Punitive Damages Update

In their recent paper, Constitutional Constraints on Punitive Damages: Clarity, Consistency, and the Outlier Dilemma, Laura and William Hines (Kansas and Iowa, respectively) provide a helpful post-State Farm picture of punitive damages activity in state and federal courts from 2003-2013. To this end, the paper looks to data (507 punitive damages cases from state and federal courts) to assess the degree to which punitive damages incorporate past Supreme Court guidance on Due Process Clause implications. What the authors' descriptive analyses imply is that "[their] 507 case sample suggests a high degree of uniformity nationwide in the process by which courts conduct the review of punitive damages awards. Less clear, however, is whether that heightened level of judicial review significantly reduced the inconsistency or unpredictability of punitive damages awards overall."