Opinion ID: 2067270
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Overkill

Text: The District Court for the Northern District of California was quite correct in stating that the intention of punitive damages awards is to sting, not kill, a defendant. . . . [17] In re Northern District of California Dalkon Shield IUD Products Liability Litigation, 526 F.Supp. 887 (N.D.Cal. 1981), vacated on other grounds, 693 F.2d 847, 899 (9th Cir. 1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1171, 103 S.Ct. 817, 74 L.Ed.2d 1015 (1983). But if the defendant's conduct was so reckless, and injured so many people, that the effect of the damages awarded against it is bankruptcy, we are hard-pressed to understand why that defendant should not be required to live with the consequences of its actions. We agree with the reasoning of the Illinois Court of Appeals in Froud v. Celotex Corp., 107 Ill.App.3d 654, 658, 63 Ill.Dec. 261, 264, 437 N.E.2d 910, 913 (1982): [W]e do not believe that defendants should be relieved of liability for punitive damages merely because, through outrageous conduct, they have managed to seriously injure a large number of persons. Such a rule would encourage wrongdoers to continue their misconduct because, if they kept it up long enough to injure a large number of people, they could escape all liability for punitive damages. See also State ex rel. Young v. Crookham, supra, 290 Or. at 66, 618 P.2d at 1271 ([F]inancial interests of the malicious and wanton wrongdoer must be considered in the context of societal concern for the injured and future protection of society). Nor is it an answer to say that because a series of punitive damages awards may bankrupt a defendant, so that some future plaintiffs will be deprived of a damages recovery, [18] all plaintiffs should be foreclosed from recovering punitive damages. For the eventuality (bankruptcy) might never occur, in which case all plaintiffs would needlessly have been deprived of the option of obtaining punitive damages, and the objective of deterring reckless marketing practices would have needlessly been forgone. [19] See Wangen v. Ford Motor Co., supra, 97 Wis.2d at 291-92, 294 N.W.2d at 454 (Ford would solve the inequity of awarding punitive damages to some plaintiffs by having this court eliminate all punitive damages and by having us allow the wrong-doer to go unpunished). Although we agree with the Roginsky court's observation that it is indeed unfortunate when a subsequent plaintiff is unable to obtain relief because the defendant's assets have been exhausted by prior verdicts, this possibility is neither unique to products liability actions nor sufficient to persuade us that defendants in products liability actions should enjoy a windfall while potential plaintiffs suffer the deprivation of a right to which they would otherwise be entitled. We therefore conclude that the problems outlined by Judge FRIENDLY in Roginsky do not outweigh the needed deterrent effect that punitive damages may provide.