Day On Torts : Tennessee Injury Lawyer & Attorney : John Day : Personal Injury, Accidents : Serving Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville

A settlement has been reached in Mohr v. Daimler Chrysler Corp., a products liability case which alleged defects in a 2000 Dodge Caravan.

The Court of Appeals affirmed almost $5,000,000 in compensatory damage awards for the death of the driver and front-seat passenger in the case.  The court also affirmed a finding of no liability for injuries suffered by two passengers.  The court reduced the punitive damage award from almost $49,000,000 to $13,800,000.  A Rule 11 Application was pending before the Tennessee Supreme Court.

With interest, the judgment was over $26,000,000.

The case was settled for $22,600,000.  As everyone knows, Chrysler is in bankruptcy.  The settlement received court approval last Thursday.  The judgment was paid by insurers that posted surety bonds.  Safeco picked up $15.1 of the amount and Chrysler Insurance Co. picked up the balance.

Read the Court of Appeals opinion at 2008 WL 4613584 (Tenn. App. Oct. 14, 2008).

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

The Social Science Research Network has an article available that is of interest to tort lawyers: The Decision to Award Punitive Damages: An Empirical Study. Here is the abstract:

Empirical studies have consistently shown that punitive damages are rarely awarded, with rates of about three to five percent of plaintiff trial wins. Using the 2005 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Civil Justice Survey, this article shows that knowing in which cases plaintiffs sought punitive damages transforms the picture of punitive damages. Not accounting for whether punitive damages were sought obscures the meaningful punitive damages rate, the rate of awards in cases in which they were sought, by a factor of nearly 10, and obfuscates a more explicable pattern of awards than has been reported. Punitive damages were surprisingly infrequently sought, with requests found in about 10% of tried cases that plaintiffs won. Punitive damages were awarded in about 30% these trials. Awards were most frequent in cases of intentional tort, with a punitive award rate of over 60%. Greater harm corresponded to a greater probability of an award: the size of the compensatory award was significantly associated with whether punitive damages were awarded, with a rate of approximately 60% for cases with compensatory awards of $1 million or more. Regression models correctly classify about 70% or more of the punitive award request outcomes, Judge-jury differences in the rate of awards exist, with judges awarding punitive damages at a higher rate in personal injury cases and juries awarding them at a higher rate in nonpersonal injury cases. These puzzling adjudicator differences may be a consequence of the routing of different cases to judges and juries.

Thanks for Torts Prof Blog for informing me about the article.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Share Link

The United States Supreme Court denied cert in  Flax v. DaimlerChrysler Corporation, the products liability, punitive damages, and negligent infliction of the emotional distress case decided by the Tennessee Supreme Court last year.  Here is my post from last July on the decision by the Tennessee court.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Share Link

The Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled that a jury may consider a defendant's three convictions for drunk driving in deciding the punitive damages issue in a personal injury case arising out of yet another drunk driving episode. 

The opinion has great language about why the evidence of the prior convictions is probative.

The opinion is Yeakley v. Doss,  06-851 (Ark. S.C. May 31, 2007).  Read the opinion here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Share Link

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Share Link

The SCOTUS hears another punitive damage case today.  Here is my earlier post on the Williams v. Phillip Morris case out of Oregon.

Law.Com summarizes it this way:  "The case asks the high court to review the punitive damages award for excessiveness. It also asks the justices to set forth clearly how judges and juries that are considering punitive damages are to weigh harm caused by the defendant's conduct to other smokers who were not parties to the suit."  Read the whole article here.

You will be able to get a transcript of the argument tomorrow evening at this site.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Share Link