Update on “Blockbuster” Punitive Damages Awards
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Punitive damages in general and “blockbuster” punitive damages in particular continue to exercise unusual influence in tort reform, especially given their relative and absolute scarcity. Empirical scarcity notwithstanding, punitive awards certainly warrant close and rigorous examination. Building on an earlier set of papers, Kip Viscusi (Vanderbilt) and Benjamin McMichael (Vanderbilt Business School) assess “blockbuster” awards on both empirical and normative fronts. Their paper, Taming Blockbuster Punitive Damages Awards, exploits data on the 137 punitive damages awards that were imposed between 1981 and 2013. Of note is a “heat map” (below) which illustrates the distributions of blockbuster awards across states, with darker states having had more such awards.
As the authors note, “unsurprisingly, populous states like Texas and California have had the most blockbuster awards. Interestingly, however, smaller states such as West Virginia, Alabama, and Oregon have had several awards within their borders.”
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