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Last week, I posted the first installment of a two-part series on recent excessiveness decisions.  In this second installment, I discuss two additional excessiveness decisions.

In re: Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” Marketing, Sales Practices, & Products Liability Litigation

This case involves allegations that Volkswagen used so-called defeat devices to evade federal and state emissions test procedures. After more than 1,000 vehicle owners sued Volkswagen, alleging fraud and California statutory claims, the company entered into two settlements. Ten vehicle owners opted out.
Continue Reading An Update On Recent Excessiveness Decisions: Part II

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.
Continue Reading Seventh Circuit Agrees With Mayer Brown Amicus Brief That $3 Million Punitive Damages Award Was Unconstitutionally Excessive

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, lower courts continue to make conceptual errors interpreting and applying the guideposts. The Seventh Circuit will have the opportunity to address and rectify several such errors made by a district court in upholding a $3 million punitive award in Saccameno v. U.S. Bank National Association.
Continue Reading Mayer Brown Submits Amicus Brief For Chamber Of Commerce In Seventh Circuit Appeal Involving Proper Application Of Punitive Damages Guideposts

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 Warren v. Shelter Mutual Insurance Co.
Continue Reading Louisiana Supreme Court Wades Into Punitive Damages In Maritime Context

The Ninth Circuit recently issued an unpublished memorandum opinion reducing a $2.5 million punitive award against GEICO to $1,064,282.44—four times the compensatory damages—in a Montana insurance bad-faith case. When it comes to punitive damages doctrine, the decision is a mixed bag.
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Issues Mixed-Bag Decision On Punitive Damages In Insurance Bad-Faith Case

Application of the Supreme Court’s excessiveness guideposts to cases involving multiple defendants is one of the more confounding problems that arises in punitive damages jurisprudence. The Supreme Court of Texas got the issue right in Horizon Health Corp. v. Acadia Healthcare Co., a case in which several defendants were jointly liable for compensatory damages but individually liable for separate punitive awards.
Continue Reading Texas Supreme Court Issues Important Decision On How To Calculate Ratio Of Punitive To Compensatory Damages In Multi-Defendant Cases

Car insuranceSeemingly minor legal issues sometimes can have a surprisingly significant effect. That is particularly true with the ratio guidepost because the effect of any dispute about the guidepost’s application is literally multiplied. We recently filed an amicus brief on behalf of a group of organizations in an Eighth Circuit appeal that proves the point: Dziadek v. The Charter Oak Fire Insurance Company, No. 16-4070.
Continue Reading Mayer Brown Submits Amicus Brief For Chamber Of Commerce, American Tort Reform Association, And American Insurance Association In Eighth Circuit Appeal Involving Proper Application Of Punitive Damages Guideposts

fraction (1)On June 9, 2016, the California Supreme Court issued its decision in Nickerson v. Stonebridge Life Insurance Co., holding that so-called Brandt fees should be treated as compensatory damages when calculating the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages even when they are awarded by the trial court after the jury has returned its punitive damages award.

As discussed in my post about our amicus brief for the Chamber of Commerce in Nickerson, Brandt fees are the attorneys’ fees incurred by an insured in obtaining policy benefits that an insurer has been held to have denied the insured in bad faith.  Accordingly, at first blush Nickerson may appear to be irrelevant outside the insurance context.  But that first impression may be mistaken.
Continue Reading California Supreme Court Holds That Brandt Fees Awarded Post-Trial By A Court Must Be Included In Denominator Of Punitive/Compensatory Ratio

pair-of-scissors-307766_640A couple of months ago, I did a post about the post-trial motions in the first trial arising out of alleged defects in Wright Medical Technology’s hip implant device. On April 5, the district court resolved the motions, rejecting all of Wright’s arguments for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial, but dramatically reducing the punitive damages from $10 million to $1.1 million.

The plaintiff in this case received a Wright hip implant and, after experiencing what the district court characterized as “a cataclysmic failure,” had to have it removed and replaced. She alleged that Wright’s hip implant was defectively designed and that Wright committed fraud and made negligent misrepresentations in marketing the device to surgeons.  Although the procedural history is complicated, the bottom line is that the jury found Wright liable for design defect and awarded the plaintiff $550,000 in compensatory damages; it also found that Wright made negligent misrepresentations about the virtues of its device, for which it awarded the plaintiff an additional $450,000 in compensatory damages, plus $10 million in punitive damages.
Continue Reading Federal District Court Slashes Punitive Award In Hip Implant Case