Even More on Punitive Damages: An Empirical Critique of the Court's Exxon Shipping Decision

It did not take long for the Court's Exxon Shipping decision to stimulate a scholarly response. Professors Joni Hersch (Vanderbilt) and Kip Viscusi (Vanderbilt) provide one critique in their paper, Punitive Damages by Numbers: Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker. In it, the authors argue with "the Court's reliance on the median ratio of punitive to compensatory damages in samples of verdicts to set an upper bound for punitive damages awards. Our critique of the approach draws on the properties of statistical distributions and a new analysis of cases with punitive damages awards. The Court's conclusion that a 1:1 ratio establishes a fair upper bound lacks a sound scientific basis."