Juries are not putty
for greedy lawyersThe issue: A new study shows that
lawyers are not able to manipulate juries
to award excessive punitive damages.
LAWYERS often are portrayed as greedy vultures skillful at manipulating gullible juries to award heaps of money to their clients -- and a nifty percentage to themselves, of course -- in the form of punitive damages. Members of Congress and state legislators often mirror this public perception in opposing legislation that they warn will add to the gravy train. As a new study shows, however, this is far from the case.Punitive damages are awarded for the purpose of punishment in cases where compensatory relief to a single victim is deemed inadequate in discouraging further misconduct. A draft of a study of 8,724 trials in 45 courts across the country shows that punitive damages are rarely awarded and that juries are no more apt than judges to award them.
The study, to be published next March in the Cornell Law Review, says that punitive damages were awarded in 4 percent of the cases won by plaintiffs. These actual cases contradict a 1999 study based on answers to questions about a hypothetical railroad accident in which 23 percent of judges but 67 percent of respondents eligible for jury service said they would have awarded punitive damages. The real world demonstrates otherwise.
Critics often cite a case several years ago in which a jury awarded $160,000 in compensatory damages and $2.7 million in punitive damages to a woman who suffered third-degree burns over 6 percent of her body from spilling excessively hot coffee she had purchased from McDonald's. Not often mentioned is that the punitive award was reduced by the presiding judge to $480,000 and probably further as terms of a confidential settlement reached during the appeals process.
In the cases included in the Cornell study, judges and juries awarded punitive damages in roughly the same proportion and in about the same amounts in relation to compensatory damages. Juries awarded punitive damages many multiples of compensatory damages in only seven of the 121 verdicts in which they awarded punitive awards. As Professor Theodore Eisenberg, co-author of the study, noted, such large amounts often are overturned or reduced by an appeals court, if not by the trial judge, as in the McDonald's case.
However, in legislative debates regarding liability -- most recently in the congressional handling of medical patients' legal rights -- the Cornell study is not likely to bring an end to unfair lawyer-bashing. "Policy is being determined," says Eisenberg, "on the notion that there are these crazy jurors out there that need to be reined in by legislatures and courts. The evidence is that juries are not out of control."
Money doesn’t always
make us happy or contentThe issue: New census numbers show
a sharp increase in Americans'
standard of living.
New census data paints a picture of American life as generally more affluent, but affluence does not always translate into a better quality of life. In the modern world, the effort to gain more material goods often comes at the sacrifice of time and a sense of well being.A preview of official 2000 census data to be issued next year showed that while incomes of families generally grew, so did the size of the their homes. If people's homes are bigger, so are their mortgages and the more they must work to pay for them.
Meanwhile, according to a new book, "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic," Americans spend on average only 40 minutes a week playing with their children, and working couples talk with one another on average of just 12 minutes a day. Despite having more consumer goods, fewer Americans describe themselves as happy now than in 1957.
Of course, the world was vastly different in 1957, but the book attributes low satisfaction levels more to a society based on expanded wants than the contemporary fears of crime and lack of safety. Americans are told to buy, to work harder to gain what they perceive they need than what is really a necessity in life.
At the same time, the over-consumption can harm the environment. Census figures showed that more cars with lone drivers crowded the highways, while public transportation usage remained the same at 5 percent. In Alabama, 84.6 percent of workers 16 and older drove to work by themselves, the highest percentage in the nation, according to the census report.
Hawaii's single-occupant numbers were among the lowest at 66.8 percent, but, on any given workday, that figure provides little consolation as solo motorists jockey to get to work. More disturbing is that car-pooling declined from 13 percent in 1990 to 11 percent in 2000.
In all of America's affluence, however, many are living without. The number of families living in poverty increased to 6.8 million compared with 6.5 million in the 1990 census.
Nearly 13 percent of Americans subsist at poverty levels, 17 percent of children under 18 years of age and 11 percent of adults 65 or older. Half a million do not have plumbing and 3.2 million are without telephones.
Income disparity in the United States ranks as the highest in the world and although no one is saying that hard-working individuals should give away their gains, Americans should examine what is truly valuable in life -- a larger home, a new car or the sharing of the American dream.
Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.Don Kendall, President
John Flanagan, publisher and editor in chief 529-4748; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
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