Justice should not be pot luck.(14th Amendment limitations on punitive damage awards)(Editorial)

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

Here we go again. For the seventh time in the last eight years the U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to determine the extent to which the due process clause of the 14th Amendment limits punitive damages. In a frustrating series of rulings dating back Aetna v. Lavoie in 1986, the high court has conceded that the due process clause does indeed limit punitive damages.

However, the court has left the judicial system hanging by failing to clearly define those constitutional limits. This year, the court is considering a particularly outrageous example of the punishment not fitting the crime. In BMW v. Gore, an Alabama jury awarded the plaintiff $4 million in punitive damages, despite the fact that the compensatory award was only $4,000 and the wrong committed was far...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.