The Supreme Court had an interesting 5-4 split this week overturning a tobacco award appeal, a civil suit from Oregon in which a jury awarded Mr. Williams' widow $800,000 in damages and $79.5 million in 'punitive damages', for 'fraud' in the state at large. I asked Ali Baba, Global Review's legal consultant to explain the decision - and whether it signals the arrival of a 'centrist' coalition on the Court.
The documents surrounding the case are available from Jurist.com, and another in-depth discussion is online at SCOTUS Blog. Ali Baba takes it from here:
The Majority's (Breyer, Roberts, Kennedy, Souter, Alito) opinion represents their common desire to avoid changes to prior Supreme Court decisions. The substantive part of their decision clarifies the prior rule on punitive damages by making explicit the principle that Defendant’s cannot be punished for harms inflicted on persons other than the plaintiff. This seems to be making explicit an unspoken rule that many other states are probably already using. However, as they are trying to avoid changing the standards for punitive damages they attempt to reconcile this with the 'reprehensibility' requirement in prior cases. Determining whether conduct was reprehensible requires considering harm the company was willing to inflict on others and/or the public at large. Thus the majority focuses on how this can be done without jurors deciding to punish Phillip Morris for injuries to every smoker in the US. They fail to come up with a very good solution (else they would have announced it. IMO deference is often another way of saying I don’t want to deal with a tough question) and end up saying "State courts cannot authorize procedures that create an unreasonable and unnecessary risk of any such confusion occurring." This basically tells state courts to come up with their own solution. This issue is very likely to come back to the court in the form of testing whether ensuing state procedures do this adequately.
The reason for the unusual alignment is that these justices, particularly Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy, do not want to rock the boat by dramatic changes in punitive damages standards. If we want to make future predictions, on issues on which the point being contested is how to apply prior SC decision, look for these justices to join in decisions that clarify a very small part of the question being asked and then send it back to federal circuit courts or state supreme courts to avoid changes in established SC jurisprudence.
Ginsburg, Scalia and Thomas focus on the problems in this approach, the main one being that if Supreme Court precedent is confusing then the Supreme Court should make an honest attempt to address the issue, rather than clarify the smallest point possible and hope the problem goes away. The other option is to allow state supreme courts lots of leeway in interpreting confusing Supreme Court precedent. They seem to agree that the latter option is more appropriate in this case and say the Supreme Court should have focused solely on Phillip Morris’s suggested jury instructions and specify whether or not they would accurately implement current law on punitive damages. The fact that they all agree on this point reflects their willingness to broadly clarify and event depart from precedent when it is clear current law is not working. On most issues they will disagree on what the changes should be, but are all willing to make changes.
Stevens states that the majority's "nuance eludes him" in their attempt to describe how jurors can consider harm to third parties when determining reprehensibility but not when determining the amount of damages. I wholeheartedly agree on this point. As soon as jurors hear something, they will rely on it; the only solutions are to not let them consider third parties at all or make that the basis for punitive damages. Stevens argues for making damage to third parties the basis for punitive damages. You can make what you will of that argument. The majority operates under the assumption that this would be inappropriate, but avoid discussing it.
Thomas writes "reiterate his view" which he does quite often. However, not many people (myself and most law professors included) understand his views despite his constant explanations for them. Thomas is by far the most ridiculed SC justice on campus, including among conservatives who like him but have no idea what he's up to).
This ruling clearly shows how the justices view the importance of following precedent and how receptive they are to making changes and clarifying prior Supreme Court rulings. Scalia, Thomas, and Ginsburg are more than happy to do this. Breyer, Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, and Souter are much less comfortable doing the same thing.
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