Opinion ID: 1927554
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Standard for Imposition of Punitive Damages

Text: The concept of punitive damages embodies a rule for individualized punishment of a wrongdoer whose conduct toward the plaintiff is particularly outrageous. Collins v. Eli Lilly Co., 116 Wis. 2d 166, 202, 342 N.W. 2d 37, 54, cert. denied sub nom. E.R. Squibb & Sons, Inc. v. Collins, ___ U.S. ___, 105 S.Ct. 107, 83 L.Ed. 2d 51 (1984). If the manufacturer displays such a conscious and outrageous indifference to the risks of marketing, manufacturing, or producing its product, then punitive damages should be awarded. This indifference should equate with something more significant than willful and wanton conduct, a concept that our law has not sharply defined. See Krauth v. Israel Geller, 31 N.J. 270, 277 (1960). [2] I recognize that the use of any verbal formula does not convey with unerring accuracy the concept that we wish to impart. To this extent, we are trapped in the language of the law. Commentators have pessimistically characterized such verbal variations as negligence `with the addition of a vituperative epithet,' Ellis, Fairness and Efficiency in the Law of Punitive Damages, 56 S.Cal.L.Rev. 1, 36 (1982) (quoting Wilson v. Brett, 152 Eng. Rep. 737, 739 (Ex.Ch. 1842)). Still we must try to give content to the phrase that we choose to impart the degree of failure of conduct that will warrant imposition of the sanction of punitive damages. I believe that the phrase conscious indifference to the risks of marketing the product will convey the requirement that the manufacturer was aware of the risk at the time the product was marketed. This concept conveys an indifference to human values that I regard as essential to the imposition of punitive damages. [T]he thing that outrages the juries in those cases is precisely the notion of the defendant manufacturer supposedly using consumers in the instrumentalist fashion for dollars. Symposium Discussion, supra, 56 S.Cal.L.Rev. at 158. Such conduct is an insult to the personal well-being of the victim equivalent to that which prompted the early development of the doctrine. Punitive-damages awards are acceptable when the indifference and disregard exhibited by the manufacturer, who sees the consumer as a human test laboratory, constitute an affront to the dignity of the individual. See, e.g., Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co., 119 Cal. App. 3d 757, 174 Cal. Rptr. 348 (1981) ($3,500,000 punitive-damages award, which had been reduced from $125 million, upheld for marketing Ford Pinto with inherently dangerous gas tank when avoidance would have involved minimal costs). I agree with the majority that in a products-liability action the concept of election of remedies does not preclude the imposition of punitive damages. In such an action, the plaintiff is relieved of the burden of proving knowledge of the dangerous propensity of the product, Freund v. Cellofilm Properties, Inc., supra, 87 N.J. at 244, but is not precluded from demonstrating in the risk-utility analysis that the manufacturer made a conscious choice to expose users to an unreasonable risk of harm that could have been avoided or minimized with a slight burden to the utility of the product. In presenting the differing standards of conduct to a jury a court will confront some difficulties, but such difficulties will not be insurmountable.