Opinion ID: 1695459
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Supreme Court of the United States was Mistaken Concerning the Adequacy of Hammond Review Procedures

Text: From my reading of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Haslip, I find it bottomed to a great degree on the independent review by the trial court and by this Court. In fact, Haslip's counsel argued in the Supreme Court that Alabama's procedures provided an independent review. [9] This decision, which overturns a judgment by the trial court in exercising that independent review, should be proof positive that this Court does not consider that the Hammond and Green Oil Co. standards authorize the type of independent review Haslip's counsel described to the United States Supreme Court, and that the procedure that Court called meaningful and adequate, ___ U.S. at ___, 111 S.Ct. at 1035, is neither meaningful nor adequate. Not only does this decision show that the Hammond and Green Oil Co. standards are inadequate, as I stated in a dissent in Haslip, 553 So.2d at 544, but the principles of law contained in this decision are a harbinger of what is to follow. If the legislature cannot say that a jury's verdict is not presumed to be correct, can it say that a verdict cannot exceed $250,000? If the legislature cannot say a jury's verdict is not presumed to be correct, how can it regulate the award of such damages in any particular? Is this Court the only branch of government that can regulate the award of punitive damages? The decision raises each of these questions, and we can be sure that they will be presented in future cases. The least that the decision shows is that the procedures this Court adopted in Hammond and Green Oil Co., and which to a large degree are the basis for the Supreme Court's affirmance of Haslip, will not protect the constitutional rights of defendants to due process of law, because the trial judge in this case, following the very procedures that this Court said were sufficient to protect a defendant's due process rights, and the same procedure the Supreme Court of the United States in Haslip stated ensures meaningful and adequate review, found, under the facts of this case, that an award of any punitive damages was inappropriate.