Last summer, my colleague C.J. Summers and I posted a report about Saccameno v. U.S. Bank National Association, a Seventh Circuit case in which we had filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States.
In late November 2019, the Seventh Circuit issued an opinion reducing the punitive damages to a 1:1 multiple of the compensatory damages, agreeing with both the bottom line and a good deal of the analysis in our brief. And in late January 2020, the court denied the plaintiff’s rehearing petition.
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Last October, I 
By now, you’ve probably read reports of the $8 billion punitive verdict against Johnson & Johnson in an individual case alleging failure to warn that young men using its antipsychotic drug Risperdal could develop breasts. Robot-like, virtually every article about the verdict says that the verdict is likely to be reduced because it is disproportionate to the $680,000 award of compensatory damages.
Although the Supreme Court identified three guideposts for evaluating whether a punitive award is unconstitutionally excessive 23 years ago in 
On June 24, the Supreme Court held in 
In an earlier 
Should divided panels of federal appellate courts really be deciding state-law issues of first impression? That’s what happened last month in 
When the Supreme Court agrees to hear a punitive damages case, that’s always news—even when the case involves something as arcane as the availability of punitive damages under maritime law.
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.
Over the years, we have reported on many cases in which courts adhered to the Supreme Court’s guidance in