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Washington Post Journalist Jason Rezaian on His Iranian Imprisonment
Polsinelli Podcasts - Removing Caps on Punitive Damages: What is the Impact on Business?
Bill on Bankruptcy: Sigmund Freud, Marx Brothers, Bernie Madoff
The risk of a large verdict has always been a major factor in any litigation. In recent years, the potential for a punitive damages instruction reaching a jury and a consequent verdict has grown as well. US juries have not...more
Court: Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, Civil Division - In this asbestos action, a California state court set aside a $107 million verdict against defendants Union Carbide Corp., Elementis Chemicals...more
When are punitive damages awarded? Under Arkansas law, a statute affixes the standard for awarding punitive damages, and the key element is a showing of express or implied malice. Under this rule, punitive damages are...more
The South Carolina Supreme Court recently decided Garrison v. Target Corporation in which it interpreted South Carolina’s statutory cap on punitive damages....more
While too many of us get overdosed with clownish depictions - from doctors, hospitals, insurers, and corporations, especially Big Pharma firms - of how the civil justice system operates, it’s always worth a reminder of the...more
In Burnett v. Ocean Properties, Ltd., et al., the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a jury verdict for the plaintiff in his failure to accommodate claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Maine Human...more
In a recent unpublished opinion, California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal handed down a potentially significant opinion on the application of punitive damages. In Morgan v. J-M Manufacturing Co. (Case. No. B297393), the...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit amended its August 2020 opinion in Epic Systems v. Tata Consultancy to clarify that its analysis of punitive damages applies only to this particular case. Epic Systems Corp. v....more
It may be common to see protest activity on your campus – but thankfully it is not common to see a massive jury award rendered against an educational institute due to that activity. An ongoing dispute at an Ohio college that...more
Addressing the appropriateness of three separate damages awards totaling $520 million, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the lower court’s award of $140 million in compensatory damages, but found that...more
It is not often that a United States Court of Appeals issues a decision on trade secrets, much less one involving the review of a bench trial that drew legal conclusions on the scope of trade secret law and the propriety of...more
In BritNed v ABB, the English Court of Appeal substantially reduced the UK's first award of damages in a so-called cartel damages claim brought for breach of European competition law. In so doing, the Court rejected calls for...more
On April 4, 2019, the Colorado Court of Appeals issued its decision in Houchin v. Denver Health and Hospital Authority, holding that under 2013 amendments to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), state employees may...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
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
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
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit—which covers federal courts in North Carolina—recently affirmed a borrower’s victory against a loan servicer under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). In...more
The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings apply to all South Carolina employers) recently decided a religious accommodation case in which a jury awarded a former employee more than half a million dollars. The Equal...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, recently found that punitive and compensatory damages are not available for retaliation claims brought under the federal Age...more
Last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed its earlier position that compensatory and punitive damages are not available to plaintiffs who allege violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)....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 Nickerson v. Stonebridge Life Ins. Co. (No. B234271A, filed 11/3/16), (“Nickerson II”) a California appeals court outlined the requirements for complying with the single-digit multiplier annunciated as a Constitutional...more
Things have been quiet in the world of punitive damages for the last few months, but two recent decisions substantially reducing punitive awards under the BMW/State Farm factors warrant mention. My colleague Miriam Nemetz...more
In Brandt v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court held that when a plaintiff proves that an insurance company withheld policy benefits in bad faith, attorneys' fees reasonably incurred to compel payment of the...more
On June 9, 2016, the California Supreme Court ruled in Nickerson v. Stonebridge Life Ins. Co., __ Cal.4th ___ (2016) that the attorneys’ fees awarded to a veteran who sued for benefits under a “hospital stay” policy should be...more