Fat, Juicy Punitive Damages For Trial Lawyers
Ted Frank explains in the Wall Street Journal just how feeble courts are at reining in excessive punitive damages awards, contrary to what you may have read about the Exxon Valdez case. Thus, state tort reform laws limiting punitive damages remain necessary to restrain the whims of idiosyncratic juries. I earlier took a somewhat more sanguine view of the Exxon Valdez decision.