Opinion ID: 2566656
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: analysis limited to activity in utah

Text: ¶ 13 While authorizing us to determine the amount of the punitive damages award, the Supreme Court leashed us more tightly to the established analytical guideposts of Gore in two ways: by narrowing the scope of relevant evidence which we may consider in evaluating the reprehensibility of State Farm's conduct, and by providing more detailed guidance for determining the relationship between compensatory and punitive damages. Campbell II, 538 U.S. at 419-22, 424-28, 123 S.Ct. 1513. ¶ 14 The Supreme Court chided us for basing our reinstatement of the jury's $145 million punitive damages award on State Farm's nationwide policies rather than for the conduct direct [sic] toward the Campbells. Id. at 420, 123 S.Ct. 1513. The Supreme Court found impermissible our reliance on State Farm's conduct outside Utah in measuring the reprehensibility of the company's conduct. Id. at 421, 123 S.Ct. 1513. Drawing on views expressed in Gore, the Supreme Court limited evidence that can properly be weighed in the reprehensibility scale to behavior which took place within our borders and was directed at the Campbells. Id. at 421-22, 123 S.Ct. 1513. We are mindful that it was our consideration of irrelevant extra-territorial evidence concerning reprehensibility which attracted most of the Supreme Court's criticism in Campbell II. We therefore reevaluate State Farm's conduct based solely on its behavior that affected the Campbells and took place within Utah. ¶ 15 The Supreme Court stopped well short, however, of punctuating its disagreement with the evidence we considered in our analysis by pinning State Farm's behavior to a particular location along the reprehensibility continuum. It instead simply issued the mandate that a more modest punishment for this reprehensible conduct could have satisfied the State's legitimate objectives, and the Utah courts should have gone no further. Id. at 419-20, 123 S.Ct. 1513. ¶ 16 Had the Supreme Court injected into Campbell II its own conclusive findings concerning the degree of State Farm's blameworthiness, it would have announced a federal standard measuring reprehensibility. By creating such a national reprehensibility standard, however, the Supreme Court would have collided with its own rationale for limiting the scope of relevant reprehensibility evidence to intra-state conduct. The Supreme Court's rejection of our consideration of State Farm's conduct in other states was grounded in the recognition that much of the out-of-state conduct was lawful where it occurred. Id. at 422, 123 S.Ct. 1513. The Supreme Court respected states' autonomy to make policy choices about the lawfulness of human and corporate behavior within their own borders, and used that deference to justify disallowing out-of-state conduct as an indicator of reprehensibility. ¶ 17 Just as behavior may be unlawful or tortious in one state and not in another, the degree of blameworthiness assigned to conduct may also differ among the states. As long as the Supreme Court stands by its view that punitive damages serve a legitimate means to satisfy a state's objectives to punish and deter behavior which it deems unlawful or tortious based on its own values and traditions, it would seemingly be bound to avoid creating and imposing on the states a nationwide code of personal and corporate behavior. ¶ 18 In this instance, we find the blameworthiness of State Farm's behavior toward the Campbells to be several degrees more offensive than the Supreme Court's less than condemnatory view that State Farm's behavior merits no praise. Id. at 419, 123 S.Ct. 1513. We reach this conclusion after applying the relevant reprehensibility standards to the facts approved for consideration of State Farm's reprehensibility in Campbell II, and in light of Utah's values and traditions. We now turn to explaining how we exercised the discretion granted us by the Supreme Court to award the Campbells $9,018,780.75 in punitive damages.