Court to Revive Issue of Large Punitive Damages : Law: The justices have struggled with recent rulings on awards that far exceed actual losses. This case involves a $5-million judgment against Honda.

The Supreme Court announced Friday that it would once again consider the constitutionality of a huge award of punitive damages, this time $5 million to an Oregon man who was badly injured when his Honda all-terrain vehicle overturned.

The ruling, expected by summer, likely will confirm that lower court judges must review punitive verdicts to ensure that they are not excessive.

That alone would be an important victory for business lawyers, but it would not necessarily change the practice in most states.

Unlike in other states, the Oregon Supreme Court has said that it will not reduce a punitive damages verdict as long as the jurors were properly instructed that such an award should be imposed only for “wanton and willful wrongdoing.”

In two recent decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has suggested that state judges must carefully review large punitive verdicts.

In their appeals, lawyers for Honda said that the hands-off approach adopted by the Oregon courts violated the company’s right to due process of law. By agreeing to hear the case (Honda Motor Corp. vs. Oberg, 93-644), the high court renewed a nearly decade-long legal struggle over the constitutionality of punitive damages.

Several members of the court, led by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, are convinced that punitive damages should be reined in. But a majority has been unable to agree on a formula.

Instead, they voted to uphold multimillion-dollar punitive verdicts in 1989, 1991 and 1993, leading to predictions among some corporate attorneys that Congress or the state legislatures would have to handle the issue.

Unlike compensatory damages, which repay victims for their losses, punitive damages are intended to punish a malicious or deceitful company. In product liability cases, however, these damages also have been awarded in the case of injuries caused by products that were poorly designed.

The Oregon case began when Karl Oberg tried to ride his three-wheeled vehicle up a steep embankment. The 325-pound machine flipped over backward and fell on Oberg. He suffered broken facial bones and some brain damage.

A jury awarded him $735,000 in compensatory damages and tacked on $5 million to punish Honda for a “wanton disregard for the health and safety” of its customers. The company’s lawyers said that the punitive award should be overturned as unfair and unjustified.

Two other appeals were granted during an unusual Friday afternoon orders list as the court agreed to decide:

* Whether a state can restrict an accountant’s right to advertise her expertise (Ibanez vs. Florida, 93-639). Although the high court has said that lawyers and accountants have a free-speech right to advertise, Florida law has prohibited such ads and the Florida courts upheld a sanction against a lawyer-accountant who advertised her specialized training.

* Whether the government can force coal operators to pay black-lung benefits to former miners when it is not clear that mining caused their lung problems (Labor Department vs. Greenwich Collieries, 93-744).