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Insurance

Mar. 23, 2010

New Standards for Punitive Damages?

Judge Rex Heeseman asks whether concepts such as "arbitrary" will have force in the world of punitive damages.

Rex Heeseman

JAMS

555 W 5th St Fl 32
Los Angeles , CA 90013-1055

Phone: (213) 253-9772

Fax: (213) 620-0100

Email: rheeseman@jamsdar.com

Stanford Univ Law School

Rex Heeseman retired from the Los Angeles Count Superior Court bench in 2014. He is at JAMS, Los Angeles. Besides speaking at various MCLE programs, he co-authors The Rutter Group's practice guide on "Insurance Litigation." From 2002 to 2015, he was an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School.

Regarding a well-known oil spill, Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 128 S.Ct. 2605 (2008) observed that "we take for granted the District Court's calculation of the total relevant compensatory damage at $507.5 million. A punitive-to-compensatory ratio of 1:1 thus yields [the] maximum punitive damages."

The opinion by Justice David H. Souter, with four justices signing on, proclaimed: "The real problem, it seems, is the stark unpredictability of punitive awards." The opinion went ...

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