(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2007 1 

Syllabus 

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. 

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

EXXON SHIPPING CO. ET AL. v. BAKER ET AL. 

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR 

THE NINTH CIRCUIT 

No. 07–219. Argued February 27, 2008—Decided June 25, 2008 

In 1989, petitioners’ (collectively, Exxon) supertanker grounded on a 

reef off Alaska, spilling millions of gallons of crude oil into Prince

William Sound. The accident occurred after the tanker’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood—who had a history of alcohol abuse and whose blood

still had a high alcohol level 11 hours after the spill—inexplicably exited the bridge, leaving a tricky course correction to unlicensed subordinates. Exxon spent some $2.1 billion in cleanup efforts, pleaded 

guilty to criminal violations occasioning fines, settled a civil action by

the United States and Alaska for at least $900 million, and paid another $303 million in voluntary payments to private parties. Other 

civil cases were consolidated into this one, brought against Exxon,

Hazelwood, and others to recover economic losses suffered by respondents (hereinafter Baker), who depend on Prince William Sound for 

their livelihoods. At Phase I of the trial, the jury found Exxon and

Hazelwood reckless (and thus potentially liable for punitive damages) 

under instructions providing that a corporation is responsible for the 

reckless acts of employees acting in a managerial capacity in the 

scope of their employment. In Phase II, the jury awarded $287 million in compensatory damages to some of the plaintiffs; others had

settled their compensatory claims for $22.6 million. In Phase III, the 

jury awarded $5,000 in punitive damages against Hazelwood and $5

billion against Exxon. The Ninth Circuit upheld the Phase I jury instruction on corporate liability and ultimately remitted the punitive

damages award against Exxon to $2.5 billion. 

Held: 

1. Because the Court is equally divided on whether maritime law

allows corporate liability for punitive damages based on the acts of

managerial agents, it leaves the Ninth Circuit’s opinion undisturbed 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Syllabus 

in this respect. Of course, this disposition is not precedential on the

derivative liability question. See, e.g., Neil v. Biggers, 409 U. S. 188, 

192. Pp. 7–10.

2. The Clean Water Act’s water pollution penalties, 33 U. S. C.

§1321, do not preempt punitive-damages awards in maritime spill 

cases. Section 1321(b) protects “navigable waters . . . , adjoining

shorelines, . . . [and] natural resources,” subject to a saving clause reserving “obligations . . . under any . . . law for damages to any . . . privately owned property resulting from [an oil] discharge,” §1321(o).

Exxon’s admission that the CWA does not displace compensatory

remedies for the consequences of water pollution, even those for economic harms, leaves the company with the untenable claim that the 

CWA somehow preempts punitive damages, but not compensatory

damages, for economic loss. Nothing in the statute points to that result, and the Court has rejected similar attempts to sever remedies 

from their causes of action, see Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 

U. S. 238, 255–256. There is no clear indication of congressional intent to occupy the entire field of pollution remedies, nor is it likely

that punitive damages for private harms will have any frustrating effect on the CWA’s remedial scheme. Pp. 10–15.

3. The punitive damages award against Exxon was excessive as a

matter of maritime common law. In the circumstances of this case, 

the award should be limited to an amount equal to compensatory

damages. Pp. 15–42. 

(a) Although legal codes from ancient times through the Middle

Ages called for multiple damages for certain especially harmful acts,

modern Anglo-American punitive damages have their roots in 18thcentury English law and became widely accepted in American courts 

by the mid-19th century. See, e.g., Day v. Woodworth, 13 How. 363, 

371. Pp. 16–17. 

(b) The prevailing American rule limits punitive damages to 

cases of “enormity,” Day v. Woodworth, 13 How. 363, 371, in which a 

defendant’s conduct is outrageous, owing to gross negligence, willful, 

wanton, and reckless indifference for others’ rights, or even more deplorable behavior. The consensus today is that punitive damages are

aimed at retribution and deterring harmful conduct. Pp. 17–21.

(c) State regulation of punitive damages varies. A few States 

award them rarely, or not at all, and others permit them only when 

authorized by statute. Many States have imposed statutory limits on

punitive awards, in the form of absolute monetary caps, a maximum

ratio of punitive to compensatory damages, or, frequently, some combination of the two. Pp. 21–23. 

(d) American punitive damages have come under criticism in recent decades, but the most recent studies tend to undercut much of it. 
 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3 

Syllabus 

Although some studies show the dollar amounts of awards growing 

over time, even in real terms, most accounts show that the median 

ratio of punitive to compensatory awards remains less than 1:1. Nor 

do the data show a marked increase in the percentage of cases with 

punitive awards. The real problem is the stark unpredictability of 

punitive awards. Courts are concerned with fairness as consistency, 

and the available data suggest that the spread between high and low

individual awards is unacceptable. The spread in state civil trials is

great, and the outlier cases subject defendants to punitive damages

that dwarf the corresponding compensatories. The distribution of 

judge-assessed awards is narrower, but still remarkable. These 

ranges might be acceptable if they resulted from efforts to reach a 

generally accepted optimal level of penalty and deterrence in cases 

involving a wide range of circumstances, but anecdotal evidence suggests that is not the case, see, e.g., Gore, supra, at 565, n. 8. Pp. 24–

27. 

(e) This Court’s response to outlier punitive damages awards has

thus far been confined by claims that state-court awards violated due 

process. See, e.g., State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 

538 U. S. 408, 425. In contrast, today’s enquiry arises under federal 

maritime jurisdiction and requires review of a jury award at the level

of judge-made federal common law that precedes and should obviate

any application of the constitutional standard. In this context, the 

unpredictability of high punitive awards is in tension with their punitive function because of the implication of unfairness that an eccentrically high punitive verdict carries. A penalty should be reasonably

predictable in its severity, so that even Holmes’s “bad man” can look

ahead with some ability to know what the stakes are in choosing one 

course of action or another. And a penalty scheme ought to threaten

defendants with a fair probability of suffering in like degree for like 

damage. Cf. Koon v. United States, 518 U. S. 81, 113. Pp. 28–29.

(f) The Court considers three approaches, one verbal and two 

quantitative, to arrive at a standard for assessing maritime punitive

damages. Pp. 29–42. 

(i) The Court is skeptical that verbal formulations are the best

insurance against unpredictable outlier punitive awards, in light of 

its experience with attempts to produce consistency in the analogous 

business of criminal sentencing. Pp. 29–32. 

(ii) Thus, the Court looks to quantified limits. The option of

setting a hard-dollar punitive cap, however, is rejected because there 

is no “standard” tort or contract injury, making it difficult to settle

upon a particular dollar figure as appropriate across the board; and

because a judicially selected dollar cap would carry the serious drawback that the issue might not return to the docket before there was a 
 

 

 

 

 

 

4 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Syllabus 

need to revisit the figure selected. Pp. 32–39.

(iii) The more promising alternative is to peg punitive awards 

to compensatory damages using a ratio or maximum multiple. This 

is the model in many States and in analogous federal statutes allowing multiple damages. The question is what ratio is most appropriate. An acceptable standard can be found in the studies showing the 

median ratio of punitive to compensatory awards. Those studies reflect the judgments of juries and judges in thousands of cases as to

what punitive awards were appropriate in circumstances reflecting

the most down to the least blameworthy conduct, from malice and

avarice to recklessness to gross negligence. The data in question put 

the median ratio for the entire gamut at less than 1:1, meaning that 

the compensatory award exceeds the punitive award in most cases.

In a well-functioning system, awards at or below the median would

roughly express jurors’ sense of reasonable penalties in cases like this

one that have no earmarks of exceptional blameworthiness. Accordingly, the Court finds that a 1:1 ratio is a fair upper limit in such

maritime cases. Pp. 39–42.

(iv) Applying this standard to the present case, the Court takes

for granted the District Court’s calculation of the total relevant compensatory damages at $507.5 million. A punitive-to-compensatory

ratio of 1:1 thus yields maximum punitive damages in that amount. 

P. 42. 

472 F. 3d 600 and 490 F. 3d 1066, vacated and remanded. 

SOUTER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, 

C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined, and in which STEVENS, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined, as to Parts I, II, and III. 

SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which THOMAS, J., joined. STEVENS, J., GINSBURG, J., and BREYER, J., filed opinions concurring in part 

and dissenting in part. ALITO, J., took no part in the consideration or 

decision of the case. 
 

 

_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 1 

Opinion of the Court 

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 07–219 

EXXON SHIPPING COMPANY, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. 

GRANT BAKER ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[June 25, 2008] 

JUSTICE SOUTER delivered the opinion of the Court. 

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 owner’s derivative liability, and 

hold that the federal statutory law does not bar a punitive 

award on top of damages for economic loss, but that the 

award here should be limited to an amount equal to compensatory damages. 

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 owner, petitioner Exxon Shipping Co. (now SeaRiver Maritime, Inc.), and its owner,

petitioner Exxon Mobil Corp. (collectively, Exxon), have

settled state and federal claims for environmental dam-
 

2 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

age, with payments exceeding $1 billion, and this action 

by respondent Baker and others, including commercial

fishermen and native Alaskans, was brought for economic 

losses to individuals dependent on Prince William Sound 

for their livelihoods. 

A 

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 Hazelwood, who had completed a 28-day alcohol

treatment program while employed by Exxon, as his superiors knew, but dropped out of a prescribed follow-up 

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 aboard 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, 270 

F. 3d 1215, 1238 (CA9 2001), Exxon presented no evidence 

that it monitored Hazelwood after his return to duty or 

considered giving him a shoreside assignment, see Order 

265, p. 5, supra, at 256a. Witnesses testified that before 

the Valdez left port on the night of the disaster, Hazelwood downed at least five double vodkas in the waterfront 

bars of Valdez, an intake of about 15 ounces of 80-proof 
 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3 

Opinion of the Court 

alcohol, enough “that a non-alcoholic would have passed 

out.” 270 F. 3d, at 1236. 

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, Hazelwood 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 one, 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 
 

 

4 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

turn at Busby Light, and a later emergency maneuver

attempted by Cousins came too late. The tanker ran 

aground on Bligh Reef, tearing the hull open and spilling 

11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. 

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.1 The 

Coast Guard’s nearly immediate response included a blood 

test of Hazelwood (the validity of which Exxon disputes) 

showing a blood-alcohol level of .061 eleven hours after the

spill. Supp. App. 307sa. Experts testified that to have

this much alcohol in his bloodstream so long after the 

accident, Hazelwood at the time of the spill must have had 

a blood-alcohol level of around .241, Order 265, p. 5, supra,

at 256a, three times the legal limit for driving in most 

States. 

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 

—————— 

1As 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 ‘laid 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, 30 Oil Spill

Intelligence Report 2 (Mar. 29, 2007). 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 5 

Opinion of the Court 

$150 million fine, later reduced to $25 million plus restitution of $100 million. A civil action 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 Alaksans; 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 well as conflicting testimony about Exxon officials’ 

knowledge of Hazelwood’s backslide. At the close of Phase 

I, the Court instructed the jury in part that 

“[a] corporation is responsible for the reckless acts of

those employees who are employed in a managerial 
 

 

 

6 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

capacity while acting in the scope of their employment. The reckless act or omission of a managerial officer or employee of a corporation, 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.2 

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 

—————— 

2The jury was not asked to consider the possibility of 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. 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 7 

Opinion of the Court 

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, 270 F. 3d, at 1236 (citing Protectus 

Alpha Nav. Co. v. North Pacific Grain Growers, Inc., 767 

F. 2d 1379 (CA9 1985)). With respect to the size of the 

punitive damages award, however, the Circuit remanded

twice for adjustments in light of this Court’s due process 

cases before ultimately itself remitting the award to $2.5 

billion. See 270 F. 3d, at 1246–1247; 472 F. 3d 600, 601, 

625 (2006) (per curiam), and 490 F. 3d 1066, 1068 (2007).

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. 552 U. S. ___ 

(2007). We now vacate and remand. 

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.”3 App. K to 

—————— 

3Baker 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 enforc-
 

 

8 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

Pet. for Cert. 301a. The Courts of Appeals have split on 

this issue,4 and the company relies primarily on two cases, 

The Amiable Nancy, 3 Wheat. 546 (1818), and Lake Shore 

& Michigan Southern R. Co. v. Prentice, 147 U. S. 101 

(1893), to argue that this Court’s precedents are clear that 

punitive damages are not available against a shipowner 

for a shipmaster’s recklessness. The former was a suit in 

admiralty against the owners of The Scourge, a privateer 

whose officers and crew boarded and plundered a neutral 

ship, The Amiable Nancy. In upholding an award of compensatory damages, Justice Story observed that, 

“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 

—————— 

ing 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 36–39. 

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, 398 U. S. 6, 11 (1970) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). 4Compare Protectus Alpha Nav. Co. v. North Pacific Grain Growers, 

Inc., 767 F. 2d 1379, 1386 (CA9 1985) (adopting Restatement (Second)

of Torts rule), with CEH, Inc. v. F/V Seafarer, 70 F. 3d 694, 705 (CA1 

1995); In re P & E Boat Rentals, Inc., 872 F. 2d 642, 652 (CA5 1989); 

United States Steel Corp. v. Fuhrman, 407 F. 2d 1143, 1148 (CA6 1969). 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 9 

Opinion of the Court 

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, 304 U. S. 64 (1938), general 

common law, that “[t]hough [a] principal is liable to make

compensation for [intentional torts] by his agent, he is not 

liable to be punished by exemplary damages for an intent 

in which he did not participate.” 147 U. S., at 110. Because maritime law remains federal common law, and 

because the Court has never revisited the issue, Exxon 

argues that Lake Shore endures as sound evidence of 

maritime law. And even if the rule of Amiable Nancy and 

Lake Shore does not control, Exxon urges the Court to fall

back to a modern-day variant adopted in the context of 

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Kolstad v. 

American Dental Assn., 527 U. S. 526, 544 (1999), that

employers are not subject to punitive damages for discriminatory conduct by their managerial employees if they 

can show that they maintained and enforced good-faith

antidiscrimination policies.

Baker supports the Ninth Circuit in upholding the 
 

 

 

10 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

instruction, as it did on the authority of Protectus Alpha 

Nav. Co., 767 F. 2d 1379, which followed the Restatement 

rule recognizing corporate liability in punitive damages for 

reckless acts of managerial employees, see 4 Restatement 

(Second) of Torts §909(c) (1977) (hereinafter Restatement).

Baker says that The Amiable Nancy offers nothing but

dictum, because punitive damages were not at issue, and

that Lake Shore merely rejected company liability for the

acts of a railroad conductor, while saying nothing about

liability for agents higher up the ladder, like ship captains. He also makes the broader points that the opinion

was criticized for failing to reflect the majority rule of its

own time, not to mention its conflict with the respondeat 

superior rule in the overwhelming share of land-based 

jurisdictions today. Baker argues that the maritime rule 

should conform to modern land-based common law, where 

a majority of States allow punitive damages for the conduct of any employee, and most others follow the Restatement, imposing liability for managerial agents. 

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., 7 Wall. 107, 112 

(1869). We therefore leave the Ninth Circuit’s opinion

undisturbed in this respect, though it should go without 

saying that the disposition here is not precedential on the 

derivative liability question. See, e.g., Neil v. Biggers, 409 

U. S. 188, 192 (1972); Ohio ex rel. Eaton v. Price, 364 U. S. 

263, 264 (1960) (opinion of Brennan, J.). 

III 

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. 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 11 

Opinion of the Court 

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 casemanagement 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 of punitive damages. The District Court denied the 

motion. 

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 Claims”

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),”5 App. to Brief in Opposition 30a–31a. Exxon’s 

—————— 

5Most 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 
 

12 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

accompanying memorandum asserted that two recent 

cases, Glynn v. Roy Al Boat Management Corp., 57 F. 3d 

1495 (CA9 1995), and Guevara v. Maritime Overseas 

Corp., 59 F. 3d 1496 (CA5 1995), suggested that the rule of 

maritime punitive damages was displaced by federal

statutes, including the CWA. On November 2, 1995, the 

District Court summarily denied Exxon’s request to file 

the motion, App. to Brief in Opposition 35a, and in January 1996 (following the settlement of the Phase IV compensatory claims) the court entered final judgment.

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. 270 F. 3d, at 1229. On the merits, the Circuit held 

that the CWA did not preempt maritime common law on 

punitive damages. Id., at 1230. 

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 

—————— 

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, 363 F. 3d 70, 73–74 (CA1 2004); 9B C. Wright

& A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure §2537, pp. 603–604 (3d ed. 

2008). Rule 59(e) permits a court to alter or amend a judgment, but it

“may not be used to relitigate old matters, or to raise arguments or

present evidence that could have been raised prior to the entry of

judgment.” 11 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure 

§2810.1, pp. 127–128 (2d ed. 1995) (footnotes omitted). Where Exxon 

has been unable to demonstrate that any rule supported the motion, we

need not choose the best of the worst, and risk implying that this lastminute motion was appropriate under any rule. Suffice it to say that,

whatever type of motion it was supposed to be, it was very, very late. 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 13 

Opinion of the Court 

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, a party can make any argument in

support of that claim; parties are not limited to the precise

arguments they made below.” Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 

519, 534 (1992). But this principle stops well short of 

legitimizing Exxon’s untimely motion. If “statutory preemption” were a sufficient claim to give Exxon license to

rely on newly cited statutes anytime it wished, a litigant

could add new constitutional claims as he went along, 

simply because he had “consistently argued” that a challenged regulation was unconstitutional. See id., at 533 

(rejecting substantive due process claim by takings petitioners who failed to preserve it below); Browning-Ferris 

Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U. S. 257, 

277, n. 23 (1989) (rejecting due process claim by EighthAmendment petitioners).

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. 270 F. 3d, at 1229. “It is the general rule,

of course, that a federal appellate court does not consider

an issue not passed upon below,” Singleton v. Wulff, 428 

U. S. 106, 120 (1976), when to deviate from this rule being 

a matter “left primarily to the discretion of the courts of 

appeals, to be exercised on the facts of individual cases,” 

id., at 121. We have previously stopped short of stating a

general principle to contain appellate courts’ discretion, 

see ibid., and we exercise the same restraint today.6 

—————— 

6We 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 
 

 

 

14 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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) 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 that, 

because the saving clause makes no mention of preserving

punitive damages for economic loss, they are preempted. 

But so, of course, would a number of other categories of

damages awards that Exxon did not claim were preempted. If Exxon were correct here, there would be preemption of provisions for compensatory damages for 

—————— 

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., 989 F. 2d 527, 531 (CA1 

1993) (Boudin, J.) (citation omitted). The District Court’s sensible 

efforts to impose order upon the issues in play and the progress of the 

trial deserve our respect. 
 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 15 

Opinion of the Court 

thwarting economic activity or, for that matter, compensatory damages for physical, personal injury from oil spills

or other water pollution. But we find it too hard to conclude that a statute expressly geared to protecting “water,”

“shorelines,” and “natural resources” was intended to 

eliminate sub silentio oil companies’ common law duties to 

refrain from injuring the bodies and livelihoods of private

individuals. 

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., 464 U. S. 238, 255–256 (1984). All in 

all, we see no clear indication of congressional intent to 

occupy the entire field of pollution remedies, see, e.g., 

United States v. Texas, 507 U. S. 529, 534 (1993) (“In order 

to abrogate a common-law principle, the statute must 

speak directly to the question addressed by the common 

law” (internal quotation marks omitted)); nor for that

matter do we perceive that punitive damages for private 

harms will have any frustrating effect on the CWA remedial scheme, which would point to preemption.7 

—————— 

7 In this respect, this case differs from two invoked by Exxon, Middlesex County Sewerage Authority v. National Sea Clammers Assn., 453 

U. S. 1 (1981), and Milwaukee v. Illinois, 451 U. S. 304 (1981), where 

plaintiffs’ common law nuisance claims amounted to arguments for 

effluent-discharge standards different from those provided by the CWA.

Here, Baker’s private claims for economic injury do not threaten similar

interference with federal regulatory goals with respect to “water,” 
 

 

16 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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. III, §2, cl. 1; see, e.g., Edmonds v. 

Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 443 U. S. 256, 259 

(1979) (“Admiralty law is judge-made law to a great extent”); Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 

358 U. S. 354, 360–361 (1959) (constitutional grant “empowered the federal courts . . . to continue the development of [maritime] law”). In addition to its resistance to 

derivative liability for punitive damages and its preemption claim already disposed of, Exxon challenges the size

of the remaining $2.5 billion punitive damages award. 

Other than its preemption argument, it does not offer a

legal ground for concluding that maritime law should

never award punitive damages, or that none should be

awarded in this case, but it does argue that this award 

exceeds the bounds justified by the punitive damages goal

of deterring reckless (or worse) behavior and the consequently heightened threat of harm. The claim goes to our 

understanding of the place of punishment in modern civil

law and reasonable standards of process in administering 

punitive law, subjects that call for starting with a brief 

account of the history behind today’s punitive damages. 

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 

—————— 

“shorelines,” or “natural resources.”
 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 17 

Opinion of the Court 

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, 116 U. S. 616, 626 

(1886). And in Huckle v. Money, 2 Wils. 205, 206–207, 95 

Eng. Rep. 768, 768–769 (K. B. 1763), the same judge who 

is recorded in Wilkes gave an opinion upholding a jury’s

award of £300 (against a government officer again) although “if the jury had been confined by their oath to

consider the mere personal injury only, perhaps [£20] 

damages would have been thought damages sufficient.”

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 (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, 13 How. 363, 371 (1852). 

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 
 

 

 

 

18 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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.”8 Cooper Industries, Inc. v. 

Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532 U. S. 424, 437–438, n. 

11 (2001) (citing, inter alia, Note, Exemplary Damages in

the Law of Torts, 70 Harv. L. Rev. 517 (1957)). But see 

Sebok, What Did Punitive Damages Do? 78 Chi.-Kent 

L. Rev. 163, 204 (2003) (arguing that “punitive damages 

have never served the compensatory function attributed to

them by the Court in Cooper”). As the century progressed,

and “the types of compensatory damages available to

plaintiffs . . . broadened,” Cooper Industries, supra, at 437, 

n. 11, the consequence was that American courts tended to

speak of punitive damages as separate and distinct from

compensatory damages, see, e.g., Day, supra, at 371 (punitive damages “hav[e] in view the enormity of [the] offence

rather than the measure of compensation to the plaintiff”). 

See generally 1 L. Schlueter, Punitive Damages §§1.3(C)–

(D), 1.4(A) (5th ed. 2005) (hereinafter Schlueter) (describ-

—————— 

8 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, 499 

U. S. 1, 25 (1991) (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment) (citing 2 S.

Greenleaf, Law of Evidence 235, n. 2 (13th ed. 1876)). “This view,” 

however, “was not widely shared.” Haslip, supra, at 25 (SCALIA, J., 

concurring in judgment) (citing other prominent 19th-century treatises). Whatever the actual importance of the subterfuge for compensation may have been, it declined. 
 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 19 

Opinion of the Court 

ing the “almost total eclipse of the compensatory function” 

in the decades following the 1830s). 

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.9 This consensus informs the doctrine in 

most modern American jurisdictions, where juries are

customarily instructed on twin goals of punitive awards.

See, e.g., Cal. Jury Instr., Civil, No. 14.72.2 (2008) (“You

must now determine whether you should award punitive 

damages against defendant[s] . . . for the sake of example

and by way of punishment”); N. Y. Pattern Jury Instr.,

Civil, No. 2:278 (2007) (“The purpose of punitive damages 

is not to compensate the plaintiff but to punish the defendant . . . and thereby to discourage the defendant . . . from

acting in a similar way in the future”). The prevailing rule

in American courts also limits punitive damages to cases 

of what the Court in Day, supra, at 371, spoke of as 

“enormity,” where a defendant’s conduct is “outrageous,” 4

Restatement §908(2), owing to “gross negligence,” “willful, 

wanton, and reckless indifference for the rights of others,”

or behavior even more deplorable, 1 Schlueter §9.3(A).10 

—————— 

9See, e.g., Moskovitz v. Mount Sinai Medical Center, 69 Ohio St. 3d 

638, 651, 635 N. E. 2d 331, 343 (1994) (“The purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate a plaintiff, but to punish and deter certain

conduct”); Hamilton Development Co. v. Broad Rock Club, Inc., 248 Va. 

40, 45, 445 S. E. 2d 140, 143 (1994) (same); Loitz v. Remington Arms 

Co., 138 Ill. 2d 404, 414, 563 N. E. 2d 397, 401 (1990) (same); Green Oil 

Co. v. Hornsby, 539 So. 2d 218, 222 (Ala. 1989) (same); Masaki v. 

General Motors Corp., 71 Haw. 1, 6, 780 P. 2d 566, 570 (1989) (same); 

see also Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532 

U. S. 424, 432 (2001) (punitive damages are “intended to punish the

defendant and to deter future wrongdoing”); State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U. S. 408, 416 (2003) (“[P]unitive damages . . . are aimed at deterrence and retribution”); 4 Restatement §908,

Comment a. 10These standards are from the torts context; different standards 

apply to other causes of action. 
 

20 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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 §500, Comment a, pp. 587–588 (1964) (“Recklessness

may consist of either of two different types of conduct. In 

one the actor knows, or has reason to know . . . of facts 

which create a high degree of risk of . . . harm to another,

and deliberately proceeds to act, or to fail to act, in conscious disregard of, or indifference to, that risk. In the 

other the actor has such knowledge, or reason to know, of 

the facts, but does not realize or appreciate the high degree of risk involved, although a reasonable man in his 

position would do so”). Action taken or omitted in order to 

augment profit represents an enhanced degree of punishable culpability, as of course does willful or malicious

action, taken with a purpose to injure. See 4 id., §908, 

Comment e, p. 466 (1979) (“In determining the amount of 

punitive damages, . . . the trier of fact can properly consider not merely the act itself but all the circumstances

including the motives of the wrongdoer . . .”); cf. Alaska 

Stat. §09.17.020(g) (2006) (higher statutory limit applies 

where conduct was motivated by financial gain and its

adverse consequences were known to the defendant); Ark.

Code Ann. §16–55–208(b) (2005) (statutory limit does not 

apply where the defendant intentionally pursued a course 

of conduct for the purpose of causing injury or damage). 

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, 517 

U. S. 559, 582 (1996) (“A higher ratio may also be justified 

in cases in which the injury is hard to detect”), or when

the value of injury and the corresponding compensatory 

award are small (providing low incentives to sue), see, e.g., 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 21 

Opinion of the Court 

ibid. (“[L]ow awards of compensatory damages may properly support a higher ratio . . . if, for example, a particularly egregious act has resulted in only a small amount of 

economic damages”); 4 Restatement §908, Comment c, p.

465 (“Thus an award of nominal damages . . . is enough to 

support a further award of punitive damages, when a tort,

. . . is committed for an outrageous purpose, but no significant harm has resulted”). And, with a broadly analogous

object, some regulatory schemes provide by statute for 

multiple recovery in order to induce private litigation to 

supplement official enforcement that might fall short if 

unaided. See, e.g., Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 

344 (1979) (discussing antitrust treble damages). 

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 and Packaging Co. 

v. Cox, 232 Neb. 846, 857, 443 N. W. 2d 566, 574 (1989) 

(per curiam). Four others permit punitive damages only

when authorized by statute: Louisiana, Massachusetts,

and Washington as a matter of common law, and New 

Hampshire by statute codifying common law tradition.

See Ross v. Conoco, 2002–0299, p. 14 (La. 10/15/02), 828 

So. 2d 546, 555; Flesner v. Technical Communications 

Corp., 410 Mass. 805, 813, 575 N. E. 2d 1107, 1112 (1991); 

Fisher Properties v. Arden-Mayfair, Inc., 106 Wash. 2d 

826, 852, 726 P. 2d 8, 23 (1986); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann.

§507:16 (1997); see also Fay v. Parker, 53 N. H. 342, 382 

(1872). Michigan courts recognize only exemplary damages supportable as compensatory, rather than truly

punitive, see Peisner v. Detroit Free Press, Inc., 104 Mich. 

App. 59, 68, 304 N. W. 2d 814, 817 (1981), while Connecticut courts have limited what they call punitive recovery to

the “expenses of bringing the legal action, including attor-
 

 

22 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

ney’s fees, less taxable costs,” Larsen Chelsey Realty Co. v. 

Larsen, 232 Conn. 480, 517, n. 38, 656 A. 2d 1009, 1029, n. 

38 (1995).

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, 499 U. S. 

1, 15 (1991); see also Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg, 512 U. S. 

415, 421–426 (1994).11 Many States have gone further by

imposing statutory limits on punitive awards, in the form

of absolute monetary caps, see, e.g., Va. Code Ann. §8.01–

38.1 (Lexis 2007) ($350,000 cap), a maximum ratio of

punitive to compensatory damages, see, e.g., Ohio Rev. 

Code Ann. §2315.21(D)(2)(a) (Lexis 2001) (2:1 ratio in most 

tort cases), or, frequently, some combination of the two, 

see, e.g., Alaska Stat. §09.17.020(f) (2006) (greater of 3:1

ratio or $500,000 in most actions). The States that rely on

a multiplier have adopted a variety of ratios, ranging from

5:1 to 1:1.12 

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: 

—————— 

11A like procedure was followed in this case, without objection. 12See, 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 cases of intentional and 

malicious conduct); §9.1(D) (no limit where the conduct is intentional, 

malicious, and life threatening). 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 23 

Opinion of the Court 

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-code 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, e.g., Gotanda, 

Charting Developments Concerning Punitive Damages: Is 

the Tide Changing? 45 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 507, 514,

518, 528 (2007) (noting refusals to enforce judgments by 

Japanese, Italian, and German courts, positing that such

refusals may be on the decline, but concluding, “American

parties should not anticipate smooth sailing when seeking 

to have a domestic punitive damages award recognized

and enforced in other countries”). 
 

24 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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,13 by most accounts the median 

ratio of punitive to compensatory awards has remained 

—————— 

13See, 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); M. Peterson, S. Sarma, & M. 

Shanley, Punitive Damages: Empirical Findings 15 (RAND Institute for 

Civil Justice 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 damage award in civil jury trials decreased between

1992 and 2001). 
 

 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 25 

Opinion of the Court 

less than 1:1.14 Nor do the data substantiate a marked 

increase in the percentage of cases with punitive awards

over the past several decades.15 The figures thus show an

overall restraint and suggest that in many instances a 

—————— 

14See, 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). 15See, 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 damage 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 damage 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, & Talarico, 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 (1998) 

(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)). 
 

 

26 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

high ratio of punitive to compensatory damages is substantially greater than necessary to punish or deter. 

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 available 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 269.16 

Even to those of us unsophisticated in statistics, the

thrust of these figures is clear: the spread is great, and the 

outlier cases subject defendants to punitive damages that

dwarf the corresponding compensatories. The distribution 

of awards is narrower, but still remarkable, among punitive damages assessed by judges: the median ratio is

0.66:1, the mean ratio is 1.60:1, and the standard deviation is 4.54. Ibid. Other studies of some of the same data 

show that fully 14% of punitive awards in 2001 were 

greater than four times the compensatory damages, see 

Cohen 5, with 18% of punitives in the 1990s more than

trebling the compensatory damages, see Ostrom, Rottman,

& Goerdt, A Step Above Anecdote: A Profile of the Civil 

—————— 

16This 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 and the study did “not rely on litigants or third parties to report.” Ibid. 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 27 

Opinion of the Court 

Jury in the 1990s, 79 Judicature 233, 240 (1996). And a 

study of “financial injury” cases using a different data set 

found that 34% of the punitive awards were greater than

three times the corresponding compensatory damages. 

Financial Injury Jury Verdicts 333. 

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., 509 U. S. 443, 457–458 

(1993) (plurality opinion). But anecdotal evidence suggests that nothing of that sort is going on. One of our own 

leading cases on punitive damages, with a $4 million 

verdict by an Alabama jury, noted that a second Alabama

case with strikingly similar facts produced “a comparable

amount of compensatory damages” but “no punitive damages at all.” See Gore, 517 U. S., at 565, n. 8. As the 

Supreme Court of Alabama candidly explained, “the disparity between the two jury verdicts . . . [w]as a reflection 

of the inherent uncertainty of the trial process.” BMW of 

North America, Inc. v. Gore, 646 So. 2d 619, 626 (1994) 

(per curiam). We are aware of no scholarly work pointing 

to consistency across punitive awards in cases involving 

similar claims and circumstances.17 

—————— 

17The 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, & 
 

 

 

28 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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, 538 U. S. 408, 

425 (2003); Gore, 517 U. S., at 574–575. Although “we

have consistently rejected the notion that the constitutional line is marked by a simple mathematical formula,” 

id., at 582, we have determined that “few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory 

damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process,” 

State Farm, 538 U. S., at 425; “[w]hen compensatory 

damages are substantial, then a lesser ratio, perhaps only

equal to compensatory damages, can reach the outermost 

limit of the due process guarantee,” ibid. 

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, 499 U. S., at 7 (fraud under Alabama law).

These, as state-law cases, could provide no occasion to 

consider a “common-law standard of excessiveness,” 

—————— 

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. 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 29 

Opinion of the Court 

Browning-Ferris Industries, 492 U. S., at 279, and the only

matter of federal law within our appellate authority was

the constitutional due process issue.

Our review of punitive damages today, then, considers

not their intersection with the Constitution, but the desirability of regulating them as a common law remedy for 

which responsibility lies with this Court as a source of 

judge-made law in the absence of statute. Whatever may

be the constitutional significance of the unpredictability of 

high punitive awards, this feature of happenstance is in

tension with the function of the awards as punitive, just 

because of the implication of unfairness that an eccentrically high punitive verdict carries in a system whose

commonly held notion of law rests on a sense of fairness in

dealing with one another. Thus, a penalty should be 

reasonably predictable in its severity, so that even Justice 

Holmes’s “bad man” can look ahead with some ability to 

know what the stakes are in choosing one course of action 

or another. See The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 

457, 459 (1897). And when the bad man’s counterparts 

turn up from time to time, the penalty scheme they face 

ought to threaten them with a fair probability of suffering 

in like degree when they wreak like damage. Cf. Koon v. 

United States, 518 U. S. 81, 113 (1996) (noting the need “to

reduce unjustified disparities” in criminal sentencing “and

so reach toward the evenhandedness and neutrality that 

are the distinguishing marks of any principled system of 

justice”). The common sense of justice would surely bar 

penalties that reasonable people would think excessive for 

the harm caused in the circumstances. 

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 
 

30 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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 relationship to the 

compensatory damages awarded.” Bowden v. Caldor, Inc., 

350 Md. 4, 25–39, 710 A. 2d 267, 277–284 (1998). Alabama has seven general criteria, such as “actual or likely 

harm [from the defendant’s conduct],” “degree of reprehensibility,” and “[i]f the wrongful conduct was profitable 

to the defendant.” Green Oil Co. v. Hornsby, 539 So. 2d 

218, 223–224 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted).

But see McClain v. Metabolife Int’l, Inc., 259 F. Supp. 2d

1225, 1236 (ND Ala. 2003) (noting but not deciding claim

that post-trial review under Green Oil “is unconstitutionally vague and inadequate”).

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, 336 Md. 145, 185, 647 A. 2d 405, 

424–425 (1994), juries may be instructed that 

“An 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 
 

 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 31 

Opinion of the Court 

considering “the character and degree of the wrong as 

shown by the evidence in the case, and the necessity of 

preventing similar wrongs.” 1 Ala. Pattern Jury Instr.,

Civil, No. §23.21 (Supp. 2007).

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. “[P]unitive damages advance the interests of punishment and deterrence,

which are also among the interests advanced by the criminal law.” Browning-Ferris Industries, 492 U. S., at 275.18 

See also 1977 Restatement §908, Comment a, at 464 

(purposes of punitive damages are “the same” as “that of a

fine imposed after a conviction of a crime”); 18 U. S. C.

§3553(a)(2) (requiring sentencing courts to consider, inter 

—————— 

18This observation is not at odds with the holding in BrowningFerris, that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment does 

not apply to punitive damages. See Browning-Ferris, 492 U. S., at 275. 

That conclusion did not reject the punitive nature of the damages, see 

ibid., but rested entirely upon our conviction that “the concerns that

animate the Eighth Amendment” were about “plac[ing] limits on the 

steps a government may take against an individual,” ibid. Thus the 

Clause “does not constrain an award of money damages in a civil suit

when the government neither has prosecuted the action nor has any

right to receive a share of the damages awarded.” Id., at 264. We 

noted the similarities of purpose between criminal penalties and

punitive damages and distinguished the two on the basis of their

differing levels of state involvement. See id., at 275. 
 

 

32 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

alia, “the need for the sentence imposed . . . to provide just 

punishment for the offense” and “to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct”); United States Sentencing

Commission, Guidelines Manual §1A1.1, comment. (Nov.

2007).

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.”19 Instead it became a system of detailed 

guidelines tied to exactly quantified sentencing results,

under the authority of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, 

18 U. S. C. §3551 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. V). 

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 that as long “as there are no punitivedamages guidelines, corresponding to the federal and state

sentencing guidelines, it is inevitable that the specific 

amount of punitive damages awarded whether by a judge 

or by a jury will be arbitrary.” Mathias v. Accor Economy 

Lodging, Inc., 347 F. 3d 672, 678 (CA7 2003). 

—————— 

19Nagel, Structuring Sentencing Discretion: The New Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 80 J. Crim. L. & C. 883, 895–899 (1990) (citing

studies and congressional hearings). 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 33 

Opinion of the Court 

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 22, 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, 462 U. S. 523, 546–547 

(1983) (declining to adopt a fixed formula to account for

inflation in discounting future wages to present value, in

light of the unpredictability of inflation rates and variation among lost-earnings cases).

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 
 

34 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

many States have adopted, see supra, at 22, 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. §284.20 And of course the potential

relevance of the ratio between compensatory and punitive 

damages is indisputable, being a central feature in our 

due process analysis. See, e.g., State Farm, 538 U. S., at 

425; Gore, 517 U. S., at 580. 

Still, some will murmur that this smacks too much of 

policy and too little of principle. Cf. Moviecolor Ltd. v. 

Eastman Kodak Co., 288 F. 2d 80, 83 (CA2 1961). But the 

answer rests on the fact that we are acting here in the

position of a common law court of last review, faced with a 

perceived defect in a common law remedy. Traditionally,

courts have accepted primary responsibility for reviewing

punitive damages and thus for their evolution, and if, in

the absence of legislation, judicially derived standards

leave the door open to outlier punitive-damages awards, it

is hard to see how the judiciary can wash its hands of a 

problem it created, simply by calling quantified standards 

legislative. See State Farm, supra, at 438 (GINSBURG, J., 

dissenting) (“In a legislative scheme or a state high court’s

design to cap punitive damages, the handiwork in setting 

single-digit and 1-to-1 benchmarks could hardly be questioned”); 2 ALI Reporters’ Study 257 (recommending adoption of ratio, “probably legislatively, although possibly 

judicially”).

History certainly is no support for the notion that judges 

—————— 

20There 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). 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 35 

Opinion of the Court 

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, Limitations of Actions §1, p. 4 (4th 

ed. 1916). For more examples, see 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 451 (1765) (listing

other common law age cut-offs 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 425.21 

—————— 

21To the extent that JUSTICE STEVENS suggests that the very subject

of remedies should be treated as congressional in light of the number of 

statutes dealing with remedies, see post, at 1–4 (opinion concurring in 

part and dissenting in part), we think modern-day maritime cases 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., 476 

U. S. 858, 865 (1986), accounts for the large part we have taken in 

working out the governing maritime tort principles. See, e.g., ibid.

(“recognizing products liability . . . as part of the general maritime

law”); American Export Lines, Inc. v. Alvez, 446 U. S. 274 (1980) (recognizing cause of action for loss of consortium); Moragne v. States Marine 

Lines, Inc., 398 U. S. 375 (1970) (recognizing cause of action for wrongful death). And for the very reason that our exercise of maritime 

jurisdiction has reached to creating new causes of action on more than

one occasion, it follows that we have a free hand in dealing with an

issue that is “entirely a remedial matter.” Id., at 382. The general 

observation we made in United States v. Reliable Transfer Co., 421 

U. S. 397, 409 (1975), when we abrogated the admiralty rule of divided 

damages in favor of proportional liability, is to the point here. It is 

urged “that the creation of a new rule of damages in maritime collision 

cases is a task for Congress and not for this Court. But the Judiciary 
 

36 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

Although the legal landscape is well populated with 

examples of ratios and multipliers expressing policies of 

retribution and deterrence, most of them suffer from 

features that stand in the way of borrowing them as paradigms of reasonable limitations suited for application to 

—————— 

has traditionally taken the lead in formulating flexible and fair remedies in the law maritime, and Congress has largely left to this Court 

the responsibility for fashioning the controlling rules of admiralty law”

(internal quotation marks and footnote omitted). See also Exxon Co., 

U. S. A. v. Sofec, Inc., 517 U. S. 830 (1996) (holding that proportionalliability rule applies only to defendants proximately causing an injury); 

McDermott, Inc. v. AmClyde, 511 U. S. 202 (1994) (adopting proportionate-fault rule for calculation of nonsettling maritime tort defendants’

compensatory liability). 

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. 

See K. Abraham, Forms and Functions of Tort Law 247–248 (3d ed. 

2007); see, e.g., Robins Dry Dock & Repair Co. v. Dahl, 266 U. S. 449 

(1925) (imposing rule in maritime context). But “[t]he courts have . . . 

occasionally created exceptions to the rule. Perhaps the most noteworthy involve cases in which there has been natural-resource damage for

which no party seems to have a cause of action.” Abraham, supra, at 

249 (discussing Union Oil Co. v. Oppen, 501 F. 2d 558 (CA9 1974)

(recognizing exception for commercial fishermen)). We raise the point

not to express agreement or disagreement with the Ninth Circuit rule 

but to illustrate the entirely judge-made nature of the landscape we are

surveying.

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., 498 U. S. 19, 27 (1990). But we may not slough off our responsibilities for common law remedies because Congress has not made a first 

move, and the absence of federal legislation constraining punitive

damages does not imply a congressional decision that there should be

no quantified rule, cf. Rapanos v. United States, 547 U. S. 715, 749 

(2006) (plurality opinion) (noting the Court’s “oft-expressed skepticism

towards reading the tea leaves of congressional inaction”). Where there 

is a need for a new remedial maritime rule, past precedent argues for 

our setting a judicially derived standard, subject of course to congressional revision. See, e.g., Reliable Transfer, supra, at 409. 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 37 

Opinion of the Court 

this case. While a slim majority of the States with a ratio

have adopted 3:1, others see fit to apply a lower one, see, 

e.g., Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13–21–102(1)(a) (2007) (1:1);

Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2315.21(D)(2)(a) (Lexis 2005) (2:1), 

and a few have gone higher, see, e.g., Mo. Ann. Stat. 

§510.265(1) (Supp. 2008) (5:1). Judgments may differ

about the weight to be given to the slight majority of 3:1

States, but one feature of the 3:1 schemes dissuades us 

from selecting it here. With a few statutory exceptions,

generally for intentional infliction of physical injury or 

other harm, see, e.g, Ala. Code §6–11–21(j) (2005); Ark.

Code Ann. §16–55–208(b) (2005), the States with 3:1 ratios

apply them across the board (as do other States using 

different fixed multipliers). That is, the upper limit is not 

directed to cases like this one, where the tortious action 

was worse than negligent but less than malicious,22 exposing the tortfeasor to certain regulatory sanctions and

inevitable damage actions;23 the 3:1 ratio in these States 

also applies to awards in quite different cases involving 

some of the most egregious conduct, including malicious

behavior and dangerous activity carried on for the purpose 

of increasing a tortfeasor’s financial gain.24 We confront, 

—————— 

22Although 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. 23We 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. 24Two 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 cases. See 

Alaska Stat. §09.17.020(g) (2006) (where the defendant’s conduct was 
 

38 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

instead, a case of reckless action, profitless to the tortfeasor, resulting in substantial recovery for substantial injury. Thus, a legislative judgment that 3:1 is a reasonable 

limit overall is not a judgment that 3:1 is a reasonable 

limit in this particular type of case. 

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);25 the relevance of the governing rules in patent or trademark cases, say, is doubtful at 

best. And in some instances, we know that the considerations that went into making a rule have no application

here. We know, for example, that Congress devised the

treble damages remedy for private antitrust actions with

an eye to supplementing official enforcement by inducing 

private litigation, which might otherwise have been too 

rare if nothing but compensatory damages were available 

at the end of the day. See, e.g., Reiter, 442 U. S., at 344. 

That concern has no traction here, in this case of stagger-

—————— 

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). 25See, 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 (trademark) (2000 ed. 

and Supp. V); 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). 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 39 

Opinion of the Court 

ing damage inevitably provoking governmental enforcers 

to indict and any number of private parties to sue. To 

take another example, although 18 U. S. C. §3571(d) 

provides for a criminal penalty of up to twice a crime

victim’s loss, this penalty is an alternative to other specific 

fine amounts which courts may impose at their option, see

§§3571(a)–(c), a fact that makes us wary of reading too

much into Congress’s choice of ratio in one provision. 

State environmental treble-damages schemes offer little 

more support: for one thing, insofar as some appear to

punish even negligence, see, e.g., Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 

130, §27, while others target only willful conduct, see, e.g.,

Del. Code Ann., Tit. 25, §1401 (1989), some undershoot 

and others may overshoot the target here. For another, 

while some States have chosen treble damages, others 

punish environmental harms at other multiples. See, e.g.,

N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §146–A:10 (2005) (damages of oneand-a-half times the harm caused to private property by

oil discharge); Minn. Stat. Ann. §115A.99 (2005) (civil

penalty of 2 to 5 times the costs of removing unlawful solid 

waste). All in all, the legislative signposts do not point the 

way clearly to 2:1 as a sound indication of a reasonable 

limit. 

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 25–26, and n. 14. We think it is 

fair to assume that the greater share of the verdicts studied in these comprehensive collections reflect reasonable

judgments about the economic penalties appropriate in 

their particular cases. 

These studies cover cases of the most as well as the least 
 

40 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

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 25–26, 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, 538 U. S., at 425 (ratio of 145:1); 

Gore, 517 U. S., at 582 (ratio of 500:1). On these assumptions, a median ratio of punitive to compensatory damages 

of about 0.65:126 probably marks the line near which cases 

like this one largely should be grouped. Accordingly, given 

the need to protect against the possibility (and the disruptive cost to the legal system) of awards that are unpredictable and unnecessary, either for deterrence or for measured retribution, we consider that a 1:1 ratio, which is 

above the median award, is a fair upper limit in such 

maritime cases.27 

—————— 

26See supra, at 25, n. 14, for the spread among studies. 27The reasons for this conclusion answer JUSTICE STEVENS’s sugges-
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 41 

Opinion of the Court 

The provision of the CWA respecting daily fines confirms our judgment that anything greater would be exces-

—————— 

tion, post, at 7–8, 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 of this sort. 

The dissent 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 4–6. 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 “[p]unitive 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., 453 U. S. 247, 266–267 (1981); 

see supra, at 18–19. Indeed, any argument for more generous punitive 

damages in maritime cases would call into question the maritime 

applicability of the constitutional limit on punitive damages as now 

understood, for we have tied that limit to a conception of punitive

damages awarded entirely for a punitive, not quasi-compensatory, 

purpose. See, e.g., Philip Morris USA v. Williams, 549 U. S. 346, 352 

(2007) (“This Court has long made clear that ‘[p]unitive damages may 

properly be imposed to further a State’s legitimate interests in punishing unlawful conduct and deterring its repetition’ ” (quoting Gore, 517 

U. S., at 568)); State Farm, 538 U. S., at 416 (“[P]unitive damages . . . 

are aimed at deterrence and retribution”); Cooper Industries, 532 U. S., 

at 432 (“[C]ompensatory damages and punitive damages . . . serve 

distinct purposes. The former are intended to redress the concrete 

loss that the plaintiff has suffered . . . . The latter . . . operate as 

‘private fines’ intended to punish the defendant and to deter future 

wrongdoing”). 
 

42 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of the Court 

sive here and in cases of this type. Congress set criminal

penalties of up to $25,000 per day for negligent violations

of pollution restrictions, and up to $50,000 per day for 

knowing ones. 33 U. S. C. §§1319(c)(1), (2). Discretion to 

double the penalty for knowing action compares to discretion to double the civil liability on conduct going beyond

negligence and meriting punitive treatment. And our 

explanation of the constitutional upper limit confirms that 

the 1:1 ratio is not too low. In State Farm, we said that a 

single-digit maximum is appropriate in all but the most 

exceptional of cases, and “[w]hen compensatory damages 

are substantial, then a lesser ratio, perhaps only equal to 

compensatory damages, can reach the outermost limit of 

the due process guarantee.” 538 U. S., at 425.28 

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, 236 F. Supp. 2d 1043, 1063 (D. Alaska 

2002). A punitive-to-compensatory ratio of 1:1 thus yields

maximum punitive damages in that amount.

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. 

—————— 

28The criterion of “substantial” takes into account the role of punitive

damages to induce 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. 
_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 1 

SCALIA, J., concurring 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 07–219 

EXXON SHIPPING COMPANY, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. 

GRANT BAKER ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[June 25, 2008] 

JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins,

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, 538 U. S. 408, 429 (2003) 

(SCALIA, J., dissenting). 
 

 

_________________ 

_________________ 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 1 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order

that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 07–219 

EXXON SHIPPING COMPANY, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. 

GRANT BAKER ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[June 25, 2008] 

JUSTICE STEVENS, 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 16 (quoting Edmonds v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 443 U. S. 256, 259 (1979)), it is also

statutory law to a great extent; indeed, “[m]aritime tort

law is now dominated by federal statute.” Miles v. Apex 

Marine Corp., 498 U. S. 19, 36 (1990). For that reason, 

when we are faced with a choice between performing the

traditional task of appellate judges reviewing the acceptability of an award of punitive damages, on the one hand, 

and embarking on a new lawmaking venture, on the other,

we “should carefully consider whether [we], or a legislative 

body, are better equipped to perform the task at hand.” 

Boyle v. United Technologies Corp., 487 U. S. 500, 531 

(1988) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). 

Evidence that Congress has affirmatively chosen not to 

restrict the availability of a particular remedy favors 
 

 

2 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

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., 498 

U. S., at 27, “an admiralty court must be vigilant not to

overstep the well-considered boundaries imposed by federal legislation.” In light of the many statutes governing 

liability under admiralty law, the absence of any limitation on an award of the sort at issue in this case suggests 

that Congress would not wish us to create a new rule 

restricting the liability of a wrongdoer like Exxon. 

For example, the Limitation of Shipowners’ Liability Act 

(Limitation Act), 46 U. S. C. App. §1831, a statute that has 

been part of the fabric of our law since 1851, provides in

relevant part: 

“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 onboard 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) 

—————— 

1The Limitation Act is now codified as amended at 46 U. S. C. 

§30505. See Pub. L. 109–304, §3, 120 Stat. 1513. 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

(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.2 Exxon evidently did not

invoke the protection of the Limitation Act because it

recognized the futility of attempting to establish that it

lacked “privity or knowledge” of Captain Hazelwood’s 

drinking.3 Although the existence of the Limitation Act 

does not resolve this case, the fact that Congress chose to 

provide such generous protection against liability without 

including a party like Exxon within that protection counsels against extending a similar benefit here. 

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 

—————— 

2See Lewis v. Lewis & Clark Marine, Inc., 531 U. S. 438, 446 (2001)

(“Admiralty and maritime law includes a host of special rights, duties, 

rules, and procedures. . . . Among these provisions is the Limitation 

Act. . . . The Act allows a vessel owner to limit liability for damage or

injury, occasioned without the owner’s privity or knowledge, to the 

value of the vessel or the owner’s interest in the vessel”); Coryell v. 

Phipps, 317 U. S. 406, 412 (1943) (“One who selects competent men to

store and inspect a vessel and who is not on notice as to the existence of

any defect cannot be denied the benefit of the limitation as respects a

loss incurred by an explosion during the period of storage, unless 

‘privity’ or ‘knowledge’ are to become empty words”). 3Testimony 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 alcohol by Captain Hazelwood.’ ” App. to Brief in 

Opposition 43a. 
 

 

4 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

restrict the availability of punitive damages.4 (Exxon

unsuccessfully argued that the TAPAA precluded punitive

damages at an earlier stage of this litigation, see App.

101–107.) And the Court today rightly decides that in 

passing the Clean Water Act, Congress did not displace or 

in any way diminish the availability of common-law punitive damages remedies. Ante, at 14–15. 

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, Admi-

—————— 

4Although 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, 944 F. 2d 577, 583 (CA9 1991) (“[W]e hold 

that TAPAA implicitly repealed the Limitation Act with regard to the 

transportation of trans-Alaska oil”). 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 5 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

ralty and Maritime Law §5–15 (4th ed. 2004),5 and, on the 

view of many courts, maritime law precludes recovery for

purely “economic losses . . . absent direct physical damage

to property or a proprietary interest,” 2 id., §14–7, at 124.6 

Under maritime law, then, more than in the land-tort 

context, punitive damages may serve to compensate for

certain sorts of intangible injuries not recoverable under 

the rubric of compensation.

We observed in Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman 

Tool Group, Inc., 532 U. S. 424, 437–438, n. 11 (2001): 

“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 

—————— 

5Schoenbaum 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.” §5–

15, p. 239. See also Gough v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of Am., 996 

F. 2d 763, 765 (CA5 1993) (purely emotional injuries are compensable 

under maritime law when maritime plaintiffs “satisfy the ‘physical

injury or impact rule’ ”). 6The latter limitation has its roots in the “dry dock doctrine” of Robins Dry Dock & Repair Co. v. Flint, 275 U. S. 303 (1927) (opinion for the 

Court by Holmes, J.). See Barber Lines A/S v. M/V Donau Maru, 764 

F. 2d 50 (CA1 1985) (opinion for the Court by Breyer, J.) (tracing the

history and purposes of the doctrine, and resolving to adhere to its 

rule); see also Louisiana v. M/V Testbank, 752 F. 2d 1019, 1020 (CA5

1985) (en banc) (affirming rule denying recovery for economic loss

absent “physical damage to a proprietary interest . . . in cases of unintentional maritime tort”). 
 

 

6 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

. . . 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.7 

—————— 

7See Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622, 665– 

666 (1994) (plurality opinion) (“As an institution . . . Congress is far

better equipped than the judiciary to amass and evaluate the vast

amounts of data bearing upon an issue as complex and dynamic as that

presented here” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Patsy v. Board of 

Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 513 (1982) (when “relevant policy considerations do not invariably point in one direction, and there is vehement 

disagreement over the validity of the assumptions underlying many of

them[, t]he very difficulty of these policy considerations, and Congress’ 

superior institutional competence to pursue this debate, suggest that 

legislative not judicial solutions are preferable”). 

The Court points to United States v. Reliable Transfer Co., 421 U. S. 

397 (1975), a case in which the Court adopted a rule of proportional 

liability in maritime tort cases, as an illustrative example of the Court’s

power to craft “flexible and fair remedies in the law maritime.” Id., at 

409. In that case, however, the Court noted that not only was the new 
 

 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 7 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

The Court concedes that although “American punitive

damages have been the target of audible criticism in recent decades,” “most recent studies tend to undercut much 

of [that criticism].” Ante, at 24. It further acknowledges 

that “[a] survey of the literature reveals that discretion to

award punitive damages has not mass-produced runaway

awards.” Ibid. The Court concludes that the real problem 

is large outlier awards, and the data seem to bear this out. 

But the Court never explains why abuse-of-discretion

review is not the precise antidote to the unfairness inherent in such excessive awards. 

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-ofdiscretion standard,’” Cooper Industries, Inc., 532 U. S., at 

433; see also Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U. S. 

1, 15 (1991) (“Under the traditional common-law approach, the amount of the punitive award is initially 

determined by a jury instructed to consider the gravity of

the wrong and the need to deter similar wrongful conduct. 

The jury’s determination is then reviewed by trial and

appellate courts to ensure that it is reasonable”). 

On an abuse-of-discretion standard, I am persuaded 

that a reviewing court should not invalidate this award.8 

—————— 

proportional liability rule not barred by any “statutory or judicial

precept,” but also that its adoption would “simply bring recovery for 

property damage in maritime collision cases into line with the rule of 

admiralty law long since established by Congress for personal injury

cases.” Ibid. By contrast, the Court in this case has failed to demonstrate that adoption of the rule it announces brings the maritime law 

into line with expressions of congressional intent in this (or any other) 

context. 8The idiosyncratic posture of this case makes true abuse-of-discretion

appellate review something of a counterfactual, since the $5 billion 
 

 

 

8 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of STEVENS, J. 

In light of Exxon’s decision to permit a lapsed alcoholic to

command a supertanker carrying tens of millions of gallons of crude oil through the treacherous waters of Prince

William Sound, thereby endangering all of the individuals 

who depended upon the sound for their livelihoods, the

jury could reasonably have given expression to its “moral

condemnation” of Exxon’s conduct in the form of this 

award. Cooper Industries, Inc., 532 U. S., at 432. 

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., 398 U. S. 375, 387 

(1970) (quoting Chief Justice Chase in The Sea Gull, 21 

F. Cas. 909, 910 (CC Md. 1865)). 

* * * 

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. 

—————— 

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. 472 F. 3d 600 (2006) (per curiam). 

Suffice it to say, for now, that although the constitutional limits and 

the abuse-of-discretion standard are not identical, in this case the $2.5 

billion the Ninth Circuit believed survived de novo constitutional 

scrutiny would, in my judgment, also satisfy abuse-of-discretion review. 
_________________ 

_________________ 

 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 1 

Opinion of GINSBURG, J. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 07–219 

EXXON SHIPPING COMPANY, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. 

GRANT BAKER ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[June 25, 2008] 

JUSTICE GINSBURG, 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, 538 U. S. 408, 418–428 (2003) (reining in statecourt awards of punitive damages); BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559, 574–585 (1996) (same). 

The controversy here presented “arises under federal

maritime jurisdiction,” ante, at 28 (opinion of the Court), 

and, beyond question, “the Court possesses the power to 

craft the rule it announces today,” ante, at 8 (STEVENS, J., 

concurring in part and dissenting in part). The issue, 

therefore, is whether the Court, though competent to act,

should nevertheless leave the matter to Congress. The 

Court has explained, in its well stated and comprehensive 

opinion, why it has taken the lead. While recognizing that 

the question is close, I share JUSTICE STEVENS’ view that 

Congress is the better equipped decisionmaker.

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-
 

 

2 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of GINSBURG, J. 

court, and then appellate-court review, to ensure that [the 

award] is reasonable.” Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 

499 U. S. 1, 15 (1991). The Court acknowledges that the

traditional approach “has not mass-produced runaway 

awards,” ante, at 24, or endangered settlement negotiations, ante, at 25, n. 15. Nor has the Court asserted that 

outlier awards, insufficiently checked by abuse-ofdiscretion review, occur more often or are more problematic in maritime cases than in other areas governed by

federal law. 

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 20. What ratio 

will the Court set for defendants who acted maliciously or 

in pursuit of financial gain? See ante, at 37–38. 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 Hazelwood’s attempt to rock the boat off the reef.

See ante, at 4 (opinion of the Court); cf. TXO Production 

Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp., 509 U. S. 443, 460–462 

(1993) (plurality opinion) (using potential loss to plaintiff 

as a guide in determining whether jury verdict was excessive). In the end, is the Court holding only that 1:1 is the

maritime-law ceiling, or is it also signaling that any ratio 

higher than 1:1 will be held to exceed “the constitutional 

outer limit”? See ante, at 42, n. 28. On next opportunity,

will the Court rule, definitively, that 1:1 is the ceiling due 

process requires in all of the States, and for all federal 

claims? 

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 
 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3 

Opinion of GINSBURG, J. 

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 damage limitation. Ante, at 6. 

* * * 

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. 
_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 1 

Opinion of BREYER, J. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 07–219 

EXXON SHIPPING COMPANY, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. 

GRANT BAKER ET AL. 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
 

APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
 

[June 25, 2008] 

JUSTICE BREYER, 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 assure 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 assure the uniform treatment of 

similarly situated persons. See BMW of North America, 

Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559, 587 (1996) (BREYER, J., concurring). Legal standards, however, can secure these objectives without the rigidity that an absolute fixed numerical 

ratio demands. In setting forth constitutional due process 

limits on the size of punitive damages awards, for example, we said that “few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio 

between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process.” State Farm Mut. 

Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U. S. 408, 425 (2003) 

(emphasis added). We thus foresaw exceptions to the 

numerical constraint. 

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 
 

 

2 EXXON SHIPPING CO. v. BAKER 

Opinion of BREYER, J. 

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 2. 

The jury thought that the facts here justified punitive

damages of $5 billion. See ante, at 6 (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.

296 F. Supp. 2d 1071, 1110 (D. Alaska 2004). And each 

time it concluded “that a $5 billion award was justified by 

the facts of this case,” based in large part on the fact that

“Exxon’s conduct was highly reprehensible,” and it reduced the award (slightly) only when the Court of Appeals

specifically demanded that it do so. Ibid.; see also id., at 

1075. 

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 472 F. 3d 600, 625 (CA9 2006) (per 

curiam). It specifically noted the “egregious” nature of

Exxon’s conduct. Ibid. And, apparently for that reason, it

believed that the facts of the case “justifie[d] a considerably higher ratio” than the 1:1 ratio we had applied in our 

most recent due process case and that the Court adopts

here. Ibid. 

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 
Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (2008) 3 

Opinion of BREYER, J. 

already represents a 50% reduction from the amount that 

the District Court strongly believed was appropriate. I 

would uphold it.