Supreme Court hears punitive damage dispute.

National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, October, 1995 by Brostoff, Steven

WASHINGTON - Insurance and business groups are again keeping their fingers crossed hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will finally define the Constitutional scope of punitive damage awards. The high court last week heard oral arguments for die seventh time in the past eight years on the extent to which the due process clause of the 14th Amendment limits punitive damages.

In a series of cases beginning in 1986 with Aetna v. Lavoie, the court has said the due process clause does impose a substantive limitation on punitive damages, but that limitation has never been clearly defined. In the case argued last week - BMW v. Gore - the plaintiff received a jury award in Alabama of $4 million in punitive damages when the compensatory award was only $4,000. The $4 million...

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