Supreme Court Curtails Punitive Damages

WASHINGTON, D.C.: The Supreme Court decided Monday on a tight 5-4 vote to curtail punitive damage awards from juries. The court struck down as "grossly excessive" a $2 million award won by an Alabama doctor dissatisfied with his BMW. Althought businesses around the country hailed today's decision as a victory, the ruling did not contain any new legal guidelines for future punitive damages caps. The Court only made clear that the awards in this case were excessive and "transcended the constitutional limit". Among the dissenting judges, Antonin Scalia wrote for himself and Clarence Thomas that the ruling is "an unjustified incursion into the province of state governments." Ruth Bader Ginsburg supported that view in a seperate dissent: "The court, I am convinced, unnecessarily and unwisely ventures into territory within the states' domain, and does so in the face of reform measures recently adopted or currently under consideration in legislative arenas." Congress and the Supreme Court have been grappling with limiting punitive damages on a federal level unsuccessfully for years. Some states already have caps on punitive damages awards and others even disallow them altogether. So far, the Court has not ruled consistently on award limits and Congress has been unable to pass a federal law limiting the amount of punitive damages. Lamia Abu-Haidar