4 ms·
The supreme court has never put a cap on punitives and in fact, for egregious conduct they've affirmed that no ratio applies. [1] In fact, if anything it looks
by cogman10 3y ago
The supreme court has never put a cap on punitives and in fact, for egregious conduct they've affirmed that no ratio applies. [1]
In fact, if anything it looks like the supreme court has basically left everything to be determined in a case by case basis.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TXO_Production_Corp._v._Alliance_Resources_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TXO_Production_Corp._v._Allian.... (Note, there's a period at the end here that HN is removing)
- lolinder 3y agoYes, and that was not a defamation case. There's no chance on this earth that if this makes it to the Supreme Court the court will rule that a 1m:1 ratio is acceptable in a speech case (regardless of the political composition of the court at the time), and if they did it would represent a major step backward for free speech in the US. After TXO, the Supreme Court wrote this in BMW, Inc. v. Gore where a similar 500:1 ratio was at stake (and was overturned) [0]: > The $2 million in punitive damages awarded to Dr. Gore by the Alabama Supreme Court is 500 times the amount of his actual harm as determined by the jury. Moreover, there is no suggestion that Dr. Gore or any other BMW pur- chaser was threatened with any additional potential harm by BMW’s nondisclosure policy. The disparity in this case is thus dramatically greater than those considered in Haslip and TXO. > Once again, “we return to what we said . . . in Haslip: ‘We need not, and indeed we cannot, draw a mathematical bright line between the constitutionally acceptable and the constitutionally unacceptable that would fit every case. We can say, however, that [a] general concer[n] of reasonableness . . . properly enter[s] into the constitutional calculus.’ ” Id., at 458 (quoting Haslip, 499 U. S., at 18). In most cases, the ratio will be within a constitutionally acceptable range, and remittitur will not be justified on this basis. When the ratio is a breathtaking 500 to 1, however, the award must surely “raise a suspicious judicial eyebrow.” When a "suspicious judicial eyebrow" gets raised in a speech case in the US, the plaintiff has already lost. [0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/559/case.pdf https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/517/559/case.pdf
- cogman10 3y ago> To me that's a very scary result. Then to circle back on the beginning of this thread, what exactly do you find so scary about this? The trial judge can adjust the damages down, so can the appellate courts, and if that doesn't resolve it ultimately the supreme court can eliminate the damages. It's not terribly unusual for punitive damages to be adjusted after the jury awards them. So why be scared that a jury potentially gave out too much in damages?
- lolinder 3y agoI'm scared about what it says about our society that we've reached the point where juries think it's their job to punish speech and that punishment gets cheered on even in spaces like HN. Just because we have robust speech protections doesn't mean we always will, and I see this verdict and its reception here as evidence of declining interest in preserving speech protections in the United States.