Greedy Trial Lawyer
Constitutionally Unconscionable - Punitive Damages Or Outrageous Corporate Conduct?
Category: In Your Face
The Law Blog of the Wall Street Journal has tip-toed into the subject of punitive damages. I would like to stomp around the outrageous conduct that necessarily supports punitive damages a bit myself.
Excerpts from The Supreme Court and Punitive Damages
Juries have no place awarding huge sums in punitive damages for alleged wrongdoing that has never been proved in court, writes Financial Times legal columnist Patti Waldmeir.In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision earlier this week to take up the hot-button issue of punitive damages next term, Waldmeir looks at the questions the Court will address:
Should jurors be allowed to punish defendants for harm they may cause to people who are not party to the suit? Is that necessary to deter corporate wrongdoing? Or is it economically counter- productive - and constitutionally unconscionable - to hit corporate defendants with damages in three-figure millions for each case of wrongdoing?
I believe it is constitutionally unconscionable for the U.S. Supreme Court, after just stocking itself with two pro-business justices, to consider abolishing the only mechanism left to the citizen-victims of our country to get the attention of a reckless, fraudulent or malicious corporation. Unless the corporate wallet is significantly lightened by an occasional punitive damage award for outrageous (not careless) conduct corporate bad actors will simply continue to factor into the cost of a product the additional "cost" of injuries and deaths caused by it. Have we all forgotten the Ford memos that candidly factored in the future "costs" of the expected burned and killed passengers of the poorly designed Pinto with its exploding gas tank?
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