How does one “deter” bad-faith? One man’s bad-faith is another’s zealousness.

I do agree with you that “single digit” dictum is a rule not of the mind but of the antipodal organ. How about using pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, or, my favorite, the ratio of the square root of two to two?

Generally, was Mr. Pearson’s multi-million dollar pant’s suit any crazier than the $145 million punitive damage award?

1) To repeat, State Farm did not tell Campbell to sell his house. The lawyer representing Campbell told him to sell his house.

2) What do you think “bad faith” means? State Farm had a contract with Campbell to pay a maximum of $25,000/claim. Campbell could have bought a more expensive insurance policy that had higher claim limits, but he did not. Campbell said he was innocent, so State Farm defended him. Why is it bad faith for an insurer to say it won’t gratuitously give Campbell $135,000 he didn’t bargain or pay for? Granted: Summers’ conduct was appalling (which is why he lost his job). But the exaggerated claim report was immaterial to the underlying case: the relevant issue is whether Ospital was speeding, not why.

3) I’m in Austin, so can’t immediately confirm from the record what motivated Campbell’s decision to retain a new attorney; I believe that they chose to do so in response to Wendell Bennett’s callous remark.

Don’t you think it’s bad faith for SF to have told the plaintiff they would cover an excess judgment and then tell him to sell his house to cover the excess judgment? Isn’t it also bad faith to falsify docs, even if done to benefit Campbell?

There is no legitimate legal reason to require State Farm to listen to adopt the position of the most pessimistic of its investigators when there was other evidence that the case was defensible. (Note that one reason that the jury found Campbell 100% at fault was because Ospital and Slusher colluded at trial to contradict their earlier positions.) Campbell said it wasn’t his fault, and justice should require him to be estopped from playing “heads I win, tails don’t count” and complaining that State Farm should have known that he was lying. At worst, make State Farm liable for the excess judgment, though even that has an element of injustice. But a million dollars in additional damages when there was no injury? And punitives on top of it? Highway robbery.

The ratio in this case was not single-digit, because compensatory damages were zero. There were a million dollars in wholly theoretical noneconomic damages for emotional distress—a figure that by itself is clearly punitive—and another 9 million in punitive damages. That’s a ten-million-dollar-to-zero ratio.

The appeal/appeal bond: “Nor was State Farm willing to post a supersedeas bond to allow Campbell to appeal the judgment against him. Campbell obtained his own counsel to appeal the verdict ”

The judgment: “State Farm also ignored the advice of one of its own investigators and took the case to trial, assuring the Campbells that “their assets were safe, that they had no liability for the accident, that [State Farm] would represent their interests, and that they did not need to procure separate counsel.” Id., at ___, 2001 WL 1246676, at *2. To the contrary, a jury determined that Campbell was 100 percent at fault, and a judgment was returned for $185,849, far more than the amount offered in settlement.

At first State Farm refused to cover the $135,849 in excess liability. Its counsel made this clear to the Campbells: “ ‘You may want to put for sale signs on your property to get things moving.’ ”

My objection to the ruling: I disagree with the single-digit ratio since that often times will not be a sufficient punishment or deterrent.

Sadly, I predicted it exactly.

JL,

Do you LIKE to be shown a fool? Stuff like that probably works just fine in politically homogenous circles, but people who actually check the facts (such as Ted here) are simply going to go check the original sources and make you look like a paid hack.

1) State Farm offered to pay for a supersedeas bond; Campbell’s attorney told them not to, and never asked them to. Moreover, at trial, Campbell’s expert admitted that the lack of a supersedeas bond was irrelevant, since the judgment was never executed. Justinian’s claim that Campbell was “deprived of the ability to appeal the judgment” is completely invented, since Campbell did appeal the judgment.

2) State Farm had a legal right to refuse to pay the full judgment, as it exceeded policy limits, but did pay it in full after the appeal failed. It was Campbell’s attorney, not State Farm’s, who told Campbell to sell his house. The judgment was never executed against Campbell, so he had no need to sell his house to pay for the excess judgment.

3) The State Farm employee who had falsified the file was fired by State Farm when State Farm learned of the misconduct; the employee, Ray Summers, sued State Farm for wrongful discharge and lost. Nevertheless, he told the same false story to the Campbell jury on behalf of Campbell, and Campbell benefited from the testimony from the person he claims acted fraudulently, even though that testimony was the same claim that State Farm had previously successfully defeated in the wrongful discharge case.

4) There was no evidence that any of State Farm’s conduct in Campbell’s case was part of any nationwide scheme; the “scheme” in question, as I document in my post, consisted of lawful conduct.

5) SCOTUS only took the question on the size of the punitives award; the question of liability was not briefed or argued, and SCOTUS was not permitted to redecide facts, despite the manifest unfairness of the trial below.