appellants may please the court this case arises from significant with us in the servicing of a single one hundred and thirty five thousand dollar loan the jury awarded five hundred and eighty two thousand dollars in compensatory damages one of the highest single loan awards in auckland history and the district court subsequently subsequently awarded an additional seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in attorney's fees we're not challenging either of those awards on appeal we are however challenging the three million dollars in punitive damages that the jury awarded under the illinois consumer fraud act and we have a sufficiency of the evidence challenge and a due process challenge i'll start with sufficiency if i could illinois law as this court has repeatedly recognized has a quote strong aversion to punitive damages and allows them only an extraordinary and exceptional circumstances and most relevant here it requires two showings st outrageous conduct similar to that usually found crime and nd direct participation by corporate or management level employees start with direct corporate participation because the opposing is only argument there was a claim of waiver which is clearly wrong with this record obviously which the merits of this argument because it was fully presented below but the court was simply incorrect on the merits in upholding the punitive award because there was no evidence at all of management level knowledge of the conduct the main cases a case called progress printing which is six hundred and one ne nd at one thousand and sixty seven dollars and the cases that normally a principals actual knowledge of the transaction is essential and there is no evidence at all of any management level knowledge of the actual conduct here there is an exception and narrow exception one whose ignorance or mistake was the result of gross or culpable negligence in failing to learn the facts will be treated as as though they had known the facts for purposes of ratification but again there is no evidence at all that management's failure to learn the facts of the servicing of this single loan was based on gross negligence culpable negligence there was no evidence about that either way and so did act when st learned that a mistake had been made or st acknowledge it so i believe in august of and thirteen the original mistake what what was referred to in trial as morals mistake was corrected and one thousand six hundred dollars in but there were a lot of subsequent yes and then that well i think it would all basically stem from one mistake which or it seems like from the trial evidence that with respect to the question on whether or not the last two payments had right that they didn't figure that out tell the woman was testifying on the stand that seems to be true but they stopped sending the delinquency notices in february of two thousand and fifteen but of course none of that has anything to do st of all with whether any management level employee had any knowledge or was grossly negligent in failing to learn the facts because there was no evidence offered of for example what kind of loan servicing errors would be elevated to the management level i mean they could have introduced that kind of burden in france be drawn here that wants t lawsuit was filed that certainly somebody in management knew oh yeah but once the lawsuit was filed the delinquency notices stopped and so i think that was the end of the i c if they conduct so so the fact that they may not have figured out that the actual plan payments had been made until trial wouldn't impact that analysis i don't think so because the because the conduct that issue stopped right the conduct that resulted in the punitive damage award now setting aside management  knowledge which we think is enough to to resolve the sufficiency challenge there's also the point of the men's rate requirement which it's a very high standard in illinois it requires evil motive  or conscious disregard of the rights of the plaintiff and in this case the evidence is just that everything was based on good faith reliance on wouldn't we kept records and i would i want the best to argue and i'm sorry to interrupt that to pick up on what you just said the district court in ruling relied on a deliberate and difference there ie in your briefing you seem to resist wanting to to cast things in a deliberate indifference argument are you saying you don't think deliberate indifference satisfies the mens rea a requirement for that three it that it compels except that i'm quoting from the lloyd's case in the illinois supreme court deliberate indifference or reckless in difference in illinois approaches the degree of moral blame attached to intentional harm since the defendant deliberately inflicts a highly on reasonable risk of harm upon others in conscious disregard of it and i would point the court to the crux this case a two thousand and four case from the illinois appellate court which is really on all fours here in that case a bank withdrew incorrectly withdrew one of its customers funds from from its deposit account the customer in fact  overdrew the account with her more than the customer had they didn't notify the customer when the customer found out because she was charged an overdraft fee she went into the bank talked to a manager filed an affidavit explaining that the withdrawal was improper the bank admitted that they never looked into whether the withdrawal with proper or not and didn't return either the deposit or back out the fees the overdraft fees until she sued them and the court had the court held that the  certainly libel for conversion but that it was just not a punitive damages case under illinois law because there was no evidence of evil intent or the or the reckless indifference equivalent  right so so for those two reasons again we think this is not a punitive damages case under illinois law but if you disagree with that certainly we think under the due process analysis the three million dollars award here  substantially reduced and the most obvious error below is the ratio analysis where we go there one more question please on the ratification question should the is there any evidence that your client need any effort to change its procedures that this this kind of mistake wouldn't happen again you mean after the fact after it learned of the problem well after it learned of this particular position with regard to where you think our courts are going to aggregate and so st of all i don't think the court should even reach the question because they waited in their philip reeves they said the court shouldn't resolve it because they think they have two other arguments on which the the district court's judgment should be affirmed but if the court did reach should it seems to me fairly obvious that in a case like this where the jury specifically acts on the one hand find actual damages that result from the one claim that allows for punitive damages and on the other hand find actual damages on the other claims that do not allow for peter to damages when you're trying to figure out in the due process punitive damages analysis what the actual harm is you have to look at the jury's verdict and see what they thought the actual harm from the see if they claim was not for the claims for congress is that if you don't have damages are not allowed so this is the argument page thirteen of your reply brief are you grounding it in the discussion that happened at the verdict conference and or the law as it flows from the different circuit circuits i think it's it's a legal argument that again i don't think they actually dispute that so i don't think the court needs to resolve it in this case it's not it doesn't result from the colloquy between counsel and the district court except in so far as that colloquy just confirms what the verdict form already reflects which is that the jury was specifically going to be asked separately to decide what the compensatory damages are under the c f a and what the company compensatory damages are on their the f t c p a a and and rest but and the breach of contract claim and i think what counsel is saying i think i'll be better able to respond after after he explains the argument but i think that the agreement that he's relying on is that the compensatory debt the two different compensatory damage verdicts will be added together as opposed to the viewing the i c if a verdict as a subset of the general damage them out of course that's true but it supports us because it just further demonstrates that the i c s they damages  separate and apart from the damages from the other counts that's why you can add them together right because there are the jury decided what the actual harm was under the c f a separately from the other counts and in that circumstance at least i don't see any argument for comparing the punitive damage award to a substantial compensatory award that's under statutes where congress has said that no p i think judge that par was with respect misreading the t x zero case because he was relying on the proposition that you could look at the screen court you could look at potential harm and not only actual harm in the ratio analysis but at least in this case also oh i'll reserve after i just finish answering this question with in this case there's no reason to think that the five hundred thousand dollars that were that were  terms i had to go back and correct or so she had trouble doing it with the help and and it was kind of indicative of my client's experience with auckland mr wood and what evidence is there that anyone in management knew now if you look at what's three so are you saying that the best evidence of management knowing would be the consent decrees that were permitted to come in for knowledge well that would be the st trigger of knowledge your honor and if you look at you reading from a consent decree right and then it in then is that awkward did not take adequate steps to implement reforms that it was legally obligated to implement pursuant to the two thousand and eleven agreement so that agreement in two thousand and eleven the original agreement was auckland's management was that they would cease to utilize this technology and they were trying the personnel which they failed to do and at the point time miss sacramento ran into this bus all that had been a standing condition for multiple you standards that were imposed in auckland among others other than the consent crease is there any evidence that was admitted it that the management here knew about your client's issues certainly don't line up lawyers who were making mistakes left and right and serious mistakes for your client if there's evidence of that but is there any evidence that anyone in management knew of the particular mistakes here aside from the consent decrees that put them on notice about their some of their problems if you look at paragraph thirty three of the fact that our side from the record says there weren't very many and in whomever that was it was the person who made the decision about how auckland would respond they specifically refused to raise the bankruptcy discharge flag on the basis that misaka mino had made forty and not forty two plan payments and his there is any evidence in the record as to the person who made that note if that individual was line employee versus management no matter who can do it the issue with that is this the way auckland system works like split that out among several departments but there's an ultimate decision making department that deals with these requests are these written request notices of air or you should call them on huge of yours so that department tells everyone else what their response will be so you can infer that that's management in the sense that they control their response and that choice is the reason that collections continued beyond august of two thousand and thirteen which auckland's corporate representative acknowledged that had that been responded to appropriately at that moment that was at that point about the th chance auckland had to stop this nightmare and at that point they made a deliberate choice that there were forty and not forty two payments and so we will not raise the bankruptcy discharge what and then of course it continues spiral out of control now as you are to your question are no i cannot tell you that that is signed by express manager because it just does not have that but it was testified that that was the part of the company that told everyone else what they would do with respect to that issue so that was the test  often fall like the dickens to keep them out in the local and then they they challenge them post post trial in their motions for a new trial just was a matter of law on the grounds that they were evidence of corporate complicity but challenge to these consent cribs and i think the reason for that very much strategic they do not want a circuit level opinion talking about the contents of these consideration the fact that they are missiles which as you all know the standard of it would be almost impossible for them to overcome so they knew that that was trying to run their head to a brick wall and they didn't want a bad opinion that focused on those consent decrees because it would be damaging to their national litigation so they abandoned the actual challenge but they kept the argument and in my opinion that's improper in the if you say in the lower court that that was evidence of complicity but then you come to the appellate court and you don't continue your challenge to that evidence you can't then say that there is no corporate complicity so at the point time that misaka mino was dealing with this issue you have a corporation that was under core multiple places to do certain things they were not doing and refused to do and so what happened was the jury did hear those things we talked about the new york consent decree and we talked about specifically  not honor their legal obligations under that decree and that there were millions of consumers forced to deal with laughlin because consumers don't get to choose their mortgage servicer their mortgage servicer is imposed upon them by the owners of the debt who continued this unbelievably head of year which is not contested when they admit it isn't even their brut they said they're going to conduct was unacceptable and clearly should not have been done  quite frankly it just it doesn't for me it doesn't pass the logic test how can you not oppose of art itself insufficiency of the evidence but then say that the jury made the same decision that you violated the it made us sep in wrong decision about whether you your conduct was a gracious enough to warrant peter damages you know we always say that we trust juries to follow the instructions are given in a plot a lot of the facts and this jury was an exceptionally well educated jury are our foreman was a civil engineer so this was not a situation where you had people that were just being led around by the whims of the plaintiffs all the next spent three days deliberating so i don't think that this was a product of passion i think it was a product of reason and if you know today the jury clearly had problems with office conduct let's talk about the issue of the aggregation of the ratio sure give us your position on that was so interesting  the damages form and i had a line for compensatory and punitive that was it so they said that because it for requires a finding of economic home we want to learn where the jury has to ride in economic damages and you know judge got to set mediately i think that's proper i think they should do that i don't disagree on it and see the issue with that and they so she looked at down at the bottom and then we had separate ones that bond for punitive if appropriate so as we're talking about what to do with that issue you know judge gospel says mr bone how are we going to treat this so i need to you're saying is we have these three lines together and that's the way the total or he said yes well that was me and him talking at the table because we were colleagues and been working well together so i walked back to the letter and i said based on our conversation what you've indicated you are we're fine with this form and of course i explained the form to the jury and i noted this in the brief i was the only person discussed for us this is how you fill out the for me type whatever you're going to war for compensatory damages and split it up among these lines and you've got to put a number in for economic awarded in the st place that we should reduce the amount of punitive damages to a lower number focusing only on the amount of damages awarded on the verdict form sign it was also incompetent but how do you address the question that only one of the statutes that you want on allows for punitive damages so in determining the appropriateness of defendant has argued that you should only look at that particular statute you can't look at all of them because the awards on the other ones don't allow for punitive damages and so my legal position on that  historic damage in this case even though it was divided among theories of relief is still a single award of compensatory damages and so the conduct is judged awful found was all interrelated in twine in other words we could have gotten the whole five hundred and eighty two thousand dollars had we gone to the jury only only if there was nothing in those damages that were awarded under the bridge contractor or f e c p a arrest but that could not been part of a verdict under it but that's not what this jury inner twan condo and literally we're all speculating about what may have happened just because the structure of the art form but had the verdict form been flipped and it's a count been at the beginning and the other line been below who knows maybe the jury would have written five hundred thousand of the it's a camp the jury was never told that there was a legal significance to that number they were told split up what you're awarding these will be added together now i mean if that argument was there i could've said you have to put the biggest number down here cost is going to be compared to your punitive damages but then that creates separate problems for us practically strong lawyers because now we're trying to educate juries own ratios and got post and that's not their job so it was not his issue though the type of damages does the fact that these are emotional damages versus a machine that had cut off an arm of the company been told six times you got to put a guard on there's not a guard type of damages something that we should consider on that well you know i had made a point here to mention that the state farm case that the supreme court case where they say that emotional stress has a punitive element i made a point to mention that that's kind of a dick to comment and the fact the matter is the jury instructions they're charged to separate compensatory and punitive damages so i can't see how you can say that there's a punitive element to emotional distress whe was substantial credible testimony that this event was devastating to my client her daughter said my mother was absent when she got married when she had a st child she was absent she was gone years of her life taken away it was significant when you broke it down into hours if you put into forty hour work weeks it was the same number of hours that would go into a twenty year work arrears and i think that slap the jury in the face we think about the magnitude of this so when you break that down this was massively damaging to my client change your entire outlook on life in general she testified without contradiction to how severe  does but it flies in the face of what we understand the instructions to be and then one last point which we really didn't get to was the issue of whether the attorney speech could be added to the  time are expended to defend the k that that is a relevant factor in any in the constitution analysis s the post and here are discounted agree fees through the trial were seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars we had more than a management and employees so there's just no evidence on the on that they could have taken depositions as for discovery on it they didn't it's just a failure of proof mr wooden said the sufficiency of the evidence on  for the other damages would be added which is right that's why the damages are five hundred and eighty two dollars not five hundred dollars but the the point is clear that the jury was aspecific only what the damages under the i c if they are they found that there are eighty two thousand dollars mr wood now says that he the of the division of compensatory damages but of course that's a question for the court not the jury the jury would never be told about something like that due process analysis so the jury wasn't told that it could only award puna dance on that count yes  it was told the jury was told that it could only precisely right the jury was told that only the i c s they allowed for punitive damages so if you look at the verdict form which is on i believe to a twenty two or three you know the i see a face last you have direct right so on this attorney's fees point really quickly that wasn't raised below so so it's waived it's incorrect for the reasons we explained under b m w against gore and i think if anything it would go the other way because after all the point of the due process analysis is that you shouldn't have punitive damages higher than necessary to deter and when in the extraordinary case there's the shifting so such that there is beyond compensatory damages you have attorneys fees that are themselves meant to deter a lower punitive damages an amount rather than a higher peanut of amount is what's required and i didn't get to talk about what we think the ratio itself should  not just in state farm many other cases when you did it just two thousand six hundred and twenty seven of the chamber brief made clear that when there is a substantial emotional distress amount the ratio should be lower everything else being equal  because emotional distress damages have a punitive component and finally in the reprehensible lety analysis itself what the court asks a court the supreme court is asking courts to do is look at the spectrum of cases punitive damage is warranted and figure out where on the spectrum the particular case falls and in this case on the spectrum of cases it falls nowhere close to the outer limit there is no physical harm there aren't a lot of victims of the same conduct the evidence in the case was ready that there is no evidence that anything like this had happened to anybody else the case doesn't involve health and safety and so when comparing it to cases like companies selling products to thousands of people that they know are going to cause injury or the bed bug case where the hotel is is renting rooms to thousands of people instead of just bringing in an exterminator this kind of case which we