Conservative Sock Puppet Supreme Court overturns Insurance Award

[Timber Loftis]

Thanks for the info and Point of View Thorfinn. There were things I did not mention, to be sure. One you forgot was that Clinton was the first president in years to put harsh limitations on welfare, for which I applauded him. As well, GWB, a "Repug" president, rolled back those limitations because we currently have and unemployment problem. These facts also go against my representation of the Dem party.

Do not confuse me with a Democrat - I am not one. As I said, they were merely musings.

Though, you do not suggest that Repugs help the poor out any. They don't. It's obvious looking at the tax cuts Bush has enacted. Except for "trickle down" BS they target their "benefits" toward the wealthy, by and large.

As for insurance: MagiK, thanks for the info. Were your claims denied at first blush and later paid? Just asking, because I have heard information regarding SF policies that I want to confirm.

Thorfinn, I don't want to get started on insurance companies. I have a very long post from 6 mos. ago or so that I will try to drag out when I have the time - maybe later today - and link in here. Suffice to say, regarding your comments, that you have good points. But, a policy, no matter how expensive or inexpensive, is worth nothing if coverage is refused and you have to fight your insurer every time you seek coverage. I simply hate insurance companies - and I place them at the tip top of the "evil of evils" list. A prejudice, I admit.

But, gotta go back to work now. Can't add more but will later. I have to analyze 2 $50 million dollar insurance policies to see if our amendment to a cleanup agreement will vitiate our coverage. Ironic task vis-a-vis this discussion, no?

[Thorfinn]

Oh, believe me, I did not confuse you with a Democrat. I hope you did not confuse me with a Repug. I think they are both inherently evil, politics being merely a third, slightly more subtle form of bossing people about. (Brute force being obvious, economic force a little less obvious, the merger of the two becoming the muscle behind political force. Though more subtle, it is vastly more powerful a force of coersion than either of the others.)

I am more or less in agreement that Repugs do little to help "the poor", being committed to pretty much maintaining the current power structure. Military-industrial complex, I believe, was Eisenhower's term for it. But neither do the Dems want to help "the poor", if for no other reason than if they do help them, they will become Repugs. People have no need for handouts if they are affluent and self-sufficient, and as such, actually solving the problems of the poor would eliminate the raison d'être of the Democratic Party, at least in its current incarnation.

Thus, the Dems don't want to fix things directly or indirectly, and the Repugs at least allegedly want to address it indirectly, through heightened economic freedom, which will help the poor through increased opportunity. Though Supply-Side stops short of advocating full economic freedom, wanting to maintain a conservative form of socialism, it is at least better than restricting economic freedom, which will by definition harm the poor the most.

But really, how could tax cuts do anything other than help "the rich"? The bottom half of the taxpaying population (thus not even counting those who don't pay in, or actually get more back than they pay in) pays a mere 4% of the bills of government. Cutting taxes by 10% across the board cannot help the people who don't pay in, and can only slightly help those who pay in a small amount. IIRC, in 2000, the top 1% of the population accounted for 15% of the income, and paid 37% of the tax.

But phrasing the question as who is helped more is deceiving -- it is based on the premise that all income is the government's and is therefore within the auspices of gov't to determine how it should be spent. But to make that assumption means that the government owns the fruits of a person's labor -- in effect, they own the person. The citizen is then relegated to serf, or even slave status.

Obviously, since my opinions fairly closely parallel those of Jefferson, I believe gov'ts purpose is not to bring about social equity, as defined by whomever happens to be in power at the moment, but to safeguard the inalienable rights to life, liberty and property.

[ 04-08-2003, 01:52 PM: Message edited by: Thorfinn ]

TL if the claims I put in were first declined, it was all done in house and I never knew about it. Of course my claims were all under $2,000 so may not have triggered the auto-decline circuit [img]smile.gif[/img]

errr I will just say this about that re:Trickle down BS. If the people who make businesses have more money to expand their business and hire more people, it works....it worked for Kennedy, it worked for Reagan and it will work for Bush....if it gets done.

LOL Thorfin, I like you more and more with each post [img]smile.gif[/img] A true Jeffersonian...I do agree with you about Governments role I vote repug because they do the least damage...in my opinion. I realize that it is just an opinion, but the Dems do seem to think that all money is theirs and that they need to redistribute the wealth moreso than repugs.

[ 04-08-2003, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Timber Loftis]

Well, as a fellow Jeffersonian, I largely agree. Unfortunately, both Dems and Repugs are only good at making new rules, not getting rid of old ones, and the volume of the regulatory red tape burden we all shoulder only grows each day. If I ever run for office, I will promise to support no new laws, only amendments to old ones, and to introduce legislation repealing unecessary or stoopid laws. This proclivity is why I will never be foolish enough to run for office. That, plus I like what I do better.

[Timber Loftis]

You know, I'm not going to do a complete 180 turn here, but I am going to say the newspaper NEVER gives me the correct version of Supreme Court decisions. Luckily, the ABA does. Here's more info on the State Farm case. I makes much more sense to me now. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] I should have read the S.Ct's opinion - oh well, time time time.
__________________________________________________ __
SUPREME COURT TIGHTENS PUNITIVE DAMAGES
State Farm Case Further Defines Constitutional Restrictions

BY JOHN GIBEAUT

Somewhere, there lurks a case where punitive damages may exponentially exceed the compensatory award, maybe even by a factor of 100 or more.

It’s not, however, Curtis B. Campbell’s bad-faith case against his car insurance company for refusing to settle a claim against him, then threatening to stick him with a $185,000 judgment. Nor are there likely to be many that do warrant such a difference, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday. The court rejected Campbell’s $145 million punitive award as unconstitutionally excessive in a case that yielded only $1 million in compensatory damages. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Campbell, No. 01-1289.

In the closely watched case, the justices voted 6-3 to put some meat on the bones of a 1996 decision holding that high punitive damages may violate the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. In fleshing out the earlier case, the court for the first time suggested that single-digit multipliers over compensatory awards more likely would fit due process requirements than the 145:1 ratio applied against State Farm.

"They’ve put some real teeth into the ratio this time," says Chicago defense lawyer Lori S. Nugent, author of a state-by-state practice guide to punitive damages. "This decision will call into question many cases that are at the appellate level now."

The case began in 1981 when Campbell caused a multicar crash on a Utah highway that killed one driver and disabled another. State Farm refused an offer to settle the claims against Campbell for the $50,000 limit on his policy and instead took the case to trial. After a jury awarded the plaintiffs $185,000, the company’s lawyer suggested that Campbell and his wife, Inez, "may want to put some ‘for sale’ signs" on their property.

State Farm eventually paid the judgment, but Campbell sued the company, winning the $145 million in punitives after a second jury held the company liable for bad faith, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Campbell died while the case was pending.

The supreme court in the meantime had extended the Constitution’s reach to state punitive damages in 1996, when it struck a $2 million award to an Alabama physician after he discovered that the maker of his new $40,000 sports car had repainted it without telling him. BMW of North America Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559. There, the court set three general guideposts to determine whether punitive damages comport with due process:

The degree of reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct.
The disparity between the actual or potential injury and the punitive damages.

The difference between the punitives and the civil penalties in similar cases.
Members of the defense bar cheered the justices in State Farm for adding specifics lacking from BMW. Defense lawyers were especially encouraged by the high court’s condemnation of evidence of State Farm’s conduct outside Utah that had nothing to do with Campbell’s situation. Indeed, the Utah Supreme Court cited evidence that State Farm for more than 20 years had engaged in nationwide misconduct that included fraud, lies, document destruction and "mad-dog defense tactics" to hassle opponents.

While the U.S. Supreme Court also had taken a dim view of out-of-state evidence in BMW, that evidence merely was used to compute the amount of punitive damages by multiplying the plaintiff’s compensatory award by the number of similar sales nationwide.

In State Farm, evidence of the company’s conduct outside Utah was introduced at trial for the permissible purpose of showing the company’s motive. Trial judges admitting such similar-fact evidence typically admonish jurors to consider it only for motive and other limited purposes–and not to establish liability.

But the similar-fact evidence in State Farm just wasn’t similar. In the supreme court’s view, it didn’t even come close to resembling anything that happened to Campbell.

"That’s an issue we struggle with in these cases," Nugent says. "BMW is very limited. But what they did in Campbell was dig up any dirt, anywhere and anytime against State Farm."

As the supreme court saw it, any unrelated shabby treatment of others in different circumstances had no place in computing Campbell’s punitive damages. Regardless of how jurors used it, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority that he had no doubt that the Utah Supreme Court improperly considered the evidence in its damages calculation.

"A defendant should be punished for the conduct that harmed the plaintiff, not for being an unsavory individual or business," Kennedy wrote.

But members of the plaintiffs bar also warmly greeted the same language as lifting a post-BMW cloud hanging over evidence from other states, as long as it truly is similar and jurors are properly instructed on its limits.

From that perspective, defense lawyers may not like the result because trial courts may admit more similar-fact evidence against their clients, says Robert S. Peck, head of constitutional litigation for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.

"I think it’s going to come back to bite them," Peck predicts. "Where the defendant has been engaged in that conduct, it’s going to come in, whereas plaintiffs lawyers had tried to stay away from it after BMW."

Because State Farm didn’t physically injure Campbell, and because he already had received such a large compensatory award, the justices strongly hinted that his punitive damages at the most should equal the $1 million in compensation. Still, the justices didn’t foreclose the possibility of higher punitive-to-compensatory ratios in instances where "a particularly egregious act has resulted in only a small amount of economic damages."

The high court has an opportunity to take up that and other dangling questions as early as May 15, when the justices confer on whether to hear a products liability case involving a $290 million punitive damages award in an accident involving a Ford Bronco that killed three people. Ford Motor Co. v. Romo, No. 02-1097.

Another significant leftover matter is a caution the State Farm court issued against using stiff punitive damages as a substitute for possible criminal penalties. Quoting from a criminal statute, the California Court of Appeal told Ford it had clear notice of the possibility of such a large punitive award because "killing a human being ‘in the commission of a lawful action which might produce death … without due caution and circumspection’ is manslaughter." 122 Cal. Rptr.2d 139 (2002).

"We’re the next batter up, and the State Farm decision is going to be very helpful to our position," says Ford lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous of Los Angeles.

On the other hand, one of the plaintiff’s appeals lawyers says State Farm is too fact-specific to do Ford much good in the higher-stakes Bronco case.

"I think it’s a totally different situation," says Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of Southern California law professor. "This is a case that involves deaths and a case that the court called analogous to manslaughter."

©2003 ABA Journal