Size of Punitive Damages Is Justified, Legal Experts Say

The large punitive damages assessed against O.J. Simpson by a jury Monday vastly exceed the norms in cases in which someone has died, but legal experts said they thought the magnitude of the awards was justified because of the horrific nature of the acts involved.

“There is no other case I know of in which a murder of this brutality was proved in a civil case,” said Venice civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman, who frequently files punitive-damage actions.

Marie Sanoba of Jury Verdict Research said the $25 million is much higher than the damages normally awarded in civil cases arising out of a wrongful death. “It appears the jury thought his conduct was very reprehensible,” Sanoba said.

According to studies by her company, in California between 1989 and 1996 the median punitive-damages award for the wrongful death of a man 18 years or older was $287,500 and the highest was $3 million.

Both these figures pale compared with the $12.5-million punitive damages awarded to the parents of Ronald Lyle Goldman, who was killed June 12, 1994.

Similarly, the $12.5 million awarded to the estate of Nicole Brown Simpson, who was knifed to death the same evening, vastly overshadows amounts awarded in California wrongful-death cases for women 18 or over during the 1989-96 period. The median was $1,375,000 and the top award was $7.75 million.

Leo J. Terrell, a Los Angeles civil rights lawyer and Simpson friend, said the huge award is outrageous. “The amount, in essence, bankrupts Mr. Simpson, and the purpose of punitive damages is to punish, not to destroy,” Terrell said.

“They have now destroyed his ability to earn a living and raise his family,” Terrell said, adding that he thought it would be impossible for Simpson to post the requisite $50.25-million bond (1.5 times the amount of the total damage award of $33.5 million) needed to stay execution of the judgment pending appeal. Consequently, Terrell said, Simpson may have to take other steps, such as filing for bankruptcy. That would afford him some shelter from some creditors but would not discharge the damage awards.

But Santa Monica attorney Larry Feldman, considered one of the state’s top trial lawyers, said the magnitude of the damages was “not surprising” to him.”I would expect a jury who had concluded that O.J. Simpson murdered two innocent people to not only take away everything he has today, but everything that they could conceivably believe he will make in the future,” Feldman said.

At a post-trial news conference, one of the jurors said the panel wanted the huge award to serve as “a deterrent for other murderers.”

One female juror said: “We all felt Mr. Simpson has the potential to make a lot of money in the future. We didn’t buy the defense argument that he is washed up and worthless.”

Juror Stephen Strati said, “We came to the conclusion Mr. Simpson should not profit from the murders.”

A wide array of legal experts contacted Monday said they thought that a substantial portion of those damages would be sustained if Simpson challenges them, as is expected.

Feldman stressed that it is difficult to compare the size of these awards to those in other civil cases in which an individual has died in a plane crash or a car accident or because of a defective product.

He noted that the overwhelming bulk of those cases involve negligent conduct. Even when a jury found willful conduct, that decision did not follow a murder trial. There rarely are civil damage cases brought after criminal homicide trials because most of the defendants in those cases aren’t wealthy enough to make it worthwhile for someone to sue them for civil damages.

Loyola law professor Laurie Levenson concurred: “I think an appeals court will give this a thorough review, but I think the punitive damages will be upheld in substantial measure. An appeals court could say that this case is unique. We just don’t have many civil cases where someone is found liable for slitting two people’s throats.”

Simpson now faces total damages of $33.5 million, including the $8.5 million in compensatory damages awarded to Goldman’s parents last week. That is twice as much as the $15.7 million that the plaintiffs’ lawyers said Simpson was worth.

Levenson said she thought that trial Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki or an appeals court might reduce the punitive award to that figure--slightly more than 60% of the amount awarded by the jury.

In explaining how the panel reached the $25-million figure, juror Steve Strati cited the testimony offered by an expert witness that Simpson had the potential to earn $24.8 million from his name in the future. “That was the potential that we felt Mr. Simpson could make in the future,” Strati said.

The Heisman Trophy winner could appeal on the grounds that the punitive damages do not bear a reasonable relationship to his net worth--which his attorneys said was in the red even before the compensatory damages were awarded.

According to a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision, three factors are to be considered in assessing whether a punitive-damage award passes constitutional muster: the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct; the ratio of the punitive award to the underlying compensatory damages, and the civil or criminal penalties that could be imposed for the harm caused.

Strikingly, even attorneys and organizations that normally oppose large punitive awards said Monday that they think the jury’s decisions were justified.

“Based on U.S. Supreme Court decisions, historic statutes on liability and recent legislative trends, they are within the ballpark of acceptability,” said John L. Sullivan of the Assn. for California Tort Reform, an organization that regularly lobbies the California Legislature to limit the amount of punitive damages that can be awarded.

Sullivan said the total punitive award was about three times the compensatory damages the jury awarded. He said that the Supreme Court had upheld one large award with a 4-1 ratio and that several legislatures had set a 3-1 ratio as an acceptable benchmark.

Jeffery J. Carlson, a Santa Monica defense lawyer, offered a similar critique. However, he said the punitive award to the estate of Nicole Brown Simpson might be more vulnerable. Her father, as the trustee of her estate, filed only a “survivorship” claim, not a wrongful-death claim, and did not ask the jury for compensatory damages (there was a stipulation that her estate would receive $250 for the value of the clothes she was wearing when killed). Goldman’s parents filed both types of actions, making them eligible for punitive and compensatory damages.

Nonetheless, Carlson and other attorneys noted that substantial punitive-damage awards to the families of air crash victims had been upheld even though compensatory damages had been nominal. Moreover, Judge Fujisaki made it clear to the jury before they began deliberating last Friday that they could consider the severity of the injuries suffered by the victims before they died.

“I think the judge is on solid ground there,” said Santa Monica civil lawyer Brian Lysaght, who has won several large damage awards. Still, Lysaght said he thought it was possible that Fujisaki would reduce the punitive awards somewhat, given the current state of Simpson’s finances.

Several plaintiffs’ lawyers said they had had punitive damage awards reduced or voided by trial judges or appellate courts in California in recent years as jurists have grown less sympathetic to such awards. But the lawyers said they thought that the aberrational nature of this case and all its circumstances make it less likely that the damages will be reduced.

“I think there is little doubt that given the circumstances of this case, there is no judge in California that will lower these figures one red cent,” Yagman said. “If Mr. Simpson doesn’t quickly go and take up residence next to ‘Baby Doc’ (former Haitian dictator Jean Claude Duvalier) in France--a country that has no reciprocal judgments agreement with the U.S.--he’s never going to have a penny the rest of his life.”

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Payouts in Wrongful Death Cases

Wrongful death statistics based on Jury Verdict Research’s 112,000-case database of personal injury verdicts and settlements:

COMPENSATORY

(National 1989-1996)

* Wrongful death of adult males ages 25-29

Median jury award: $633,000

Verdict range: $4,654 - $8 mil.

- Awards of less than $1 million: 62%

- Awards of $1 million or more: 38%

PUNITIVE

(National 1989-1996)

* Wrongful death of adult males ages 18 and over

Median jury award: $750,000

Verdict range: $800 - $2.5 bil.

- Awards of less than $1 million: 56%

- Awards of $1 million or more: 44%

* Wrongful death of adult females ages 18 and over

Median jury award: $1 mil.

Verdict range: $ 5,000 - $100 mil.

- Awards of less than $1 million: 45%

- Awards of $1 million or more: 55%

PUNITIVE

(California 1989-1996)

* Wrongful death of adult males ages 18 and over

Median jury award: $287,000

Verdict range: $ 5,000 - $3 mil.

- Awards of less than $1 million: 70%

- Awards of $1 million or more: 30%

* Wrongful death of adult females ages 18 and over

Median jury award: $1,375,000

Verdict range: $ 20,000 - $7.75 mil.

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Jury Verdict Research maintains the only nationwide database of plaintiff and defense verdicts and settlements resulting from personal injury claims. Some of the suits in the wrongful death data involve corporations. But class-action suits are not included.

Note: In “median” awards, an equal number of awards fall above and below that figure.

Source: Jury Verdict Research, Horsham, Pa.