Law Commons^™

Punitive Damages, Liquidated Damages, And Clauses Penale In Contract Actions: A Comparative Analysis Of The American Common Law And The French Code Civil, Charles R. Calleros

ExpressO

Although American common law allows punitive damages for reckless or intentional torts, it will neither allow a jury to assess punitive damages for breach of contract nor permit enforcement of a contractual damages clause that is deemed to be punitive. This approach is rooted in an early Chancery practice of granting equitable relief from oppressive penal bonds and has been more recently justified as a means of facilitating efficient breach. Economic efficiency, however, can be accomplished even if punitive damages could be assessed for intentional breach, because the parties would have an incentive to negotiate a release from the first …

U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power To Articulate And Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, And Punitive Damages, Thomas C. Galligan

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U.S. Supreme Court Tort Reform: Limiting State Power to Articulate and Develop Its Own Tort Law–Defamation, Preemption, and Punitive Damages analyzes and critiques the three primary areas in which the U.S. Supreme Court has found federal constitutional limits on a state’s power to articulate, develop, and apply its common law of torts. It is the first piece to consider all three areas together as an emerging body of jurisprudence which Professor Galligan calls U.S. Supreme Court tort reform. After setting forth a modest model of adjudication, the article applies that model to each of the three areas: defamation and related …

Purposeless Restraints: Fourteenth Amendment Rationality Scrutiny And The Constitutional Review Of Prison Sentences, Michael P. Oshea

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This Article presents an analysis and defense of the Supreme Court's current Eighth Amendment case law on prison sentencing. I argue that in the pivotal cases of Ewing v. California and Harmelin v. Michigan, a plurality of the Supreme Court has assimilated Eighth Amendment review of individual prison sentences to rationality review of state action under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. When the cases are read rightly, it becomes clear that Eighth Amendment review does not really ask whether a sentence is "grossly disproportionate," as the Court has asserted; rather, it seeks to identify arbitrary and capricious prison sentences …

Punishing Tobacco Industry Misconduct: The Case For Exceeding A Single Digit Ratio Between Punitive And Compensatory Damages, Sara D. Guardino, Richard A. Daynard

ExpressO

This article addresses large punitive damages awards that juries have granted to plaintiffs in recent cases against the tobacco industry, and demonstrates why such high awards are a warranted and necessary incentive for the companies to change their dangerous course of conduct.

In State Farm v. Campbell, the United States Supreme Court announced that “few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages” will be constitutional. In a subsequent smoking and health case brought against Philip Morris, however, a state appeals court allowed a punitive damages award that was almost 97 times the compensatory damages award. This decision …