Posts Tagged ‘punitive damages’

March 15 roundup

  • “A conversation with class action objector Ted Frank” [American Lawyer]
  • Reviews of new Lester Brickman book Lawyer Barons [Dan Fisher/Forbes, Russell Jackson] Plus: interview at TortsProf; comments from Columbia legal ethicist William Simon [Legal Ethics Forum]
  • “Collective Bargaining for States But Not for Uncle Sam” [Adler] Examples of how Wisconsin public-sector unionism has worked in practice [Perry] Wisconsin cop union: nice business you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it [Sykes, WTMJ] “Union ‘rights’ that aren’t” [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe]
  • “Minnesota House Considering Significant Consumer Class Action Reform Measures” [Karlsgodt]
  • 10,000 lawyers at DoD? Rumsfeld complains military overlawyered [Althouse via Instapundit]
  • “Are Meritless Claims More Prevalent in Copyright?” [Boyden, Prawfs]
  • Claim: availability of punitive damages reduces rate of truck accidents. Really? [Curt Cutting]
  • Now with improved federalism: “The Return of the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act” [Carter Wood, more, earlier here].

July 9 roundup

  • Many interesting reader comments on post about jury award against manufacturer over injury on bicycle motorized post-sale;
  • Reimbursed for money never paid: “Calif. Trial Lawyers Welcome Latest Ruling on Recovery of Medical Expenses” [The Recorder]
  • Update: Defamation suit against travel blogger Chris Elliott resolved successfully [Citizen Media Law, earlier]
  • Podcast: Northwestern lawprof Steven Calabresi on McDonald (Second Amendment incorporation) case [Federalist Society]
  • “Provost Umphrey claims banana picker reps siphoned clients, money” [SE Texas Record]
  • Lawprofs in a NYT flutter about deductibility of punitive damages [Walk, Drug & Device Law] On the merits, Carter at ShopFloor: “Changing Tax Laws to Punish Businesses — Unless They Settle”
  • Troubled Pacific Law Center to close in San Diego [ABA Journal, earlier]
  • New York high court rules Atlanta exec cannot invoke New York’s pro-plaintiff state or city laws to contest firing [NYLJ]

Update on Ogborn v. McDonald’s

Those of you who have attended my “Law of McDonald’s” talks in California and Florida may recall the case of the strip search hoax. A Florida man who was unusually persuasive would call dozens of fast food restaurants until he could find someone who would believe he was with the police and who would disrobe employees (or themselves) at his instructions; though there have been other lawsuits seeking to blame the fast food restaurants for this, courts have generally thrown them out. One exception was the case of Ogborn v. McDonald’s, where two targets of the hoax successfully sued for millions. On Friday, the Kentucky Court of Appeals largely affirmed the lower court judgment, though it reduced the punitive damages received by Donna Summers (who gave an Alford guilty plea for her role in the strip search) from $1 million to $400,000. McDonald’s hasn’t yet decided whether to appeal to the Kentucky Supreme Court. (Andrew Wolfson, “Appeals court upholds $6.1 million strip-search verdict against McDonald’s”, Kentucky Courier-Journal, Nov. 20, via ABA Journal).

SCOTUS refuses to review Flax punitive damages

I expressed skepticism this summer that the Exxon Shipping v. Baker decision was a positive sign for the Court’s punitive damages jurisprudence. After the replay of Philip Morris v. Williams and, now, the Court’s denial of certiorari in DaimlerChrysler v. Flax this week, I can say I was right.

As readers of Overlawyered know, the Tennessee Supreme Court reinstated $13.3 million of punitive damages over a good-faith dispute over a van’s seat back design (in an accident caused by a drunk driver), giving no credit to the fact that the design in question was safer than federal safety standards, or to Exxon Shipping’s suggestion that punitive damages greater than a 1:1 ratio were possibly constitutionally inappropriate where compensatory damages were substantial and the defendant’s actions were not intentional or done for profit. As I described the case back then:

In 2001, Louis Stockell, driving his pickup at 70 mph, twice the speed limit, rear-ended a Chrysler minivan. Physics being what they are, the front passenger seat in the van collapsed backwards and the passenger’s head struck and fatally injured 8-month old Joshua Flax. The rest of the family walked away from the horrific accident. Plaintiffs’ attorney Jim Butler argued that Chrysler, which already designed its seats above federal standards, should be punished for not making the seats stronger — never mind that a stronger and stiffer seat would result in more injuries from other kinds of crashes because it wouldn’t absorb any energy from the crash. (Rear-end collisions are responsible for only 3% of auto fatalities.) Apparently car companies are expected to anticipate which type of crash a particular vehicle will encounter, and design accordingly.

(h/t Cutting)

Trial lawyer earmarks: ending deductions for punitive damage payments

One can certainly see why ending tax deductions for punitive damages is a superficially appealing idea.

But the main effect will be to increase settlement pressure in cases where there are unjust punitive damages awards. Because settlements can be characterized as “compensatory” and tax-deductible while court-ordered judgments cannot, trial lawyers will be able to use the tax differential to discourage defendants from seeking appellate review. So one cannot expect very much tax revenue from this: “punitive damages” will drop precipitously, but money going to trial lawyers will go up. Moreover, appellate courts will have fewer opportunities to correct bad decisions by trial courts, creating more uncertainty in litigation, which raises litigation expenses because it will be harder to predict outcomes.

Note that taxpayers are not subsidizing punitive damages award deductions by businesses: the income “lost” because a defendant deducted the punitive damages award will be income realized by the plaintiff and his or her attorney. If the deduction is forbidden, the government will be, in effect, double-taxing the same money.

The Obama administration makes much of its claim of being pragmatic, rather than ideological, but this looks like an indirect giveaway to the trial bar rather than a source of government revenue. More: Walter at Point of Law; and my shining mug quoted at the Southeast Texas Record.

Grimes v. Raves Motion Pictures FACTA decision reversed

Last year, Overlawyered was the first to report that Judge William Acker in the Northern District of Alabama had held the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), which provides unlimited damages of $100-$1000 per violation for trivial technical violations of printing too many numbers on a credit card receipt, unconstitutional.  Other judges have refused to follow his lead, and last week the Eleventh Circuit reversed the decision, rejecting the facial challenge to the statute, but leaving open the possibility that the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in a particular case. (Harris v. Mexican Specialty Foods, No. 08-13510; h/t R.M.)

April 7 roundup

  • Wisconsin lawyer pressing bill to allow punitive damages against home resellers over claimed defects [Wisconsin State Journal] More: Dad29.
  • Longer than her will? NY Times posts ten-page jury questionnaire in Brooke Astor inheritance case [“City Room”] “Supreme Court: No Constitutional Right to Peremptory Challenge” [Anne Reed]
  • Georgia’s sex offender law, like Illinois’s, covers persons who never committed a sex crime [Balko]
  • “The lawsuits over TVA’s coal ash spill have come from all over Roane County – except the spots closest to home.” [Knoxville News]
  • Bootleg soap: residents smuggle detergents after enactment of Spokane phosphate ban [AP/Yahoo]
  • UK: Elderly Hindu man in religious-accommodation bid for approval of open-air funeral pyre [Telegraph]
  • No DUI, no one hurt, but harsh consequences anyway when Connecticut 18 year old is caught buying six-pack of beer [Fountain]
  • Only one or two not covered previously at this site [“12 Most Ridiculous Lawsuits”, Oddee]

Inside Counsel magazine on punitive damages

Inside Counsel magazine’s March 2009 issue quotes me (and mentions this blog) in a story about punitive damages and a Third Circuit ruling imposing a 1-to-1 limit on punitive damages in a bad-faith-failure-to-settle case, Jurinko v. Medical Protective Co. (albeit in a mysteriously unpublished decision). (Lauren Williamson, “Court Imposes 1-to-1 Punitive Damages Ratio”, Inside Counsel, March 2009; see also Shannon P. Duffy, “3rd Circuit Slashes Punitives, Imposes 1-1 Ratio”, Legal Intelligencer, Dec. 30.) I do take issue with the line “The decision continues a trend of appeals courts beginning to rein in punitive damage awards when there is no physical injury or ‘reprehensible’ behavior.” A 1-to-1 ratio isn’t “reining in” punitive damages awards in such cases, because just a generation ago, the ratio for such situations was zero-to-one, because punitive damages were to be limited to intentional or particularly reprehensible conduct. As I feared a few months ago, the 1-to-1 ratio “ceiling” the Supreme Court suggested in Exxon Shipping v. Baker has become a benchmark.

The magazine also has a short interview with Andrew Frey, the Mayer Brown litigator who has argued several Supreme Court punitive damages cases.