Opinion ID: 783131
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Civil or criminal penalties

Text: 102 Comparing the punitive damages award and the civil or criminal penalties that could be imposed for comparable misconduct provides a third indicium of excessiveness. BMW, 517 U.S. at 583, 116 S.Ct. 1589. In both BMW and State Farm, the Court concluded that the maximum fine that could be imposed for the conduct at issue was $10,000. 517 U.S. at 584, 116 S.Ct. 1589,. The Court found that the $2 million award in BMW was substantially greater than the statutory fines available, 517 U.S. at 584, 116 S.Ct. 1589, and that the civil fine in State Farm was dwarfed by the $145 million punitive damages award, ___ U.S. at ___, 123 S.Ct. at 1526. 103 As we held in Swinton, however, [t]here are no `civil penalties' for the type of conduct for which [the appellants were] held liable in this case. 270 F.3d at 820. In assessing the punitive damage award at issue in Swinton, we noted that Congress had imposed a $300,000 punitive damage cap for violations of Title VII, reasoning that this damage cap represented a legislative judgment similar to the imposition of a civil fine. Id. at 820. 104 The discrepancy between the $10,000 fines and multimillion dollar awards at issue in BMW and State Farm is far greater than that between the $300,000 Title VII cap and the $2,600,000 award at issue here. In addition, as we underscored in Swinton, Congress has not seen fit to impose any recovery caps in cases under § 1981 ..., although it has ample opportunity to do so. Id. And, as we noted in Swinton, that one BMW guidepost may indicate that a particular award raises BMW -type concerns does not prove that award to be constitutionally excessive. Thus, as we did in Swinton, see id., we hold that, on balance, the punitive damages award here did not violate due process. The conduct of the corporate defendants was highly reprehensible, and the punitive award exceeded the compensatory award only by a single-digit multiplier. Thus, although the punitive damages cap established for an analogous statute, Title VII, is substantially lower than the award here, the discrepancy is not nearly so great as in BMW or State Farm. Accordingly, we will not disturb the jury's award of punitive damages. 15