Punitive Damages and Injunctions Civil

Punitive Damages and Injunctions

Civil Litigation

Should punitive damages be limited in any way?

Punitive damages are designed to punish wrongdoers for intentional malicious conduct. Awarded over and above compensatory damages, they're meant to teach a defendant a lesson and deter others from similar behavior....Traditionally, punitive damages have served as juries' big stick against those corporations that place human life and safety at risk in pursuit of profits" (Court 2004). However, the argument against unlimited punitive damages is that juries often make awards based on emotion, rather than upon reason. A jury might award punitive damages to the parents of a child that was injured by the actions of a large corporation under the rationale that the corporation can afford it, even if the actions of the corporation did not merit such a large settlement. With Campbell v. State Farm (2003), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that "punitive damages must be proportionate to the actual losses suffered by individual plaintiffs. The court did not set an outright cap on such damages, but noted that a ratio of more than 4-to-1 might be close to the line of constitutional impropriety" (Court 2004).

Are "greed and politics" legitimate reasons for lawyers and litigants to engage in civil litigation?

Of course, greed is never a legitimate reason for seeking a lawsuit. But the civil litigation system has saved lives and "taught corporations important lessons" (Court 2004). For example, "in 1999, a Los Angeles jury issued the biggest punitive damage verdict ever -- $4 billion -- against General Motors (GM). The plaintiffs had been trapped and burned when their automobile gas tanks exploded. In court it was revealed that GM had chosen not to warn the public about the gas-line defect because it judged it would be cheaper to pay out individual lawsuits than to recall the defective automobiles," as explicitly stated in an internal company memo (Court 2004)

Do you think pre-conviction forfeiture in criminal cases is constitutional?