Last October, I reported on the $8 billion punitive verdict returned by a Philadelphia jury against Johnson & Johnson in a case alleging that the company had failed to warn that its antipsychotic drug Risperdal could cause young men to develop breasts.
I expressed the view that a punishment of this size in an individual case is proof positive that the jury was animated by passion and prejudice and that a reduction of the punitive award would therefore be an inadequate remedy.
Regrettably, the trial court overlooked the fact that preposterous awards like this are indicative of a malfunctioning jury and instead merely reduced the punitive damages to $6.8 million—ten times the compensatory damages.
Continue Reading A $6.8 Million Band Aid
Usually, when a defendant gets a punitive award reduced to the same amount as the compensatory damages, it considers that a victory. But while such a reduction recently saved Johnson & Johnson $15 million, I don’t think that it should be satisfied with the result.
Only three months after AbbVie obtained a retrial of a case in which a jury had imposed $150 million in punitive damages without awarding any compensatory damages, a new jury awarded the same plaintiff $200,000 in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages.
Louisiana generally does not permit punitive damages. But if an accident happens on navigable waters, and the plaintiff brings a claim under federal maritime law, a Louisiana jury can award punitive damages, and Louisiana courts then must decide the full panoply of issues that arise in punitive damages cases. That’s what happened in 
As my colleague Andy Frey and I reported in 
They don’t call the California Superior Court in Los Angeles “The Bank” for nothing. Late last month, a jury held Johnson & Johnson liable for $70 million in compensatory damages and $347 million in punitive damages in a case brought by an individual plaintiff who alleges that her terminal ovarian cancer was caused by using J&J’s talcum powder.
In an effort to address the problem of excessive, multiple punishment, the Florida Legislature enacted a statute that “punitive damages may not be awarded against a defendant in a civil action if that defendant establishes, before trial, that punitive damages have previously been awarded against that defendant in any state or federal court in any action alleging harm from the same act or single course of conduct for which the claimant seeks compensatory damages.” The statute contains an escape hatch that allows for additional awards of punitive damages “if the court determines by clear and convincing evidence that the amount of prior punitive damages awarded was insufficient to punish that defendant’s behavior.”
Just about a week after suffering 
As early as 1967,