The Supreme Court denied cert in a cigarette case yesterday, letting a $50,000,000 punitive damages award stand against Phillip Morris. The compensatory damages in the case were $5,500,000. This will be an encouragement to the plaintiff in the Oregon tobacco case; recall that the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed a $79.5…
You may hate tobacco lawsuits and lawyers who bring them. But you cannot help but agree that the tobacco industry is absolutely despicable. How the executives of the industry who lied to the country and the government for years can sleep is beyond me. There are lots of people who…
Here is a decision that reminds us about the law of arguing damages. The decision – from Florida but true in Tennessee – holds that it is reversible error to refer to assets of the defendant in trying to communicate to the jury how to determine damages for pain and…
I wrote last week that the Tennessee Supreme Court approved certain changes to the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure (and other rules of procedure). What I did not address is the proposed rule change that was not adopted by the Court. That is the proposed change to Rule 8.01, which…
The Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that personal injury victims cannot receive punitive damages against a person who is dead. The Court’s summary paragraph puts it this way: “The plaintiffs in this case were injured in an accident as passengers in a car driven by their father while he was…
Can a injured plaintiff who is back to work ask for damages for loss of future earning capacity? Yes, rules the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, given the fact that there was evidence of ongoing physical problems and testimony by the plaintiff that he would probably not be working for…
What do you do when you represent people who have been exposed to a dangerous substance but to date have not experienced an injury? Some lawyers have brought what is known as a medical monitoring claim, asking that the defendant be required to pay money to monitor the health of…
Each one of us deals with it almost every day – subrogation or reimbursement. Many of those plans are covered by ERISA. This post by John Wood on our ERISA blog may be of assistance to you.
A defendant found 100% at fault claimed it should get the benefit of plaintiff’s settlement with a prior defendant. The Tennessee Supreme Court said “No” in an opinion authored by Justice Anderson. This result is correct. While it is true that the plaintiff here recovered 150% of his damages (because…
The California Supreme Court has handed down two puntive damages cases that interpret State Farm v. Campbell. One case is Johnson v. Ford Motor Corp., a case in which the plaintiff purchasers of a used vehicle proved that Ford had concealed a history of repairs to the vehicle. They also…