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The Social Costs Of Punitive Damages Against Corporations In Environmental And Safety Torts, W. Kip Viscusi
The Social Costs Of Punitive Damages Against Corporations In Environmental And Safety Torts, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Legal scholars and judges have long expressed concerns over the unpredictability and arbitrariness of punitive damages awards. Proposed remedies, such as restricting punitive damages to narrowly defined circumstances, have not yet met with success. This paper addresses the threshold issue of whether, on balance, punitive damages have benefits in excess of their costs. There is no evidence of a significant deterrent effect based on an original empirical analysis of a wide range of risk measures for the states with and without punitive damages. These measures included accident rates, chemical spills, medical malpractice injuries, insurance performance, and other outcomes that should …
Why There Is No Defense Of Punitive Damages, W. Kip Viscusi
Why There Is No Defense Of Punitive Damages, W. Kip Viscusi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This paper is a response to the comments by David Luban and Theodore Eisenberg on my article on punitive damages to be published in the Georgetown Law Journal (1998) and entitled "The Social Costs of Punitive Damages against Corporations in Environmental and Safety Tort." Neither of these authors presents any evidence indicating that there is a determent effect of punitive damages. They suggest, however, that there could be retribution objectives or other rationales for punitive damages. In addition, they claim that punitive damages are predictable and that cognitive biases may not tilt juries against corporations. This paper reviews these diverse …