Lead Opinion
delivered
There are three questions of maritime law before us: whether a shipowner may be liable for punitive damages without acquiescence in the actions causing harm, whether punitive damages have been barred implicitly by federal statutory law making no provision for them, and whether the award of $2.5 billion in this case is greater than maritime law should allow in the circumstances. We are equally divided on the
I
On March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez grounded on Bligh Reef off the Alaskan coast, fracturing its hull and spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. The
The tanker was over 900 feet long and was used by Exxon to carry crude oil from the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in Valdez, Alaska, to the lower 48 States. On the night of the spill it was carrying 53 million gallons of crude oil, or over a million barrels. Its captain was one Joseph Hazel-wood, who had completed a 28-day alcohol treatment program while employed by Exxon, as his superiors knew, but dropped out of a prescribed followup program and stopped going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. According to the District Court, “[t]here was evidence presented to the jury that after Hazelwood was released from [residential treatment], he drank in bars, parking lots, apartments, airports, airplanes, restaurants, hotels, at various ports, and abоard Exxon tankers.” In re Exxon Valdez, No. A89-0095-CV, Order No. 265 (D. Alaska, Jan. 27, 1995), p. 5, App. F to Pet. for Cert. 255a-256a (hereinafter Order 265). The jury also heard contested testimony that Hazelwood drank with Exxon officials and that members of the Exxon management knew of his relapse. See ibid. Although Exxon had a clear policy prohibiting employees from serving onboard within four hours of consuming alcohol, see In re Exxon Valdez,
The ship sailed at 9:12 p.m. on March 23, 1989, guided by a state-licensed pilot for the first leg out, through the Valdez Narrows. At 11:20 p.m., Hazelwood took active control and, owing to poor conditions in the outbound shipping lane, radioed the Coast Guard for permission to move east across the inbound lane to a less icy path. Under the conditions, this was a standard move, which the last outbound tanker had also taken, and the Coast Guard cleared the Valdez to cross the inbound lane. The tanker accordingly steered east toward clearer waters, but the move put it in the path of an underwater reef off Bligh Island, thus requiring a turn back west into the shipping lane around Busby Light, north of the reef.
Two minutes before the required turn, however, Hazel-wood left the bridge and went down to his cabin in order, he said, to do paperwork. This decision was inexplicable. There was expert testimony that, even if their presence is not strictly necessary, captains simply do not quit the bridge during maneuvers like this, and no paperwork could have justified it. And in fact the evidence was that Hazelwood’s presence was required, both because there should have been two officers on the bridge at all times and his departure left only оne, and because he was the only person on the entire ship licensed to navigate this part of Prince William Sound. To make matters worse, before going below Hazelwood put the tanker on autopilot, speeding it up, making the turn trickier, and any mistake harder to correct.
As Hazelwood left, he instructed the remaining officer, third mate Joseph Cousins, to move the tanker back into the shipping lane once it came abeam of Busby Light. Cousins, unlicensed to navigate in those waters, was left alone with helmsman Robert Kagan, a nonofficer. For reasons that remain a mystery, they failed to make the turn at Busby Light, and a later emergency maneuver attempted by Cousins came too late. The tanker ran aground
After Hazelwood returned to the bridge and reported the grounding to the Coast Guard, he tried but failed to rock the Valdez off the reef, a maneuver which could have spilled more oil and caused the ship to founder.
In the aftermath of the disaster, Exxon spent around $2.1 billion in cleanup efforts. The United States charged the company with criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, 33 U. S. C. §§ 1311(a) and 1319(c)(1); the Refuse Act of 1899, 33 U. S. C. §§ 407 and 411; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, 16 U. S. C. §§ 703 and 707(a); the Ports and Waterways Safety Act, 33 U. S. C. § 1232(b)(1); and the Dangerous Cargo Act, 46 U. S. C. § 3718(b). Exxon pleaded guilty to violations of the Clean Water Act, the Refuse Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and agreed to pay a $150 million fine, later reduced to $25 million plus restitution of $100 million. A civil aсtion by the United States and the State of Alaska for environmental harms ended with a consent decree for Exxon to pay at least $900 million toward restoring natural resources, and it paid another $303 million in voluntary settlements with fishermen, property owners, and other private parties.
B
The remaining civil cases were consolidated into this one against Exxon, Hazelwood, and others. The District Court for the District of Alaska divided the plaintiffs seeking compensatory damages into three classes: commercial fishermen, Native Alaskans, and landowners. At Exxon’s behest, the court also certified a mandatory class of all plaintiffs seeking punitive damages, whose number topped 32,000. Respondents here, to whom we will refer as Baker for convenience, are members of that class.
For the purposes of the case, Exxon stipulated to its negligence in the Valdez disaster and its ensuing liability for compensatory damages. The court designed the trial accordingly: Phase I considered Exxon and Hazelwood’s recklessness and thus their potential for punitive liability; Phase II set compensatory damages for commercial fishermen and Native Alaskans; and Phase III determined the amount of punitive damages for which Hazelwood and Exxon were each liable. (A contemplated Phase IV, setting compensation for still other plaintiffs, was obviated by settlement.)
In Phase I, the jury heard extensive testimony about Hazelwood’s alcoholism and his conduct on the night of the spill, as
“[a] corporation is responsible for the reckless acts of those employees who are employed in a managerial capacity while acting in the scope of their employment. The reckless act or omission of a managerial officer or employee of a cоrporation, in the course and scope of the performance of his duties, is held in law to be the reckless act or omission of the corporation.” App. K to Pet. for Cert. 301a.
The court went on that “[a]n employee of a corporation is employed in a managerial capacity if the employee supervises other employees and has responsibility for, and authority over, a particular aspect of the corporation’s business.” Ibid. Exxon did not dispute that Hazelwood was a managerial employee under this definition, see App. G, id., at 264a, n. 8, and the jury found both Hazelwood and Exxon reckless and thus potentially liable for punitive damages, App. L, id., at 303a.
In Phase II, the jury awarded $287 million in compensatory damages to the commercial fishermen. After the court deducted released claims, settlements, and other payments, the balance outstanding was $19,590,257. Meanwhile, most of the Native Alaskan class had settled their compensatory claims for $20 million, and those who opted out of that settlement ultimately settled for a total of around $2.6 million.
In Phase III, the jury heard about Exxon’s management’s acts and omissions arguably relevant to the spill. See App. 1291-1320, 1353-1367. At the close of evidence, the court instructed the jurors on the purposes of punitive damages, emphasizing that they were designed not to provide compensatory relief but to punish and deter the defendants. See App. to Brief in Opposition 12a-14a. The court charged the jury to consider the reprehensibility of the defendants’ conduct, their financial condition, the magnitude of the harm, and any mitigating facts. Id., at 15a. The jury awarded $5,000 in punitive damages against Hazelwood and $5 billion against Exxon.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the Phase I jury instruction on corporate liability for acts of managerial agents under Circuit precedent. See In re Exxon Valdez,
We granted certiorari to consider whether maritime law allows corporate liability for punitive damages on the basis of the acts of managerial agents, whether the Clean Water Act (CWA), 86 Stat. 816, 33 U. S. C. § 1251 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. V), forecloses the award of punitive damages in maritime spill cases, and whether the punitive damages awarded against Exxon in this case were excessive as a matter of maritime common law.
II
On the first question, Exxon says that it was error to instruct the jury that a corporation “is responsible for the reckless acts of. . . employees ... in a managerial capacity while acting in the scope of their employment.”
“if this were a suit against the original wrong-doers, it might be proper to . . . visit upon them in the shape of exemplary damages, the proper punishment which belongs to such lawless misconduct. But it is to be considered, that this is a suit against the owners of the privateer, upon whom the law has, from motives of policy, devolved a responsibility for the conduct of the officers and crew employed by them, and yet, from the nature of the service, they can scarcely ever be able to secure to themselves an adequate indemnity in cases of loss. They are innocent of the demerit of this transaction, having neither directed it, nor countenanced it, nor participated in it in the slightest degree. Under such circumstances, we are of opinion, that they are bound to repair all the real injuries and personal wrongs sustained by the libellants, but they are not bound to the extent of vindictive damages.” The Amiable Nancy, supra, at 558-559 (emphasis in original).
Exxon takes this statement as a rule barring punitive liability against shipowners for actions by underlings not “directed,” “countenanced,” or “participated in” by the owners.
Exxon further claims that the Court confirmed this rule in Lake Shore, supra, a railway case in which the Court relied on The Amiable Nancy to announce, as a matter of pre-Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins,
Baker supports the Ninth Circuit in upholding the instruction, as it did on the authority of Protectus Alpha Nav. Co.,
The Court is equally divided on this question, and “[i]f the judges are divided, the reversal cannot be had, for no order can be made.” Durant v. Essex Co.,
Ill
Exxon next says that, whatever the availability of maritime punitive damages at common law, the CWA preempts them. Baker responds with both procedural and merits arguments, and although we do not dispose of the issue on procedure, a short foray into its history is worthwhile as a cautionary tale.
At the pretrial stage, the District Court controlled a flood of motions by an order staying them for any purpose except discovery. The court ultimately adopted a case-management plan allowing receipt of seven specific summary judgment motions already scheduled, and requiring a party with additional motions to obtain the court’s leave. One of the motions scheduled sought summary judgment for Exxon on the ground that the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, 87 Stat. 584, 43 U. S. C. §§ 1651-1656, displaced maritime common law and foreclosed the availability
After the jury returned the Phase III punitive-damages verdict on September 16,1994, the parties stipulated that all post-trial Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 50 and 59 motions would be filed by September 30, and the court so ordered. App. 1410-1411. Exxon filed 11 of them, including several seeking a new trial or judgment as a matter of law on one ground or another going to the punitive-damages award, all of which were denied along with the rest. On October 23, 1995, almost 13 months after the stipulated motions deadline, Exxon moved for the District Court to suspend the motions stay, App. to Brief in Opposition 28a-29a, to allow it to file a “Motion and Renewed Motion ... for Judgment on Punitive Damages Clаims” under Rules 49(a) and 58(2) and, “to the extent they may be applicable, pursuant to Rules 50(b), 56(b), 56(d), 59(a), and 59(e),”
Exxon renewed the CWA preemption argument before the Ninth Circuit. The Court of Appeals recognized that Exxon had raised the CWA argument for the first time 13 months after the Phase III verdict, but decided that the claim “should not be treated as waived,” because Exxon had “consistently argued statutory preemption” throughout the litigation, and the question was of “massive . . . significance” given the “ambiguous circumstances” of the case.
Although we agree with the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion, its reasons for reaching it do not hold up. First, the reason the court thought that the CWA issue was not in fact waived was that Exxon had alleged other statutory grounds for preemption from the outset of the trial. But that is not enough. It is true that “[o]nce a federal claim is properly presented,
That said, the motion still addressed the Circuit’s discretion, to which the “massive” significance of the question and the “ambiguous circumstances” of the case were said to be relevant.
As to the merits, we agree with the Ninth Circuit that Exxon’s late-raised CWA claim should fail. There are two ways to construe Exxon’s argument that the CWA’s penalties for water pollution, see 33 U. S. C. § 1321 (2000 ed. and Supp. V), preempt the common law punitive-damages remedies at issue here. The company could be saying that any tort action predicated on an oil spill is preempted unless § 1321 expressly preserves it. Section 1321(b) (2000 ed.) protects “the navigable waters of the United States, adjoining shorelines,. . . [and] natural resources” of the United States, subject to a saving clause reserving “obligations . . . under any provision of law for damages to any publicly owned or privately owned property resulting from a discharge of any oil,” § 1321(o). Exxon could be arguing
Perhaps on account of its overbreadth, Exxon disclaims taking this position, admitting that the CWA does not displace compensatory remedies for consequences of water pollution, even those for economic harms. See, e. g., Reply Brief for Petitioners 15-16. This concession, however, leaves Exxon with the equally untenable claim that the CWA somehow preempts punitive damages, but not compensatory damages, for economic loss. But nothing in the statutory text points to fragmenting the recovery scheme this way, and we have rejected similar attempts to sever remedies from their causes of action. See Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp.,
IV
Finally, Exxon raises an issue of first impression about punitive damages in maritime law, which falls within a federal court’s jurisdiction to decide in the manner of a common law court, subject to the authority of Congress to legislate otherwise if it disagrees with the judicial result. See U. S. Const., Art. Ill, § 2, cl. 1; see, e. g., Edmonds v. Compagnie Generate Transatlantique,
A
The modern Anglo-American doctrine of punitive damages dates back at least to 1763, when a pair of decisions by the Court of Common Pleas recognized the availability of damages “for more than the injury received.” Wilkes v. Wood, Lofft 1, 18, 98 Eng. Rep. 489, 498 (1763) (Lord Chief Justice Pratt). In Wilkes v. Wood, one of the foundations of the Fourth Amendment, exemplary damages awarded against the Secretary of State, responsible for an unlawful search of John Wilkes’s papers, were a spectacular £4,000. See generally Boyd v. United States,
Awarding damages beyond the compensatory was not, however, a wholly novel idea even then, legal codes from ancient times through the Middle Ages having called for multiple damages for certain especially harmful acts. See, e. g., Code of Hammurabi § 8, p. 13 (R. Harper ed. 1904) (tenfold penalty for stealing the goat of a freed man); Statute of Gloucester, 1278, 6 Edw. I, ch. 5, 1 Stat. at Large 66 (treble damages for waste). But punitive damages were a common law innovation untethered to strict numerical multipliers, and the doctrine promptly crossed the Atlantic, see, e.g., Genay v. Norris, 1 S. C. L. 6, 7 (1784); Coryell v. Colbaugh, 1 N. J. L. 77 (1791), to become widely accepted in American courts by the middle of the 19th century, see, e. g., Day v. Woodworth,
B
Early common law cases offered various rationales for punitive-damages awards, which were then generally dubbed “exemplary,” implying that these verdicts were justified as punishment for extraordinary wrongdoing, as in Wilkes’s case. Sometimes, though, the extraordinary element emphasized was the damages award itself, the punishment being “for example’s sake,” Tullidge v. Wade, 3 Wils. 18, 19, 95 Eng. Rep. 909 (K. B. 1769) (Lord Chief Justice Wilmot), “to deter from any such proceeding for the future,” Wilkes, supra, at 19, 98 Eng. Rep., at 498-499. See also Coryell, supra, at 77 (instructing the jury “to give damages for example’s sake, to prevent such offences in [the] future”).
A third historical justification, which showed up in some of the early cases, has been noted by recent commentators, and that was the need “to compensate for intangible injuries, compensation which was not otherwise available under the narrow conception of compensatory damages prevalent at the time.”
Regardless of the alternative rationales over the years, the consensus today is that punitives are aimed not at compensation but principally at retribution and deterring harmful conduct.
Under the umbrellas of punishment and its aim of deterrence, degrees of relative blameworthiness are apparent. Reckless conduct is not intentional or malicious, nor is it necessarily callous toward the risk of harming others, as opposed to unheedful of it. See, e.g., 2 Restatement
. Regardless of culpability, however, heavier punitive awards have been thought to be justifiable when wrongdoing is hard to detect (increasing chances of getting away with it), see, e. g., BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore,
C
State regulation of punitive damages varies. A few States award them rarely, or not at all. Nebraska bars punitive damages entirely, on state constitutional grounds. See, e. g., Distinctive Printing & Packaging Co. v. Cox,
As for procedure, in most American jurisdictions the amount of the punitive award is generally determined by a jury in the first instance, and that “determination is then reviewed by trial and appellate courts to ensure that it is reasonable.” Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip,
Despite these limitations, punitive damages overall are higher and more frequent in the United States than they are anywhere else. See, e. g., Gotanda, Punitive Damages: A Comparative Analysis, 42 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 391, 421 (2004); 2 Schlueter § 22.0. In England and Wales, punitive, or exemplary, damages are available only for oppressive, arbitrary, or unconstitutional action by government servants; injuries designed by the defendant to yield a larger profit than the likely cost of compensatory damages; and conduct for which punitive damages are expressly authorized by statute. Rookes v. Barnard, [1964] 1 All E. R. 367, 410-411 (H. L.). Even in the circumstances where punitive damages are allowed, they are subject to strict, judicially imposed guidelines. The Court of Appeal in Thompson v. Commissioner of Police of Metropolis, [1998] Q. B. 498, 518, said that a ratio of more than three times-the amount of compensatory damages will rarely be appropriate; awards of less than £5,000 are likely unnecessary; awards of £25,000 should be exceptional; and £50,000 should be considered the top.
For further contrast with American practice, Canada and Australia allow exemplary damages for outrageous conduct, but awards are considered extraordinary and rarely issue. See 2 Schlueter §§ 22.1(B), (D). Noncompensatory damages are not part of the civil-сode tradition and thus unavailable in such countries as France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. See id., §§ 22.2(A)-(C), (E). And some legal systems not only decline to recognize punitive damages themselves but refuse to enforce foreign punitive judgments as contrary to public policy. See,
D
American punitive damages have been the target of audible criticism in recent decades, see, e. g., Note, Developments, The Paths of Civil Litigation, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 1783, 1784-1788 (2000) (surveying criticism), but the most recent studies tend to undercut much of it, see id., at 1787-1788. A survey of the literature reveals that discretion to award punitive damages has not mass-produced runaway awards, and although some studies show the dollar amounts of punitive-damages awards growing over time, even in real terms,
The real problem, it seems, is the stark unpredictability of punitive awards. Courts of law are concerned with fairness as consistency, and evidence that the median ratio of punitive to compensatory awards falls within a reasonable zone, or that punitive awards are infrequent, fails to tell us whether the spread between high and low individual awards is acceptable. The availablе data suggest it is not. A recent comprehensive study of punitive damages awarded by juries in state civil trials found a median ratio of punitive to compensatory awards of just 0.62:1, but a mean ratio of 2.90:1 and a standard deviation of 13.81. Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages 269.
Starting with the premise of a punitive-damages regime, these ranges of variation might be acceptable or even desirable if they resulted from judges’ and juries’ refining their judgments to reach a generally accepted optimal level of penalty and deterrence in cases involving a wide range of circumstances, while producing fairly consistent results in cases with similar facts. Cf. TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp.,
E
The Court’s response to outlier punitive-damages awards has thus far been confined by claims at the constitutional level, and our cases have announced due process standards that every award must pass. See, e.g., State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell,
Today’s enquiry differs from due process review because the case arises under federal maritime jurisdiction, and we are reviewing a jury award for conformity with maritime law, rather than the outer limit allowed by due process; we are examining the verdict in the exercise of federal maritime common law authority, which precedes and should obviate any application of the constitutional standard. Our due process cases, on the contrary, have all involved awards subject in the first instance to state law. See, e. g., id., at 414 (fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress under Utah law); Gore, supra, at 563, and n. 3 (fraud under Alabama law); TXO, supra, at 452 (plurality opinion) (slander of title under West Virginia law); Haslip,
Our review of punitive damages today, then, considers not their interseсtion with the Constitution, but the desirability of regulating them as a common law
F
1
With that aim ourselves, we have three basic approaches to consider, one verbal and two quantitative. As mentioned before, a number of state courts have settled on criteria for judicial review of punitive-damages awards that go well beyond traditional “shock the conscience” or “passion and prejudice” tests. Maryland, for example, has set forth a nonexclusive list of nine review factors under state common law that include “degree of heinousness,” “the deterrence value of [the award],” and “[w]hether [the punitive award] bears a reasonable relatiоnship to the compensatory damages awarded.” Bowden v. Caldor, Inc.,
These judicial review criteria are brought to bear after juries render verdicts under instructions offering, at best, guidance no more specific for reaching an appropriate penalty. In Maryland, for example, which allows punitive damages for intentional torts and conduct characterized by “actual malice,” U. S. Gypsum Co. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore,
“[a]n award for punitive damages should be:
“(1) In an amount that will deter the defendant and others from similar conduct.
“(2) Proportionate to the wrongfulness of the defendant’s conduct and the defendant’s ability to pay.
“(3) But not designed to bankrupt or financially destroy a defendant.” Md. Pattern Jury Instr., Civil, No. 10:13 (4th ed. 2007).
In Alabama, juries are instructed to fix an amount after considering “the character
These examples leave us skeptical that verbal formulations, superimposed on general jury instructions, are the best insurance against unpredictable outliers. Instructions can go just so far in promoting systemic consistency when awards are not tied to specifically proven items of damage (the cost of medical treatment, say), and although judges in the States that take this approach may well produce just results by dint of valiant effort, our experience with attempts to produce consistency in the analogous business of criminal sentencing leaves us doubtful that anything but a quantified approach will work. A glance at the experience there will explain our skepticism.
The points of similarity are obvious. “[Pjunitive damages advance the interests of punishment and deterrencе, which are also among the interests advanced by the criminal law.” Browning-Ferris Industries, supra, at 275.
It is instructive, then, that in the last quarter century federal sentencing rejected an “indeterminate” system, with relatively unguided discretion to sentence within a wide range, under which “similarly situated offenders were sentenced [to], and did actually serve, widely disparate sentences.”
The importance of this for us is that in the old federal sentencing system of general standards the cohort of even the most seasoned judicial penalty-givers defied consistency. Judges and defendants alike were “[l]eft at large, wandering in deserts of uncharted discretion,” M. Frankel, Criminal Sentences: Law Without Order 7-8 (1973), which is very much the position of those imposing punitive damages today, be they judges or juries, except that they lack even a statutory maximum; their only restraint beyond a core sense of fairness is the due process limit. This federal criminal-law development, with its many state parallels, strongly suggests
2
This is why our better judgment is that eliminating unpredictable outlying punitive awards by more rigorous standards than the constitutional limit will probably have to take the form adopted in those States that have looked to the criminal-law pattern of quantified limits. One option would be to follow the States that set a hard dollar cap on punitive damages, see supra, at 495-496, a course that arguably would come closest to the criminal law, rather like setting a maximum term of years. The trouble is, though, that there is no “standard” tort or contract injury, making it difficult to settle upon a particular dollar figure as appropriate across the board. And of course a judicial selection of a dollar cap would carry a serious drawback; a legislature can pick a figure, index it for inflation, and revisit its provision whenever there seems to be a need for further tinkering, but a court cannot say when an issue will show up on the docket again. See, e. g., Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. v. Pfeifer,
The more promising alternative is to leave the effects of inflation to the jury or judge who assesses the value of actual loss, by pegging punitive to compensatory damages using a ratio or maximum multiple. See, e. g., 2 ALI Enterprise Responsibility for Personal Injury: Reporters’ Study 258 (1991) (hereinafter ALI Reporters’ Study) (“[T]he compensatory award in a successful case should be the starting point in calculating the punitive award”); ABA, Report of Special Comm, on Punitive Damages, Section of Litigation, Punitive Damages: A Constructive Examination 64-66 (1986) (recommending a presumptive punitive-to-compensatory damages ratio). As the earlier canvass of state experience showed, this is the model many States have adopted, see supra, at 496, and n. 12, and Congress has passed analogous legislation from time to time, as for example in providing treble damages in antitrust, racketeering, patent, and trademark actions, see 15 U. S. C. §§ 15, 1117 (2000 ed. and Supp. V); 18 U. S. C. § 1964(c); 35 U. S. C. § 284.
Still, some will murmur that this smacks too much of policy and too little of principle. Cf. Moviecolor Ltd. v. Eastman Kodak Co.,
History certainly is no support for the notion that judges cannot use numbers. The 21-year period in the rule against perpetuities was a judicial innovation, see, e. g., Cadell v. Palmer, 1 Clark & Finnelly 372, 6 Eng. Rep. 956, 963 (H. L. 1833), and so were exact limitations periods for civil actions, sometimes borrowing from statutes, see C. Preston & G. Newsom, Limitation of Actions 241-242 (2d ed. 1943), but often without any statutory account to draw on, see, e. g., 1 H. Wood, Limitation of Actions § 1, p. 4 (4th D. Moore ed. 1916). For more examples, see 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 451 (1765) (listing other common law age cutoffs with no apparent statutory basis). And of course, adopting an admiralty-law ratio is no less judicial than picking one as an outer limit of constitutionality for punitive awards. See State Farm, supra, at 425.
Although the
For somewhat different reasons, the pertinence of the 2:1 ratio adopted by treble-damages statutes (offering compensatory damages plus a bounty of double that amount) is open to question. Federal treble-damages statutes govern areas far afield from maritime concerns (not to mention each other);
3
There is better evidence of an accepted limit of reasonable civil penalty, however, in several studies mentioned before, showing the median ratio of punitive to compensatory verdicts, reflecting what juries and judges have considered reasonable across many hundreds of punitive awards. See supra, at 497-498, and n. 14. We think it is fair to assume that the greater share of the verdicts studied in these comprehensive collections reflect reasоnable judgments
These studies cover cases of the most as well as the least blameworthy conduct triggering punitive liability, from malice and avarice, down to recklessness, and even gross negligence in some jurisdictions. The data put the median ratio for the entire gamut of circumstances at less than 1:1, see supra, at 497-498, and n. 14, meaning that the compensatory award exceeds the punitive award in most cases. In a well-functioning system, we would expect that awards at the median or lower would roughly express jurors’ sense of reasonable penalties in cases with no earmarks of exceptional blameworthiness within the punishable spectrum (cases like this one, without intentional or malicious conduct, and without behavior driven primarily by desire for gain, for example) and cases (again like this one) without the modest economic harm or odds of detection that have opened the door to higher awards. It also seems fair to suppose that most of the unpredictable outlier cases that call the fairness of the system into question are above the median; in theory a factfinder’s deliberation could go awry to produce a very low ratio, but we have no basis to assume that such a case would be more than a sport, and the cases with serious constitutional issues coming to us have naturally been on the high side, see, e. g., State Farm,
V
Applying this standard to the present case, we take for granted the District Court’s calculation of the total relevant compensatory damages at $507.5 million. See In re Exxon Valdez,
We therefore vacate the judgment and remand the case for the Court of Appeals to remit the punitive-damages award accordingly.
It is so ordered.
Justice Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Notes
As it turned out, the tanker survived the accident and remained in Exxon’s fleet, which it subsequently transferred to a wholly owned subsidiary, SeaRiver Maritime, Inc. The Valdez “was renamed several times, finally to the SeaRiver Mediterranean, [and] carried oil between the Persian Gulf and Japan, Singapore, and Australia for 12 years. ... In 2002, the ship was pulled from service and flaid up’ off a foreign port (just where the owners won’t say) and prepared for retirement, although, according to some reports, the vessel continues in service under a foreign flag.” Exxon Valdez Spill Anniversary Marked, 80 Oil Spill Intelligence Report 2 (Mar. 29, 2007).
The jury was not asked to consider the possibility оf any degree of fault beyond the range of reckless conduct. The record sent up to us shows that some thought was given to a trial plan that would have authorized jury findings as to greater degrees of culpability, see App. 164, but that plan was not adopted, whatever the reason; Baker does not argue this was error.
Baker emphasizes that the Phase I jury instructions also allowed the jury to find Exxon independently reckless, and that the evidence for fixing Exxon’s punitive liability at Phase III revolved around the recklessness of company officials in supervising Hazelwood and enforcing Exxon’s alcohol policies. Thus, Baker argues, it is entirely possible that the jury found Exxon reckless in its own right, and in no way predicated its liability for punitive damages on Exxon’s responsibility for Hazelwood’s conduct. Brief for Respondents 86-39.
The fact remains, however, that the jury was not required to state the basis of Exxon’s recklessness, and the basis for the finding could have been Exxon’s own recklessness or just Hazelwood’s. Any error in instructing on the latter ground cannot be overlooked, because “when it is impossible to know, in view of the general verdict returned whether the jury imposed liability on a permissible or an impermissible ground, the judgment must be reversed and the case remanded.” Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Assn., Inc. v. Bresler,
Compare Protectus Alpha Nav. Co. v. North Pacific Grain Growers, Inc.,
Most of the Rules under which Exxon sought relief are inapplicable on their face. See Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 49(a), 56(b), (d), and 58(2). Rules 50 and 59 are less inapt: they allow, respectively, entry of judgment as a matter of law and alteration or amendment of the judgment. (At oral argument, counsel for Exxon ultimately characterized the motion as one under Rule 50. Tr. of Oral Arg. 25.)
But to say that Rules 50 and 59 are less inapt than the other Rules is a long way from saying they are apt. A motion under Rule 50(b) is not allowed unless the movant sought relief on similar grounds under Rule 50(a) before the case was submitted to the jury. See Rule 50(b); see also, e. g., Zachar v. Lee,
We do have to say, though, that the Court of Appeals gave short shrift to the District Court’s commendable management of this gargantuan litigation, and if the case turned on the propriety of the Circuit’s decision to reach the preemption issue we would take up the claim that it exceeded its discretion. Instead, we will only say that to the extent the Ninth Circuit implied that the unusual circumstances of this case called for an exception to regular practice, we think the record points the other way.
Of course the Court of Appeals was correct that the case was complex and significant, so much so, in fact, that the District Court was fairly required to divide it into four phases, to oversee a punitive-damages class of 32,000 people, and to manage a motions industry that threatened to halt progress completely. But the complexity of a case does not eliminate the value of waiver and forfeiture rules, which ensure that parties can determine when an issue is out of the case, and that litigation remains, to the extent possible, an orderly progression. “The reason for the rules is not that litigation is a game, like golf, with arbitrary rules to test the skill of the players. Rather, litigation is a “winnowing process,’ and the procedures for preserving or waiving issues are part of the machinery by which courts narrow what remains to be decided.” Poliquin v. Garden Way, Inc.,
In this respect, this case differs from two invoked by Exxon, Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn.,
Indeed, at least one 19th-century treatise writer asserted that there was “no doctrine of authentically ‘punitive’ damages” and that “judgments that ostensibly included punitive damages [were] in reality no more than full compensation.” Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip,
See, e. g., Moskovitz v. Mount Sinai Medical Center,
These standards are from the torts context; different standards apply to other causes of action.
A like procedure was followed in this case, without objection.
See, e. g., Mo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 510.265(1) (Vernon Supp. 2008) (greater of 5:1 or $500,000 in most cases); Ala. Code §§ 6-11-21(a), (d) (2005) (greater of 3:1 or $1.5 million in most personal injury suits, and 3:1 or $500,000 in most other actions); N. D. Cent. Code Ann. § 32-03.2-11(4) (Supp. 2007) (greater of 2:1 or $250,000); Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-21-102(1)(a) (2007) (1:1).
Oklahoma has a graduated scheme, with the limit on the punitive award turning on the nature of the defendant’s conduct. See Okla. Stat., Tit. 23, § 9.1(B) (West 2001) (greater of 1:1 or $100,000 in cases involving “reckless disregard”); § 9.1(C) (greater of 2:1, $500,000, or the financial benefit derived by the defendant, in eases of intentional and malicious conduct); § 9.1(D) (no limit where the conduct is intentional, malicious, and life threatening).
See, e. g., RAND Institute for Civil Justice, D. Hensler & E. Moller, Trends in Punitive Damages, table 2 (Mar. 1995) (finding an increase in median awards between the early 1980s and the early 1990s in San Francisco and Cook Counties); Moller, Pace, & Carroll, Punitive Damages in Financial Injury Jury Verdicts, 28 J. Legal Studies 283, 307 (1999) (hereinafter Financial Injury Jury Verdicts) (studying jury verdicts in “Financial Injury” cases in six States and Cook County, Illinois, and finding a marked increase in the median award between the late 1980s and the early 1990s); RAND Institute for Civil Justice, M. Peterson, S. Sarma, & M. Shanley, Punitive Damages: Empirical Findings 15 (1987) (hereinafter Punitive Damages: Empirical Findings) (finding that the median punitive award increased nearly 4 times in San Francisco County between the early 1960s and the early 1980s, and 43 times in Cook County over the same period). But see T. Eisenberg et al., Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages: Empirical Analyses Using the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts 1992, 1996, and 2001 Data, 3 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 263, 278 (2006) (hereinafter Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages) (analyzing Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 1992, 1996, and 2001, and concluding that “[n]o statistically significant variation exists in the inflation-adjusted punitive award level over the three time periods”); Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, T. Cohen, Punitive Damage Awards in Large Counties, 2001, p. 8 (Mar. 2005) (hereinafter Cohen) (compiling data from the Nation’s 75 most populous counties and finding that the median punitive-damages award in civil jury trials decreased between 1992 and 2001).
See, e. g., Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages 269 (reporting median ratios of 0.62:1 in jury trials and 0.66:1 in bench trials using the Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 1992, 1996, and 2001); Vidmar & Rose, Punitive Damages by Juries in Florida, 38 Harv. J. Legis. 487, 492 (2001) (studying civil cases in Florida state courts between 1989 and 1998 and finding a median ratio of 0.67:1). But see Financial Injury Jury Verdicts 307 (finding a median ratio of 1.4:1 in “financial injury” cases in the late 1980s and early 1990s).
See, e. g., Cohen 8 (compiling data from the Nation’s 75 most populous counties, and finding that in jury trials where the plaintiff prevailed, the percentage of cases involving punitive awards was 6.1% in 1992 and 5.6% in 2001); Financial Injury Jury Verdicts 307 (finding a statistically significant decrease in the percentage of verdicts in “financial injury” cases that include a punitive-damages award, from 15.8% in the early 1980s to 12.7% in the early 1990s). But see Punitive Damages: Empirical Findings 9 (finding an increase in the percentage of civil trials resulting in punitive-damages awards in San Francisco and Cook Counties between 1960 and 1984).
One might posit that ill effects of punitive damages are clearest not in actual awards but in the shadow that the punitive regime casts on settlement negotiations and other litigation decisions. See, e. g., Financial Injury Jury Verdicts 287; Polinsky, Are Punitive Damages Really Insignificant, Predictable, and Rational? 26 J. Legal Studies 663, 664-671 (1997). But here again the data have not established a clear correlation. See, e. g., Eaton, Mustard, & Talarieo, The Effects of Seeking Punitive Damages on the Processing of Tort Claims, 34 J. Legal Studies 343, 357, 353-354, 365 (2005) (studying data from six Georgia counties and concluding that “the decision to seek punitive damages has no statistically significant impact” on “whether a case that was disposed was done so by trial or by some other procedure, including settlement,” or “whether a case that was disposed by means other than a trial was more likely to have been settled”); Kritzer & Zemans, The Shadow of Punitives, 1998 Wis. L. Rev. 157, 160 (noting the theory that punitive damages cast a large shadow over settlement negotiations, but finding that “with perhaps one exception, what little systematic evidence we could find does not support the notion” (emphasis deleted)).
This study examined “the most representative sample of state court trials in the United States,” involving “tort, contract, and property cases disposed of by trial in fiscal year 1991-1992 and then calendar years 1996 and 2001. The three separate data sets cover state courts of general jurisdiction in a random sample of 46 of the 75 most populous counties in the United States.” Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages 267. The information was “gathered directly” from state-court clerks’ offices аnd the study did “not rely on litigants or third parties to report.” Ibid.
The Court is aware of a body of literature running parallel to anecdotal reports, examining the predictability of punitive awards by conducting numerous “mock juries,” where different “jurors” are confronted with the same hypothetical case. See, e. g., C. Sunstein, R. Hastie, J. Payne, D. Schkade, & W. Viscusi, Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide (2002); Schkade, Sunstein, & Kahneman, Deliberating About Dollars: The Severity Shift, 100 Colum. L. Rev. 1139 (2000); Hastie, Schkade, & Payne, Juror Judgments in Civil Cases: Effects of Plaintiff’s Requests and Plaintiff’s Identity on Punitive Damage Awards, 23 Law & Hum. Behav. 445 (1999); Sunstein, Kahneman, & Schkade, Assessing Punitive Damages (with Notes on Cognition and Valuation in Law), 107 Yale L. J. 2071 (1998). Because this research was funded in part by Exxon, we decline to rely on it.
This observation is not at odds with the holding in Browning-Ferris, that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment does not apply to punitive damages. See
Nagel, Structuring Sentencing Discretion: The New Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 80 J. Crim. L. & C. 883, 895-899 (1990) (citing studies and congressional hearings).
There are state counterparts of these federal statutes. See, e.g., Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-560 (2007) (cutting or destroying a tree intended for use as a Christmas tree punishable by a payment to the injured party of five times the tree’s value); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 91, § 59A (West 2006) (discharging crude oil into a lake, river, tidal water, or flats subjects a defendant to double damages in tort).
To the extent that Justice Stevens suggests that the very subject of remedies should be treated as cоngressional in light of the number of statutes dealing with remedies, see post, at 516-519 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part), we think modern-day maritime eases are to the contrary and support judicial action to modify a common law landscape largely of our own making. The character of maritime law as a mixture of statutes and judicial standards, “an amalgam of traditional common-law rules, modifications of those rules, and newly created rules,” East River S. S. Corp. v. Transamerica Delaval Inc.,
Indeed, the compensatory remedy sought in this case is itself entirely a judicial creation. The common law traditionally did not compensate purely economic harms, unaccompanied by injury to person or property. Seе K. Abraham, Forms and Functions of Tort Law 247-248 (3d ed. 2007); see, e. g., Robins Dry Dock & Repair Co. v. Dahl,
To be sure, “Congress retains superior authority in these matters,” and “[i]n this era, an admiralty court should look primarily to these legislative enactments for policy guidance.” Miles v. Apex Marine Corp.,
Although the jury heard evidence that Exxon may have felt constrained not to give Hazelwood a shoreside assignment because of a concern that such a course might open it to liabilities in personnel litigation the employee might initiate, see, e. g., App. F to Pet. for Cert. 256a, such a consideration, if indeed it existed, hardly constitutes action taken with a specific purpose to cause harm at the expense of an established duty.
We thus treat this case categorically as one of recklessness, for that was the jury’s finding. But by making a point of its contrast with cases falling within categories of even greater fault we do not mean to suggest that Exxon’s and Hazelwood’s failings were less than reprehensible.
Two of the States with 3:1 ratios do provide for slightly larger awards in actions involving this type of strategic financial wrongdoing, but the exceptions seem to apply to only a subset of those eases. See Alaska Stat. § 09.17.020(g) (2006) (where the defendant’s conduct was motivated by financial gain and the adverse consequences of the conduct were actually known by the defendant or the person responsible for making policy decisions on behalf of the defendant, the normal limit is replaced by the greater of four times the compensatory damages, four times the aggregate financial gain the defendant received as a result of its misconduct, or $7 million); Fla. Stat. §§ 768.73(1)(b), (c) (2007) (normal limit replaced by greater of 4:1 or $2 million where defendant’s wrongful conduct was motivated solely by unreasonable financial gain, and the unreasonably dangerous nature of the conduct, together with the high likelihood of injury, was actually known by the managing agent, director, officer, or other person responsible for making policy decisions on behalf of the defendant).
See, e. g., 15 U. S. C. § 15 (antitrust); 18 U. S. C. § 1964 (racketeering); 35 U. S. C. § 284 (patent); 15 U. S. C. § 1117 (2000 ed. and Supp. V) (trademark); 7 U. S. C. § 2564 (plant variety protections); 12 U. S. C. § 2607 (real estate settlement antikickback provision); 15 U. S. C. § 1693f (consumer credit protection).
See n. 14, supra, for the spread among studies.
The reasons for this conclusion answer Justice Stevens’s suggestion, post, at 521-522, that there is an adequate restraint in appellate abuse-of-discretion review of a trial judge’s own review of a punitive jury award (or of a judge’s own award in nonjury cases). We cannot see much promise of a practical solution to the outlier problem in this possibility. Justice Stevens would find no abuse of discretion in allowing the $2.5 billion balance of the jury’s punitive verdict here, and yet that is about five times the size of the award that jury practice and our judgment would signal as reasonable in a case оf this sort.
Justice Stevens also suggests that maritime tort law needs a quantified limit on punitive awards less than tort law generally because punitives may mitigate maritime law’s less generous scheme of compensatory damages. Post, at 519-520. But the instructions in this case did not allow the jury to set punitives on the basis of any such consideration, see Jury Instruction No. 21, App. to Brief in Opposition 12a (“The purposes for which punitive damages are awarded are: (1) to punish a wrongdoer for extraordinary misconduct; and (2) to warn defendants and others and deter them from doing the same”), and the size of the underlying compensatory damages does not bespeak: economic inadequacy; the case, then, does not support an argument that maritime compensatory awards need supplementing.
And this Court has long held that “[pjunitive damages by definition are not intended to compensate the injured party, but rather to punish the tortfeasor ... and to deter him and others from similar extreme conduct.” Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc.,
The criterion of “substantial” takes into account the role of punitive damages to inducе legal action when pure compensation may not be enough to encourage suit, a concern addressed by the opportunity for a class action when large numbers of potential plaintiffs are involved: in such cases, individual awards are not the touchstone, for it is the class option that facilitates suit, and a class recovery of $500 million is substantial. In this case, then, the constitutional outer limit may well be 1:1.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
While I join Parts I, II, and III of the Court’s opinion, I believe that Congress, rather than this Court, should make the empirical judgments expressed in Part IV. While maritime law “‘is judge-made law to a great extent,’” ante, at 490 (quoting Edmonds v. Compagnie Generate Transatlantique,
Evidence that Congress has affirmatively chosen not to restrict the availability of a particular remedy favors adherence to a policy of judicial restraint in the absence of some special justification. The Court not only fails to offer any such justification, but also ignores the particular features of maritime law that may counsel against imposing the sort of limitation the Court announces today. Applying the traditional abuse-of-discretion standard that is well grounded in the common law, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
I
As we explained in Miles v. Apex Marine Corp.,
For example, the Limitаtion of Shipowners’ Liability Act (Limitation Act), 46 U. S. C. App. § 183,
“The liability of the owner of any vessel, whether American or foreign, for any embezzlement, loss, or destruction by any person of any property, goods, or merchandise shipped or put on board of such vessel, or for any loss, damage, or injury by collision, or for any act, matter, or thing, loss, damage, or forfeiture, done, occasioned, or incurred, without the privity or knowledge of such owner or owners, shall not, except in the cases provided for in subsection (b) of this section, exceed the amount or value of the interest of such owner in such vessel, and her freight then pending.” § 183(a) (emphasis added).
This statute operates to shield from liability shipowners charged with wrongdoing committed without their privity or knowledge; the Limitation Act’s protections thus render large punitive damages awards functionally unavailable in a wide swath of admiralty cases.
The Limitation Act is only one of several statutes that point to this conclusion. In the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act (TAPAA), 87 Stat. 584, 43 U. S. C. § 1651 et seq., Congress altered the liability regime governing certain types of Alaskan oil spills, imposing strict liability but also capping recovery; notably, it did not restrict the availability of punitive damages.
The congressional choice not to limit the availability of punitive damages under maritime law should not be viewed as an invitation to make policy judgments on the basis of evidence in the public domain that Congress is better able to evaluate than is this Court.
II
The Court’s analysis of the empirical data it has assembled is problematic for several reasons. First, I believe that the Court fails to recognize a unique feature of maritime law that may counsel against uncritical reliance on data from land-based tort cases: General maritime law limits the availability of compensatory damages. Some maritime courts bar recovery for negligent infliction of purely emotional distress, see 1 T. Schoenbaum, Admiralty and Maritime Law § 5-15 (4th ed. 2004),
We observed in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc.,
“Until well into the 19th century, punitive damages frequently operated to compensate for intangible injuries, compensation which was not otherwise available under the narrow conception of compensatory damages prevalent at the time. ... As the types of compensatory damages available to plaintiffs have broadened, see, e. g., 1 J. Nates, C. Kimball, D. Axelrod, & R. Goldstein, Damages in Tort Actions § 3.01 [3] [a] (2000) (pain and suffering are generally available as species of compensatory damages), the theory behind punitive damages has shifted toward a more purely punitive . .. understanding.”
Although these sorts of intangible injuries are now largely a species of ordinary compensatory damages under general tort law, it appears that maritime law continues to treat such injuries as less than fully compensable, or not compensable at all. Accordingly, there may be less reason to limit punitive damages in this sphere than there would be in any other.
Second, both caps and ratios of the sort the Court relies upon in its discussion are typically imposed by legislatures, not courts. Although the Court offers a great deal of evidence that States have acted in various ways to limit punitive damages, it is telling that the Court fails to identify a single state court that has imposed a precise ratio, as the Court does today, under its common-law authority. State legislatures have done so, of course; and indeed Congress would encounter no obstacle to doing the same as a matter of federal law. But Congress is far better situated than is this Court to assess the empirical data, and to balance competing policy interests, before making such a choice.
Until Congress orders us to impose a rigid formula to govern the award of punitive damages in maritime cases, I would employ our familiar abuse-of-discretion standard: “If no constitutional issue is raised, the role of the appellate court, at least in the federal system, is merely to review the trial court’s ‘determination under an abuse-of-discretion standard,’ ” Cooper Industries, Inc.,
On an abuse-of-discretion standard, I am persuaded that a reviewing court should not invalidate this award.
I would adhere to the principle that “ It better becomes the humane and liberal character of proceedings in admiralty to give than to withhold the remedy, when not required to withhold it by established and inflexible rules.’” Moragne v. States Marine Lines, Inc.,
* * *
While I do not question that the Court possesses the power to craft the rule it announces today, in my judgment it errs in doing so. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from Parts IV and V of the Court’s opinion, and from its judgment.
The Limitation Act is now codified as amended at 46 U. S. C. § 30505. See Pub. L. 109-304, § 6, 120 Stat. 1513.
See Lewis v. Lewis & Clark Marine, Inc.,
Testimony at an early phase of this protracted litigation confirmed as much. In a hearing before the District Court, one of Exxon’s attorneys explained that his firm advised Exxon in 1989 that Exxon would “ ‘never be able to sustain its burden to show lack of privity or knowledge with the use of аlcohol by Captain Hazelwood.’ ” App. to Brief in Opposition 43a.
Although the issue has not been resolved by this Court, there is evidence that in passing TAPAA, Congress meant to prevent application of the Limitation Act to the trans-Alaskan transportation of oil. The House Conference Report includes the following passage:
“Under the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 (46 U. S. C. 183), the owner of a vessel is entitled to limit his liability for property damage caused by the vessel .... The Conferees concluded that existing maritime law would not provide adequate compensation to all victims ... in the event of the kind of catastrophe which might occur. Consequently, the Conferees established a rule of strict liability for damages from discharges of the oil transported through the trans-Alaska Pipeline up to $100,000,000.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-624, p. 28 (1973).
See also In re Glacier Bay,
Schoenbaum explains that “[n]either the general maritime law nor the Jones Act recognizes a right to recover damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress unaccompanied by physical injury.” Admiralty and Maritime Law § 5-15, at 239. See also Gough v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of Am.,
The latter limitation has its roots in the “dry dock doctrine” of Robins Dry Dock & Repair Co. v. Flint,
See Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC,
The Court points to United States v. Reliable Transfer Co.,
The idiosyncratic posture of this case makes true abuse-of-discretion appellate review something of a counterfactual, since the $5 billion award returned by the jury was, after several intervening steps, ultimately remitted to $2.5 billion by the Ninth Circuit in order to conform with this Court’s due process cases.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Parts I, II, and III of the Court’s opinion, and dissent from Parts IV and V.
This case is unlike the Court’s recent forays into the domain of state tort law under the banner of substantive due process. See State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell,
First, I question whether there is an urgent need in maritime law to break away from the “traditional common-law approach” under which punitive damages are determined by a properly instructed jury, followed by trial-court, and then appellate-court review, “to ensure that [the award] is reasonable.” Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip,
Second, assuming a problem in need of solution, the Court’s lawmaking prompts many questions. The 1:1 ratio is good for this case, the Court believes, because Exxon’s conduct ranked on the low end of the blameworthiness scale: Exxon was not seeking “to augment profit,” nor did it act “with a purpose to injure,” ante, at 494. What ratio will the Court set for defendants who acted maliciously or in pursuit of financial gain? See ante, at 510-511. Should the magnitude of the risk increase the ratio and, if so, by how much? Horrendous as the spill from the Valdez was, millions of gallons more might have spilled as a result of Captain Hazel-wood’s attempt to rock the boat off the reef. See ante, at 478 (opinion of the Court); cf. TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp.,
Heightening my reservations about the 1:1 solution is Justice Stevens’ comment on the venturesome character of the Court’s decision. In the States, he observes, fixed ratios and caps have been adopted by legislatures; this Court has not identified “[any] state court that has imposed a precise ratio” in lieu of looking to the legislature as the appropriate source of a numerical damages limitation. Ante, at 520.
For the reasons stated, I agree with Justice Stevens that the new law made by the Court should have been left to Congress. I would therefore affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Parts I, II, and III of the Court’s opinion. But I disagree with its conclusion in Parts IV and V that the punitive damages award in this case must be reduced.
Like the Court, I believe there is a need, grounded in the rule of law itself, to ensure that punitive damages are awarded according to meaningful standards that will provide notice of how harshly certain acts will be punished and that will help to ensure the uniform treatment of similarly situated persons. See BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore,
In my view, a limited exception to the Court’s 1:1 ratio is warranted here. As the facts set forth in Part I of the Court’s opinion make clear, this was no mine-run case of reckless behavior. The jury could reasonably have believed that Exxon knowingly allowed a relapsed alcoholic repeatedly to pilot a vessel filled with millions of gallons of oil through waters that provided the livelihood for the many plaintiffs in this case. Given that conduct, it was only a matter of time before a crash and spill like this occurred. And as Justice Ginsburg points out, the damage easily could have been much worse. See ante, at 524 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The jury thought that the facts here justified punitive damages of $5 billion. See ante, at 480-481 (opinion of the Court). The District Court agreed. It “engaged in an exacting review” of that award “not once or twice, but three times, with a more penetrating inquiry each time,” the case having twice been remanded for reconsideration in light of Supreme Court due process cases that the District Court had not previously had a chance to consider.
When the Court of Appeals finally took matters into its own hands, it concluded that the facts justified an award of $2.5 billion. See
I can find no reasoned basis to disagree with the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that this is a special case, justifying an exception from strict application of the majority’s numerical rule. The punitive damages award before us already represents a 50% reduction from the amount that the District Court strongly believed was appropriate. I would uphold it.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court, including the portions that refer to constitutional limits that prior opinions have imposed upon punitive damages. While I agree with the argumentation based upon those prior holdings, I continue to believe the holdings were in error. See State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell,