’t mean to suggest that we do away with punitive damages altogether, since that is a very important disincentive for businesses to ignore hazards. Just that said damages should be paid to a third party, and NOT the plaintiff.
Some people have suggested that lawyers would be less inclined to take on cases if they don’t get their 1/3 cut of a huge judgment…well GEE, we wouldn’t want to introduce actual INTEGRITY to the profession, would we?? LOL.
Anyways, that’s all I can think of to add to my own post.
And how would this be a good thing???
Let’s say that your wife or mother or someone you care about gets sick. This person sees a doctor and is prescribed medication. This person has a reaction to the medication(that the drug company knew was possible but did not disclose to anyone) and goes into a coma, then dies.
You’re furious. You have been harmed. You lost this loved one. And you have some serious medical bills to pay. Naturally, you want justice. But, you’re not a rich evil twin. Without the possibility of a punitive award, no lawyer would be able to afford taking your case without charging you an hourly rate. The fees would likely exceed any damage award you would recieve.
As such, the drug company either gets off very cheaply or gets off scott-free. Where is the added integrity in this scenario? Who benefits?