In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 19-1569 

MONETTE E. SACCAMENO, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

U.S. BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, as 

trustee for C-BASS MORTGAGE LOAN 

ASSET-BACKED CERTIFICATES, Series 2007 

RP1, and OCWEN LOAN SERVICING, LLC, 

Defendants-Appellants. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 1:15-cv-01164 — Joan B. Gottschall, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 27, 2019 

____________________ 

Before BAUER, BRENNAN, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. 

ST. EVE, Circuit Judge. Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a promise 

to a debtor: if you comply with the bankruptcy plan, then you 

can get a fresh start. That promise went unfulfilled for Monette Saccameno. She had done everything that was required 

of her: she cured the delinquencies in her mortgage and made 
2 No. 19-1569

42 monthly mortgage payments under the court’s watchful 

eye. Near the end of her bankruptcy, she obtained statements 

from her mortgage servicer, Ocwen Loan Servicing, LLC, that 

she was paid up—that she was paid ahead even. The court 

granted her a discharge. 

Ocwen, however, immediately began trying to collect 

money that it was not owed and threatening foreclosure. No 

problem, Saccameno thought, it must be a simple mistake. 

She sent Ocwen all the paperwork it could have needed to fix 

its records. When that did not work, she sent it again. Then 

she sent it a third and fourth time, with a request from an acquaintance, a lawyer, for an explanation why Ocwen thought 

she owed money. Ocwen did not explain. Ocwen did not care. 

Ocwen did not truly grasp how wrong its records were until 

almost four years later, two days into Saccameno’s jury trial 

when its witness was testifying. 

It is little wonder, then, that the jury awarded Saccameno 

substantial damages for the pain, frustration, and emotional 

torment Ocwen put her through. The jury ordered Ocwen to 

pay $500,000 in compensatory damages based on three causes 

of action that could not support punitive damages. A fourth 

claim, under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act (ICFA), 815 ILCS 505/1, did allow punitive 

damages, and for that claim the jury awarded them to the tune 

of $3,000,000, plus compensatory damages of an additional 

$82,000. Ocwen challenged this verdict on a variety of 

grounds, but the district court upheld the verdict in its entirety. On appeal, Ocwen has limited its arguments to the punitive damages award, which it contends was not authorized 

by Illinois law and is so large that it deprives the company of 

property without due process of law. We agree with the 
No. 19-1569 3

district court that the jury was well within its rights to punish 

Ocwen. We must, however, conclude that the amount of the 

award is excessive. We therefore remand to the district court 

to amend the judgment. 

I. Background 

Around 2009, Saccameno fell behind on her $135,000 home 

mortgage and her bank, U.S. Bank National Association 

(nominally a defendant but irrelevant for our purposes), began foreclosure proceedings. To keep her home, she sought 

the protection of the bankruptcy court and, in December 2009, 

began a Chapter 13 plan under which she was required to 

cure her default over 42 months while maintaining her ongoing monthly mortgage payments. See 11 U.S.C. § 1322(b)(5). 

Saccameno first began having problems with Ocwen in 

October 2011, shortly after it acquired her previous servicer. 

Ocwen sent her a loan statement saying, inexplicably, that she 

owed $16,000 immediately. With her attorney’s advice, Saccameno ignored the statement and continued making payments based on her plan. Her statements continued to fluctuate: her February 2013 statement said she owed about $7500, 

her March statement, $9000. A month later, Ocwen now owed 

Saccameno about $1000 in credit, and Ocwen told her she did 

not need to pay again until September. Still, Saccameno continued making payments through June, the last month of her 

plan. At that time the bankruptcy court issued a notice of final 

cure, Fed. R. Bankr. P. 3002.1, informing Ocwen that Saccameno had completed her payments. Ocwen never responded to the notice, and the court entered a discharge order 

on June 29, 2013. Saccameno’s last statement pre-discharge 

showed that the credit in her favor had grown to $2800 and 

she was paying down her loan. 
4 No. 19-1569

Within days, however, an Ocwen employee, whom Ocwen 

refers to only as “Marla,” reviewed the discharge but mistakenly treated it as a dismissal. As far as Ocwen was concerned, 

then, the bankruptcy stay had been lifted and it could immediately start collecting Saccameno’s debts. This might not 

have been a problem—for Saccameno of course did not have 

a debt anymore—but Marla’s mistake was only the tip of the 

iceberg. Apparently, in March, Ocwen had manually set the 

due date for Saccameno’s plan payments to September 2013, 

hence the credit. That manual setting took place in a bankruptcy module that overrode and hid Ocwen’s active foreclosure module, which instead reflected that Saccameno had not 

made a single valid payment in 2013, as each check was being 

placed into a suspense account and not being applied to the 

loan. Marla’s dismissal entry deactivated the bankruptcy 

module and reactivated the foreclosure one. If Marla had 

properly marked Saccameno’s bankruptcy as a discharge, 

then someone in Ocwen’s bankruptcy department would 

have reconciled the plan payments with the suspense accounts before closing both modules. 

Instead, on July 6 and 9, Ocwen sent Saccameno two letters 

saying it had not heard from her since its non-existent recent 

communication about her “severely delinquent mortgage.” 

The letters offered the contact information of governmental 

and non-profit services for people unable to make their home 

mortgage payments. They also warned Saccameno that failure to respond could result in fees from foreclosure, sale of 

the property, and eviction, and that this process could ruin 

her credit, making it hard for her even to find a new rental 

property. Saccameno understandably dubbed these the 

“you’ll never rent in this town again” letters. 
No. 19-1569 5

Before these letters arrived, Saccameno called Ocwen to 

ask about lowering her interest rate. An Ocwen employee said 

she was not eligible because she was several thousand dollars 

in default. Knowing this was a mistake, two weeks out from 

her discharge, Saccameno asked how to correct the records 

and was given a number where she could fax her documents. 

She did so a few days later, and with that paperwork Ocwen 

corrected Marla’s mistake before July was over. 

If only that were the end of this story. With the corrected 

records, Ocwen’s bankruptcy department performed a reconciliation and recognized that Saccameno had made several 

payments in 2013, so her default was nowhere near as large 

as the employee had said. Nevertheless, it somehow determined that she had missed two payments during her bankruptcy, so she was still in default—albeit to a lesser extent—

and the foreclosure module remained open. In August, 

Ocwen sent Saccameno a letter declaring that it had “waived” 

$1600 in fees (that had been discharged) and that it was missing two of her plan payments (which, even if true, would also 

have been discharged under the terms of the plan). Around 

this time Ocwen assigned Saccameno a “relationship manager,” Anthony Gomes, who scheduled a call with Saccameno. He was not familiar with her file or the documents 

she had sent, and asked Saccameno to resend them. She did, 

and they never spoke again. Instead Saccameno would frequently call Ocwen’s customer service line and each time was 

directed to a new, similarly unhelpful person. 

While this was all going on, Saccameno remained optimistic and continued to make her monthly payments. Ocwen had 

accepted her payments for July and August 2013 but began 

rejecting them in September because each payment was not 
6 No. 19-1569

enough to cure her supposed default. After a few months of 

rejection, more letters like those sent in July, and further futile 

phone calls, Saccameno recruited an acquaintance, an attorney named Susan Van Sky, to help. Van Sky wrote to Ocwen, 

explained how Saccameno had made all her payments during 

her bankruptcy, as confirmed by the court, and asked for an 

explanation how, then, Saccameno could be in default. She 

followed up with a phone call and an Ocwen representative 

insisted that the company never rejects payments and requested proof that it had done so. Van Sky followed directions 

and faxed 100 pages of Saccameno’s paperwork to the number Ocwen had provided. Somehow this paperwork was 

routed to the wrong department and the receiving department refused to do anything with it. Van Sky continued to call 

Ocwen, also reaching new people each time. Some asked her 

to fax the same papers again, so she sent them once more. 

Eventually, Ocwen sent Van Sky something back, though 

calling it a response would be generous. The form letter referred to the dates of Saccameno’s bankruptcy but otherwise 

mentioned nothing about her loan and did not answer any of 

Van Sky’s questions. Ocwen had not even updated the form 

with Saccameno’s name. Instead it referred to another mortgagor. Attached was a spreadsheet that supposedly explained 

how Saccameno was behind in her payments; Van Sky, 

though, could not decipher the spreadsheet, and Ocwen did 

not elucidate. Exhausted from the lack of progress, and no 

longer having time to help, Van Sky dropped out and Saccameno hired counsel. 

Ocwen, meanwhile, continued to reject Saccameno’s payments. The erroneous default grew and grew as the underlying foreclosure action remained pending in the Circuit Court 
No. 19-1569 7

of Cook County. Though the Circuit Court had stayed the case 

because of the bankruptcy, Ocwen was internally preparing 

to revive it and seek a judgment of foreclosure. Periodically, 

its experts appraised the property, and agents checked each 

month if Saccameno was still living in the home (and if they 

concluded she was not, they would have placed locks on the 

doors). Ocwen added the costs of these measures to Saccameno’s debt. It also produced affidavits to support a request for judgment of foreclosure, including one prepared as 

early as July 2013, and gave them to its local law firm. That 

firm filed an appearance in the foreclosure proceeding in 2014 

and told Ocwen, in January 2015, that it needed only one more 

document before it could move for judgment. 

Perhaps part of the reason Ocwen never did move for 

judgment was this suit, filed the next month. As relevant to 

this appeal, Saccameno sought damages under four legal theories: breach of contract, for the refused payments; the Fair 

Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), 15 U.S.C. § 1692, for 

the false collection letters; the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), 12 U.S.C. § 2601, for the inadequate responses to Saccameno and Van Sky’s inquiries; and the ICFA. 

The ICFA claim related to Ocwen’s false oral and written 

statements regarding Saccameno’s default and its unfair practices in violation of consent decrees that Ocwen previously 

had entered with various regulatory bodies. These decrees 

addressed, among other things, its inadequate recordkeeping, 

misapplication of payments, and poor customer service. 

Among the steps Ocwen had consented to take was to track 

Chapter 13 plan payments accurately and to reconcile its accounts on discharge or dismissal. 
8 No. 19-1569

Once Ocwen received the complaint, it overrode the foreclosure module again with the bankruptcy module. This had 

two effects. First, just a week after she filed the complaint, 

Ocwen sent Saccameno an offer to refinance her mortgage, 

deigning to grant her the “opportunity” to stay in her home. 

This offer would have lowered her interest rate and her 

monthly payment but increased her principal. Saccameno 

could afford her payments post-bankruptcy, though, and 

wanted to make progress toward owning her home outright. 

Ocwen sent another offer in July 2015, though Saccameno was 

even less pleased with this one. She viewed it as a “life sentence” because, though it would have lowered her interest 

rate, it would have increased her principal, reset her mortgage 

to last another thirty years, and ended with a balloon payment 

of nearly half the principal. Second, Ocwen inexplicably 

started accepting Saccameno’s payments for March and April. 

She stopped sending them, on her attorney’s advice. Little else 

happened regarding the loan, except that Ocwen voluntarily 

dismissed the state-court foreclosure case in March 2016. 

The jury heard all of this at trial—as well as testimony regarding the mental and emotional strain Saccameno went 

through because of Ocwen’s continuous errors. Ocwen had 

promised the jury, in its opening statement, that it would explain why it received only 40 payments during the bankruptcy. It never had the chance, though, as Saccameno’s counsel diligently walked Ocwen’s representative through its own 

records payment by payment. Just before lunch on the second 

day of trial, the representative counted to 42, confirming that 

Saccameno had made each payment. Ocwen never again argued otherwise. It instead focused on Marla’s mistake in July 

of 2013—the marking of dismissal instead of discharge. The 

jury evidently did not buy the story that Saccameno’s years of 
No. 19-1569 9

woeful treatment could be placed on the shoulders of a single, 

essentially anonymous, line employee. Notably, Ocwen did 

not produce Marla—did not even give her a last name. Its corporate representative admitted that it had not investigated 

Marla, had never checked to see if she—or anyone else—had 

done something similar before or since, and did not know 

even if Marla was still employed with the company (though 

the representative suspected not, because her name was not 

in the email directory). 

The jury found in Saccameno’s favor on all counts. By the 

parties’ agreement, the verdict form included a single line for 

compensatory damages under the breach of contract, FDCPA, 

and RESPA claims and the jury wrote $500,000 on that line. 

Because only the ICFA claim could include punitive damages, 

and it requires that one prove economic damages before receiving other damages, see 815 ILCS 505/10a(a), Saccameno 

agreed to place that claim in its own section of the verdict 

form with a line each for economic, non-economic, and punitive damages. The parties further agreed that the ICFA damages would not be treated as a subset of the damages on the 

other three counts. For this claim, the jury awarded $12,000 in 

economic, $70,000 in non-economic, and $3,000,000 in punitive damages, resulting in a total award of $3,582,000. 

Ocwen responded with three post-verdict motions. The 

first, a motion for new trial, objected to the admission of the 

consent decrees. The second, a request for judgment as a matter of law, challenged the sufficiency of the evidence on every 

count other than the FDCPA claim. As relevant here, it argued 

that the award of punitive damages was not supported by sufficient evidence. The third motion, to amend the judgment, 

argued that the punitive damage amount was excessive, in 
10 No. 19-1569

violation of the Due Process Clause. Ocwen primarily sought 

to compare the $3,000,000 award to the $12,000 in economic 

damages the jury found. Saccameno instead urged the district 

court to compare the punitive award to the combined damages on all four counts. 

The district court thoroughly considered and deflected 

Ocwen’s barrage of arguments and upheld the verdict. On the 

punitive damages, the district court concluded that the jury 

reasonably found Ocwen’s employees had been deliberately 

indifferent to the risk that Saccameno would be harmed, and 

Ocwen’s management had notice of—and ratified—its employees conduct. On the constitutional question, the court decided that the proper comparator for the punitive damages 

award was the total amount awarded on all four counts, as 

they involved related conduct. That resulted in a punitive 

damages ratio of roughly 5:1, which the court concluded was 

not unconstitutionally high given the reprehensibility of 

Ocwen’s conduct. 

II. Sufficiency of the Evidence 

We address first Ocwen’s argument that there was insufficient evidence for the jury to award punitive damages at all. 

We review the sufficiency of the evidence de novo and ask 

whether the record, viewed in the light most favorable to the 

prevailing party, can support the jury’s verdict. Parks v. Wells 

Fargo Home Mortg., Inc., 398 F.3d 937, 942 (7th Cir. 2005). 

Under Illinois law, punitive damages may be awarded 

only if “the defendantʹs tortious conduct evinces a high degree of moral culpability, that is, when the tort is ‘committed 

with fraud, actual malice, deliberate violence or oppression, 

or when the defendant acts willfully, or with such gross 
No. 19-1569 11

negligence as to indicate a wanton disregard of the rights of 

others.’” Slovinski v. Elliot, 927 N.E.2d 1221, 1225 (Ill. 2010)

(quoting Kelsay v. Motorola, Inc., 384 N.E.2d 353, 359 (Ill. 

1978)). When the defendant is a corporation, like Ocwen, the 

plaintiff must demonstrate also that the corporation itself was 

complicit in its employees’ tortious acts. See Kemner v. Monsanto Co., 576 N.E.2d 1146, 1156 (Ill. App. Ct. 1991); see also 

Douglass v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 769 F.2d 1128, 1145–46 (7th 

Cir. 1985). Ocwen contends that Saccameno’s case failed in 

both respects. 

The parties first accuse each other of waiving their arguments regarding corporate complicity, but both assertions are 

meritless. Saccameno contends that Ocwen cannot challenge 

the verdict because it did not object to the jury instructions. 

The instructions properly tracked Illinois law and Ocwen’s arguments, so it is permitted to argue that the jury misapplied 

those instructions to the facts. See Jabat, Inc. v. Smith, 201 F.3d 

852, 857 (7th Cir. 2000). Saccameno offers nothing else on this 

issue, so Ocwen responds that she has waived the chance to 

seek affirmance of the district court’s decision. An appellee 

cannot waive an argument as easily as an appellant can, 

though. See Thayer v. Chiczewski, 705 F.3d 237, 247 (7th Cir. 

2012). Even if an appellee forgoes a brief entirely, we may still 

affirm. See Blackwell v. Cole Taylor Bank, 152 F.3d 666, 673 (7th 

Cir. 1998). We are especially unwilling to deem Saccameno’s 

argument waived, as it goes to the validity of the jury’s verdict, to which we are inclined to defer, e.g., Gracia v. SigmaTron 

Intʹl, Inc., 842 F.3d 1010, 1018–19 (7th Cir. 2016). 

On the merits, Ocwen argues that the evidence could support only a finding of negligence, not a “conscious and deliberate disregard” for Saccameno’s rights. Parks, 398 F.3d at 942. 
12 No. 19-1569

It continues to place most of the blame on what it calls “an 

isolated ‘miscoding’ error committed by a lone employee, 

identified as ‘Marla.’” 

Ocwen cannot pin this case on Marla. Her error was one 

among a host of others, and each error was compounded by 

Ocwen’s obstinate refusal to correct them. If this case were 

truly Marla’s fault, then Saccameno’s troubles would have 

lasted a month—most of July 2013. That was how long it took 

for Saccameno to point Ocwen toward Marla’s mistake, and 

for Ocwen to change the dismissal to a discharge. The real 

problems only began at that point though, as Ocwen falsely 

claimed that Saccameno had missed two plan payments for 

the first time in August and started improperly rejecting Saccameno’s payments in September. Ocwen apparently did not 

discover the former until the second day of trial and likely 

would have continued the latter until it filed for foreclosure, 

had this lawsuit not gotten in the way. 

Ocwen contends that the miscounting of payments was 

also a human error—though it does not identify a human. We 

are not sure how many human errors a company like Ocwen 

gets before a jury can reasonably infer a conscious disregard 

of a person’s rights, but we are certain Ocwen passed it. The 

record is replete with evidence that Ocwen’s servicing of Saccameno’s loan was chaos from the moment Ocwen began 

working on the loan in 2011 to the day of the jury’s verdict 

nearly seven years later. Saccameno’s successful bankruptcy 

should have made things easier by resetting everything to 

zero—“fully current as of the date of the trustee’s notice,” the 

plan said. With her bankruptcy papers in hand, Saccameno 

repeatedly attempted to inform Ocwen that it had made an 

obvious mistake. This was not enough, though, and when 
No. 19-1569 13

Saccameno and Van Sky sought to find out why, Ocwen did 

not explain. Instead it sent her a letter written to someone else. 

Ocwen likens itself to the bank in Cruthis v. Firstar Bank, 

N.A., 822 N.E.2d 454 (Ill. App. Ct. 2004), which illegally reversed payments into the plaintiffs’ account at the behest of 

the payor. Id. at 458–59. Though this act was conversion, the 

court found punitive damages unjustified because the bank 

had credited the plaintiffs’ account after being confronted. Id.

at 465. On seeing their account had been emptied, the plaintiffs had inquired with a bank manager; that manager helped 

them to challenge the withdrawal and did his own internal 

investigation. Id. at 459. Initially, a vice president wrongly 

said the withdrawal had been fine, but within two months the 

bank had corrected the plaintiffs’ account and waived all 

charges. Id. at 460. Ocwen, in contrast, never noticed most of 

its mistakes, even well into this case. Its “waiver” of fees was 

not an acceptance of responsibility but a result of the discharge. No helpful manager assisted Saccameno—though 

Ocwen tries to cast Gomes in this role, he is a pale imitation. 

He spoke with Saccameno once, knew nothing of her case, offered no assistance, and only requested that she send paperwork that Ocwen already had twice over. 

Ocwen’s comparison to Parks v. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

is even further afield. There, a mortgagee failed to pay taxes 

on a couple’s home, allowing a tax scavenger to fraudulently 

obtain title. 398 F.3d at 939–40. In concluding that the defendant had not acted with conscious disregard of the Parks’ 

rights, we emphasized that the company, on learning of its 

mistakes, “set out to make matters right, and it succeeded in 

doing so in relatively short order.” Id. at 943. When the plaintiffs had called in, the company “immediately put two 
14 No. 19-1569

researchers on the job to find out what could be going on”; 

those researchers discovered and explained exactly how the 

taxes had gone unpaid, and the company succeeded in getting 

the fraudulent deed vacated. Id. at 940. Ocwen, however, still 

has offered no real explanation for any of the errors its employees made, and never acted to correct its mistakes. This 

“unwilling[ness] to take steps to determine what occurred” 

warranted punitive damages under the ICFA. Dubey v. Pub. 

Storage, Inc., 918 N.E.2d 265, 280 (Ill. App. Ct. 2009). 

The utter lack of explanation also supports a finding of 

corporate complicity. Illinois law insists on managerial involvement before punitive damages may be awarded against 

a corporation. See Mattyasovszky v. W. Towns Bus Co., 330 

N.E.2d 509, 512 (Ill. 1975) (listing four ways this complicity 

can be demonstrated). Saccameno, however, interacted only 

with line employees and never escalated her dispute. The district court thus rightly recognized that the only plausible basis 

on this record for corporate complicity is that “the principal 

or a managerial agent of the principal ratified or approved the 

act” of its employees. Id.; Kemner, 576 N.E.2d at 1156. Ratification is governed by agency principles and is “the equivalent 

of authorization, but it occurs after the fact, when a principal 

gains knowledge of an unauthorized transaction but then retains the benefits or otherwise takes a position inconsistent 

with nonaffirmation.” Progress Printing Corp. v. Jane Byrne Political Comm., 601 N.E.2d 1055, 1067 (Ill. App. Ct. 1992). 

As the district court recognized, Illinois law permits a 

finding of ratification based on a corporation’s litigation conduct, if that conduct is inconsistent with nonaffirmation. In 

Robinson v. Wieboldt Stores, Inc., 433 N.E.2d 1005 (Ill. App. Ct. 

1982), a part-time security guard had falsely imprisoned a 
No. 19-1569 15

woman on suspicion she had stolen a scarf, despite her receipt. Id. at 1007. The defendant’s chief of security testified 

that a receipt alone was not a reason for a guard to conclude 

a person was not a thief, and initially denied that any guards 

were working on the day in question. Id. at 1009. On crossexamination, though, he revealed that the plaintiff’s description of the guard matched that of a part-timer, who the corporation never produced. Id. at 1008. Based on this conduct, the 

court permitted the jury to consider an award of punitive 

damages against the corporation, as it had “continued to defend the actions of its agent throughout the course of th[e] litigation and ... shown no attempt to alter its procedures.” Id.

at 1009. Robinson, though, does not stand for the proposition 

that defending a lawsuit alone ratifies employees’ actions. So 

the court held in Kennan v. Checker Taxi Co., 620 N.E.2d 1208 

(Ill. App. Ct. 1993), in which the corporation “did not ignore 

plaintiff’s complaint” that he had been beaten by one of its 

drivers. Id. at 1210, 1214. Instead, the company sent an investigator to speak with the plaintiff, its president directed that 

the driver’s lease not be renewed, and by the time of trial, the 

driver and company were “no longer associated.” Id. at 1214. 

These facts invalidated the punitive damages award. Id.

Though a corporation need not go as far as the Checker 

Taxi Company to avoid a finding that it ratified its employees 

conduct, it must do more than Ocwen did here. We start with 

Marla. Even if she were to blame, Ocwen’s position regarding 

her could reasonably be seen as inconsistent with nonaffirmation. Much like the security director in Robinson, Ocwen’s corporate representative knew nothing about Marla (besides her 

first name). The representative testified that she did not speak 

with Marla, did not know where Marla’s office was, did not 

know how long Marla had been an Ocwen employee, and did 
16 No. 19-1569

not know if she remained one to this day. The jury heard evidence that no one at Ocwen took any steps, whatsoever, to investigate how Marla’s mistake—which according to Ocwen 

was all but the sole cause of Saccameno’s woes—was made or 

how Ocwen would prevent it from happening again. Ocwen 

did not need to fire Marla to defeat the inference that it had 

ratified her actions, but it needed something from which the 

jury could have seen an “attempt to alter its procedures.” Robinson, 433 N.E.2d at 1009. 

Marla’s mistake, though, was not the only problem. The 

jury’s ratification finding was supported further by Ocwen’s 

complete lack of insight into its other, unnamed employees’ 

errors. Ocwen corrected Marla’s mistake shortly after it occurred, and though Ocwen did not know why Marla had 

made it or take any steps to prevent it from recurring, the 

company at least acknowledged that it was a mistake (and 

apologized on Marla’s behalf). In contrast, Ocwen went into 

this litigation—and the first day of trial—with the view that 

Saccameno had missed two payments during her bankruptcy. 

Once its misconception was corrected through the testimony 

of its own representative, Ocwen had no explanation for how 

this whole ordeal happened, let alone how it might be 

avoided in the future. The closest it got was to blame the miscount on Saccameno’s first fax, in which she mistakenly said 

that she had sent three payments in May. (She sent them in 

March.) Ocwen’s representative suspected that this comment 

caused researchers to limit the scope of their review to the 

time before May when counting the payments. Why they 

thought it notable that Saccameno owed two payments, when 

she had two months left on her plan at the time they stopped 

looking, eludes us. Still, the representative admitted that this 
No. 19-1569 17

explanation justified only the letter in August, as no one else 

at Ocwen would have had any reason to limit themselves so. 

The jury was not obligated to withhold punishment because Ocwen’s acts were not purely harmful. Ocwen contends 

the erroneous credit toward Saccameno in the last few months 

of her bankruptcy demonstrates its employees were incompetent, not malicious. Saccameno ignored this false credit, 

though, and did not benefit from it; if she had believed 

Ocwen, and waited until September to pay her mortgage, she 

would have defaulted during her plan, risking the real dismissal of her bankruptcy. Ocwen next points to its offers of assistance as demonstrating good faith, but we agree with the district court that the jury could have found those aggravating, 

not mitigating. Ocwen had pushed Saccameno towards financial assistance, but as the district court explained, “Saccameno 

no longer needed financial assistance; she simply needed 

Ocwen to correct its records.” The loan modification offers 

were even worse. Putting to one side their timing, the terms, 

especially of the second offer, were far from generous. Why 

would Saccameno, having then endured four years with 

Ocwen, want to chain herself to the company three decades 

more, only to owe it money at the end? 

The jury, having little evidence to the contrary, concluded 

that Ocwen had accepted its employees’ indifference to Saccameno. Robinson, 433 N.E.2d at 1009; see also Dubey, 918 

N.E.2d at 280. Ocwen insisted it had not seen errors like these 

before, but its representative admitted it had never bothered 

to look. The jury was not required to accept Ocwen’s bare assertion that this was a unique case—especially considering 

the consent decrees implying it was not—and could have 
18 No. 19-1569

inferred that this is just how Ocwen does business. For that, 

Illinois law permits punitive damages. 

III. Due Process 

We next turn to the amount of punitive damages awarded 

to Saccameno—$3,000,000. Ocwen contends that this award 

exceeds constitutional limits and we address its arguments on 

those terms. We remind litigants, though, that the Constitution is not the most relevant limit to a federal court when assessing punitive damages, as it comes into play “only after the 

assessment has been tested against statutory and commonlaw principles.” Perez v. Z Frank Oldsmobile, Inc., 223 F.3d 617, 

625 (7th Cir. 2000); see also Beard v. Wexford Health Sources, Inc., 

900 F.3d 951, 955 (7th Cir. 2018). The Constitution is the only 

federal restraint on a state court’s award of punitive damages, 

so it takes center stage in Supreme Court review of state judgments. Perez, 223 F.3d at 625. A federal court, however, can 

(and should) reduce a punitive damages award sometime before it reaches the outermost limits of due process. Id.; Payne 

v. Jones, 711 F.3d 85, 97–100 (2d Cir. 2013). 

Compensatory and punitive damages serve different purposes. Compensatory damages seek to make the plaintiff

whole and to redress the wrongs committed against her, but 

punitive damages are retributive in nature and seek to deter 

wrongful acts in the first place. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. 

v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408, 416 (2003). The risk of grossly excessive or arbitrary punishment, well beyond that necessary to 

deter, requires close scrutiny of the amounts of these awards. 

Id. at 416–17. We therefore conduct an “[e]xacting” de novo 

review of the jury’s award, in which we consider three guideposts: the degree of reprehensibility, the disparity between 

the harm suffered and the damages awarded, and the 
No. 19-1569 19

difference between the award and comparable civil penalties. 

Id. at 418; BMW of N. Am., Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 575–85 

(1996); Green v. Howser, No. 18-2757, __ F.3d __, 2019 WL 

5797158, at *6 (7th Cir. Nov. 7, 2019). Reviewing these guideposts, we conclude that the $3,000,000 awarded here exceeds 

constitutional limits and must be reduced to $582,000. 

A. Reprehensibility 

The first and most important guidepost is the reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct, which we judge based on 

five factors including whether 

the harm caused was physical as opposed to 

economic; the tortious conduct evinced an indifference to or a reckless disregard of the health 

or safety of others; the target of the conduct had 

financial vulnerability; the conduct involved repeated actions or was an isolated incident; and 

the harm was the result of intentional malice, 

trickery, or deceit, or mere accident. 

Campbell, 538 U.S. at 419; Green, 2019 WL 5797158 at *6. The 

existence of any one factor may not always be enough to sustain a punitive damages award, but “the absence of all of them 

renders any award suspect.” Campbell, 538 U.S. at 419. The district court considered these factors here, concluding that the 

first two factors were inapplicable, but that the last three were 

present. Though the parties challenge the district court’s analysis of all five factors, we largely agree with its reasoning, 

though not its result. 

The district court rightly concluded that the first two factors are irrelevant to this case. Saccameno argues otherwise 

by framing her depression, anxiety, and panic disorders as 
20 No. 19-1569

physical injuries. “Mental deterioration, however, is a psychological rather than a physical problem.” Sanders v. Melvin, 873 

F.3d 957, 959 (7th Cir. 2017) (interpreting Prison Litigation Reform Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g)). The first factor is intended to 

draw a line—however hard to police—between physical injuries and those that are essentially economic, even if those economic injuries cause distress. With that understanding, we 

agree that Saccameno did not identify any evidence that she 

suffered physical symptoms or that Ocwen should have been 

aware of a risk to her health. Cf. McGinnis v. Am. Home Mortg. 

Servicing, Inc., 901 F.3d 1282, 1288–89 (11th Cir. 2018) (finding 

factors met because plaintiff’s depression caused projectile 

vomiting and she had told her mortgage servicer she was suffering undue stress). 

On the third factor, the district court concluded that Saccameno was highly vulnerable financially because she was 

just coming out of bankruptcy. Ocwen contends this was error, as it did not intentionally “exploit” her vulnerability. This 

argument is unconvincing both legally and factually. We have 

not required intentional exploitation to find that this factor 

weighs in favor of punitive damages. See Green, 2019 WL 

5797158 at *6 (finding factor relevant because plaintiff was unemployed); EEOC v. AutoZone, Inc., 707 F.3d 824, 839 (7th Cir. 

2013) (same for plaintiff who testified he needed his abusive 

job). Moreover, Ocwen’s conduct would have been both different and less reprehensible had Saccameno not recently 

come out of bankruptcy. Ocwen sent the letters based on its 

belief that the bankruptcy court had dismissed Saccameno’s 

case, reflecting her extreme vulnerability. Ocwen’s representative also explained that it would have acted differently if 

the 2009 foreclosure were not pending, as Ocwen ordinarily 

starts with a formal demand letter before filing a complaint 
No. 19-1569 21

and only then sends the “you’ll never rent in this town again” 

letters. Though the evidence does not show that Ocwen mistreated Saccameno because she was in bankruptcy, and so 

does not favor a massive award, the close connection between 

her bankruptcy and the conduct in this case supports some 

award of punitive damages.1

The fourth factor is whether “the conduct involved repeated actions or was an isolated incident.” Campbell, 538 U.S. 

at 419. Ocwen asks us to adopt the position of the Sixth Circuit 

that this factor refers exclusively to recidivism, see Bridgeport 

Music, Inc. v. Justin Combs Publ’g, 507 F.3d 470, 487 (6th Cir. 

2007), and thus that the factor does not apply here. We again 

disagree legally and factually. We have consistently found 

this factor met in cases involving repeated acts against the 

same person. See Rainey v. Taylor, 941 F.3d 243, 254 (7th Cir. 

2019) (“Taylor continued to grope and expose Rainey’s most 

intimate body parts even after she protested, so his misconduct was both repetitious and malicious.”); Estate of Moreland 

v. Dieter, 395 F.3d 747, 757 (7th Cir. 2005) (“The defendantsʹ

assault on Moreland was sustained rather than momentary, 

and involved a series of wrongful acts, not just a single blow 

....”). We agree with the Third Circuit that recidivism may often be more reprehensible than repeated acts against the same 

party, but that goes to the degree and not the relevance of the 

factor. CGB Occupational Therapy, Inc. v. RHA Health Servs., 

Inc., 499 F.3d 184, 191 (3d Cir. 2007). In any event, the record 

contains evidence that Ocwen was a recidivist. The consent 

 

1 Ocwen also argues Saccameno is not vulnerable because she won 

such a large verdict. We reject the implication that a defendant’s conduct 

is less reprehensible if it causes more harm. 
22 No. 19-1569

decrees described how it had treated other customers as it did 

Saccameno, and that it had continued its ways despite repeated warnings from regulators. The number of opportunities Ocwen had to fix its mistakes is the core fact that justifies 

punishment in this case. 

Finally, the last factor is whether the harm was “the result 

of intentional malice, trickery, or deceit, or mere accident.” 

Campbell, 538 U.S. at 419. Ocwen continues to insist that its 

employees were only negligent. Like the district court, we 

think Ocwen’s actions were not “mere accident.” The evidence shows instead “reckless indifference,” which we have 

found to suffice for this factor to be relevant. Autozone, 707 

F.3d at 839. Certainly, it would be worse if Ocwen had preyed 

on Saccameno intentionally but Ocwen does not need to be 

the worst to be subject to punitive damages. 

Ocwen’s conduct was reprehensible, but not to an extreme 

degree. It caused no physical injuries and did not reflect any 

indifference to Saccameno’s health or safety. Ocwen was, 

however, indifferent to her rights, including those rights that 

originated from her bankruptcy. No evidence supports that 

Ocwen was acting maliciously, though the number of squandered chances it had to correct its mistakes comes close. These 

factors then point toward a substantial punitive damages 

award, but not one even approaching the $3,000,000 awarded 

here. Such an award was deemed proper in McGinnis v. American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc., 901 F.3d 1282, a factually 

similar case, but there the jury found a specific intent to harm, 

and the Eleventh Circuit considered evidence supporting all 

five factors. Id. at 1288–91. Ocwen’s conduct was less reprehensible than that in McGinnis and thus warrants a smaller 

punishment. 
No. 19-1569 23

B. Ratio 

Ocwen’s primary concern on appeal is with the second 

guidepost, the disparity between the harm to the plaintiff and 

the punitive damages awarded. Campbell, 538 U.S. at 424. This 

guidepost is often represented as a ratio between the compensatory and punitive damages awards. The Supreme Court, 

however, has been reluctant to provide strict rules regarding 

the calculation of this ratio and instead has offered some general points of guidance. Id. at 425. First, few awards exceeding 

a single-digit ratio “to a significant degree” will satisfy due 

process. Id. Second, the ratio is flexible. Higher ratios may be 

appropriate when there are only small damages, and conversely, “[w]hen compensatory damages are substantial, then 

a lesser ratio, perhaps only equal to compensatory damages, 

can reach the outermost limit.” Id. Third, the ratio should not 

be confined to actual harm, but also can consider potential 

harm. TXO Prod. Corp. v. All. Res. Corp., 509 U.S. 443, 460–61 

(1993). 

Ocwen argues the district court wrongly inflated this ratio 

by looking to the entire compensatory award instead of just 

the $82,000 awarded under the ICFA. We agree, not because 

the district court was obligated to use a certain denominator 

but because the choice between available denominators—and 

their resulting ratios—reflecting the same underlying conduct 

and harm should not unduly influence whether a given 

award is constitutional. 

The district court calculated its ratio by adding the compensatory damages awarded on all counts, resulting in a 

roughly 5:1 ratio, which the court approved because it was a 

single digit. In doing so, it recognized that several courts of 

appeals have implied or held that courts should calculate 
24 No. 19-1569

punitive damages ratios claim-by-claim. See, e.g., Quigley v. 

Winter, 598 F.3d 938, 953–55 (8th Cir. 2010) (considering compensatory damages on one claim while ignoring a small additional award); Dubey, 918 N.E.2d at 279–82 (considering punitive damages on two claims separately); see also Zhang v. Am. 

Gem Seafoods, Inc., 339 F.3d 1020, 1044 (9th Cir. 2003) (considering punitive damages on only one claim and ignoring other 

award that included statutory double damages); Zimmerman 

v. Direct Fed. Credit Union, 262 F.3d 70, 82 n.9 (1st Cir. 2001) 

(finding it “appropriate” to consider ratio claim-by-claim but 

considering both ratios). The Eighth Circuit explained its rationale for this approach in JCB, Inc. v. Union Planters Bank, 

NA, 539 F.3d 862 (8th Cir. 2008). In that case, the two claims—

trespass and conversion—“protect[ed] distinct legal rights” 

and were based on separate acts, so the two awards of punitive damages were considered separately as a matter of both 

state law and due process. Id. at 874–75. The district court here 

followed the corollary of this logic and aggregated the damages because Saccameno’s four claims involved related conduct. See Bains LLC v. Arco Prod. Co., 405 F.3d 764, 776 (9th Cir. 

2005) (aggregating a compensatory award with nominal damages on separate claims because conduct was “intertwined”). 

In doing so, the court relied on Fastenal Co. v. Crawford, 609 F. 

Supp. 2d 650 (E.D. Ky. 2009), which reasoned that the related 

conduct addressed in other counts was like potential harm, 

which the Supreme Court has deemed a valid consideration. 

Id. at 660–61. 

The Fastenal court started with the premise that “the 

award would be unconstitutionally excessive if the ratio is calculated on a claim-by-claim basis, but it would be appropriate 

under an aggregate basis.” Id. at 660. No matter which denominator we use here, though, the actual award of $3,000,000 
No. 19-1569 25

remains the same. More importantly, so does Ocwen’s conduct and the harm it caused, and it is that conduct and harm 

we must assess against the amount awarded. Said another 

way, given the same conduct, an increased compensatory 

damages award leads to a decreased permissible ratio, and 

vice-versa. Campbell, 538 U.S. at 425; Mathias v. Accor Econ. 

Lodging, Inc., 347 F.3d 672, 677 (7th Cir. 2003); Cooper v. Casey, 

97 F.3d 914, 919–20 (7th Cir. 1996). As the Second Circuit explained in Payne v. Jones, 711 F.3d 85, the ratio without regard 

to the amount “tells us little of value.” Id. at 103. If the jury 

had awarded more compensation, then a small ratio of punitive damages might seem high; but if the jury had awarded 

less, a larger ratio becomes permissible. Id. Tellingly, most 

cases considering whether to aggregate damages reach the 

same result either way. See Pollard v. E.I. DuPont De Nemours, 

Inc., 412 F.3d 657, 668 (6th Cir. 2005) (affirming); Bains, 405 

F.3d at 776 (reversing); Zimmerman, 262 F.3d at 82 & n.9 (affirming). More tellingly, the sole exception among federal appellate decisions is JCB, which based its analysis on principles 

of state law distinguishing the different harms—the different 

conduct—that each claim represented. 539 F.3d at 874–76. 

The disparity guidepost is not a mechanical rule. The court 

must calculate the ratio to frame its analysis, but the ratio itself does not decide whether the award is permissible. See Williams v. ConAgra Poultry Co., 378 F.3d 790, 799 (8th Cir. 2004) 

(“It is not that such a ratio violates the Constitution. Rather, 

the mathematics alerts the courts to the need for special justification.”). The answer might be yes, despite a high ratio, if 

the probability of detection is low, the harms are primarily 

dignitary, or if there is a risk that limiting recovery to barely 

more than compensatory damages would allow a defendant 

to act with impunity. Mathias, 347 F.3d at 676–77. It might be 
26 No. 19-1569

no, even with a low ratio, if the acts are not that reprehensible 

and the damage is easily or already accounted for. Rather 

than simply move numbers around on a verdict form to reach 

a single-digit ratio, courts should assess the purpose of punitive damages and the conduct at issue in order to evaluate the 

award. On the facts of this case, Ocwen’s conduct, which overlaps all four claims, would be no more or less reprehensible 

or harmful if the jury had shifted $50,000 from the compensatory award on the other claims to the ICFA claim or if the verdict form had provided only one line for compensatory damages on all four claims.2

The district court recognized this problem. It noted that 

the 37:1 ratio without aggregation was high but thought it 

might still be constitutional. It did not go so far as to hold, in 

the alternative, that this ratio was constitutional, however, and 

it was right to hesitate. It listed several cases upholding even 

higher ratios on compensatory awards ranging from about 

$300 to $8500. Most notable is our decision in Mathias v. Accor 

Economy Lodging, where we upheld a 37:1 ratio on $5000 in 

compensatory damages. 347 F.3d 672. The compensatory 

damages in this case and Mathias, though, are quite different. 

Moreover, the acts in Mathias were incredibly reprehensible. 

The defendant motel company knew its rooms were infested 

to “farcical proportions” with bedbugs but refused to pay a 

small fee to have them exterminated; it instead told employees to call them ticks and avoid renting infested rooms (unless 

 

2 We express no opinion on whether the verdict form could have or 

should have been drafted differently absent the parties’ agreement. The 

best verdict form for a given case is a question left to the broad discretion 

of the district court and is informed by the unique facts, legal issues, and 

other circumstances presented. 
No. 19-1569 27

the motel was full). Id. at 674–75. On those facts, a modest 

punishment of $186,000 was constitutional, and the high ratio 

did not undermine that conclusion. Id. at 678. In contrast, the 

$3,000,000 here is not a modest award, and the $82,000 in compensatory damages for the ICFA claim are substantial enough 

that a huge multiplier was not needed to reflect harm that was 

“slight and at the same time difficult to quantify.” Id. at 677. 

A single-digit punitive damages ratio relative to the $82,000 

reflects an appropriate punishment on these facts. 

The district court should have hesitated just as much before upholding a 5:1 ratio relative to the $582,000 compensatory award on all four claims. Campbell instructs that a “substantial” award merits a ratio closer to 1:1. 538 U.S. at 425. 

Ocwen correctly notes that courts have found awards of 

roughly this magnitude “substantial” under Campbell and imposed a 1:1 ratio. See, e.g., Jones v. United Parcel Serv., Inc., 674 

F.3d 1187, 1208 (10th Cir. 2012) ($630,000); Bach v. First Union 

Nat. Bank, 486 F.3d 150, 156 (6th Cir. 2007) ($400,000); Williams, 

378 F.3d at 799 ($600,000). But see Lompe v. Sunridge Ptrs., LLC, 

818 F.3d 1041, 1069 (10th Cir. 2016) (noting that other cases 

draw the line at roughly $1,000,000). What counts as substantial depends on the facts of the case, and an award of this size 

(or larger) might not mandate a 1:1 ratio on another set of 

facts. See Rainey, 941 F.3d at 255 (upholding 6:1 ratio relative 

to $1.13 million compensatory award because defendant’s 

conduct was “truly egregious”). Here, though, $582,000 is a 

considerable compensatory award for the indifferent, not malicious, mistreatment of a single $135,000 mortgage. Moreover, nearly all this award reflects emotional distress damages 

that “already contain [a] punitive element.” Campbell, 538 U.S. 

at 426. A ratio relative to this denominator, then, should not 

exceed 1:1. 
28 No. 19-1569

C. Civil Penalties 

The final guidepost is the disparity between the award and 

“civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable cases.” 

Campbell, 538 U.S. at 428 (quoting Gore, 517 U.S. at 575). The 

district court identified two civil penalties to compare to the 

punitive damages award. The first was the $50,000 monetary 

penalty authorized by the ICFA, which can be calculated per 

offense if there is intent to defraud. 815 ILCS 505/7(b). Ocwen 

concedes that this penalty is appropriately considered but argues it cannot support a $3,000,000 award. We agree that 

Ocwen’s actions are not so reprehensible that they might justify an award equal to the maximum penalty for 60 intentional 

violations. Notably, we see no evidence that Ocwen’s actions 

in this case were either intentional or fraudulent, only indifferent. This aspect of the guidepost thus points to a lower 

award. 

The second civil penalty the district court considered was 

the possibility that Ocwen could have its license to service 

mortgages suspended or revoked under the Illinois Residential Mortgage License Act (RMLA), 205 ILCS 635/4-5. The 

court noted that this was far from hypothetical—as Ocwen 

had its license placed on probation for, among other things, 

RESPA violations. Ocwen insists the court could not consider 

the possibility its license would be revoked both because it 

was based on the RESPA claim, and not the ICFA, and because 

comparing a punitive damages award to a major corporation 

losing its license would allow just about any amount of damages. 

We do not think the district court erred in considering the 

possibility that Ocwen could lose its license. First of all, the 

ICFA too, allows, the attorney general to seek “revocation, 
No. 19-1569 29

forfeiture or suspension of any license ... of any person to do 

business,” 815 ILCS 505/7(a), and though that may give way 

here to the more specific provisions in the RMLA, that law allows revocation of licenses for violation of “any ... law, rule 

or regulation of [Illinois] or the United States,” 205 ILCS 

635/4-5(a)(1), presumably including the ICFA as well as the 

RESPA. This does not mean, of course, that any punitive 

award that is less than the value of Ocwen’s business license 

is per se constitutional—far from it. Illinois is not likely to take 

away Ocwen’s business license for deceptively saying one 

customer owes a few thousand dollars on a $135,000 mortgage, no matter how unjustified the error. Like a criminal penalty, then, this sort of extreme equitable remedy has “less utility” when it is used to determine the amount of an award. 

Campbell, 538 U.S. at 428. Still, also like a criminal penalty, this 

weapon in Illinois’s arsenal has “bearing on the seriousness 

with which a State views the wrongful action.” Id. This seriousness would be exaggerated by comparing the award here 

with the loss of Ocwen’s license but would be unduly minimized by limiting an award to only the $50,000 civil penalty. 

D. Remedy 

Considering all the factors together, we are convinced that 

the maximum permissible punitive damages award is 

$582,000. An award of this size punishes Ocwen’s atrocious 

recordkeeping and service of Saccameno’s loan without 

equating its indifference to intentional malice. It reflects a 1:1 

ratio relative to the large total compensatory award and a 

roughly 7:1 ratio relative to the $82,000 awarded on the ICFA 

claim alone, both of which are consistent with the Supreme 

Court’s guidance in Campbell. It is equivalent to the maximum 

punishment for less than 12, not 60, intentional violations of 
30 No. 19-1569

the ICFA, though it is also a miniscule amount compared to 

the value of Ocwen’s business license. 

The final issue the parties dispute is whether the Seventh 

Amendment mandates an offer of a new trial after determining the constitutional limit on the punitive damages award. 

We have previously said, without deciding the issue, that 

this offer of a new trial is “a matter of sound procedure, not 

constitutional law.” Beard, 900 F.3d at 955. Ocwen insists that 

this holding was limited by the fact that no party had asked 

us to decide the constitutional question, and here it asks us 

to do so. Though we continue to emphasize that parties 

should focus first on procedural and statutory limits on punitive damages awards, id. at 955–56, we agree with every 

circuit to address this question that the constitutional limit of 

a punitive damage award is a question of law not within the 

province of the jury, and thus a court is empowered to decide the maximum permissible amount without offering a 

new trial. See Lompe, 818 F.3d at 1062; Cortez v. Trans Union, 

LLC, 617 F.3d 688, 716 (3d Cir. 2010); Bisbal-Ramos v. City of 

Mayaguez, 467 F.3d 16, 27 (1st Cir. 2006); Ross v. Kansas City 

Power & Light Co., 293 F.3d 1041, 1049–50 (8th Cir. 2002); 

Leatherman Tool Grp. v. Cooper Indus., 285 F.3d 1146, 1151 (9th 

Cir. 2002); Johansen v. Combustion Engʹg, Inc., 170 F.3d 1320, 

1330–31 (11th Cir. 1999); see also Cooper Indus. v. Leatherman 

Tool Grp., 532 U.S. 424, 437 (2001) (“[T]he level of punitive 

damages is not really a ‘fact’ ‘tried’ by the jury.”). 

IV. Conclusion 

We therefore remand for the district court to amend its 

judgment and reduce the punitive damages award to 

$582,000. Each party is to bear its own costs on appeal.