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 intoxicated. After their father died of unrelated causes, the children brought this suit against his estate. We hold that Indiana law does not permit recovery of punitive damages from a decedent’s estate.”
In the text of the opinion the Court says this: “We think, however, there is little, if any, additional deterrence supplied by the prospect that one’s estate may be liable for punitive damages if one does not survive. Most tortfeasors in the case of an accident such as this presumably do not contemplate their own demise. If they consider punitive damages at all, they will deem themselves exposed to that possibility. To the extent the tortfeasor thinks at all about the consequences of his tort after he dies, he will recognize that he and his estate will have the obligation to provide full compensation to any victim. If we ever encounter a case where a tortfeasor seems to have considered his own death as an escape from punitive dam-ages incident to some intentional tort, we can address that issue at that time. For now, we are content to hold that the purposes of punitive damages are not served by recovering them from a decedent.”