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Finstad v. W.R. Grace and Co.8/22/2000
unish the defendant and serve as an example to it and others."
Tillett, 275 Mont. at 8, 909 P.2d at 1162 (citations omitted). Clearly the focus of a punitive damage award should be on punishing the wrongdoer and setting an example. Nothing in the statute or in the rationale for assessing punitive damages would suggest that the identity of the recipient is a relevant consideration.
53 Naming the recipient of the punitive damage award serves no purpose other than to influence the jury in arriving at an appropriate figure. This information can work to the detriment of the defense or the plaintiff depending upon the statutory scheme at issue. In states where all or part of the punitive damage award goes to a public fund, courts have held that informing the jury of this fact is improper since it tends to inflate the award. In Ford v. Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. (Ga. 1996), 476 S.E.2d 565, the Georgia Supreme Court held that an instruction advising the jury that seventy-five percent of the punitive damage award would go to the state's treasury was improper.
As the statute repeatedly states, the purpose of punitive damages is to punish and deter the defendant, not to compensate the victim. . . . Given the unquestioned purpose of the punitive damages statute, the sole issue for a jury is the amount of money necessary to punish the defendant and deter future misconduct. Therefore, it is irrelevant who will be compensated by the award or how much the plaintiff will ultimately receive. By instructing the jury on the statutory scheme for allocating a punitive damages award, the trial court improperly shifted the jury's focus from the critical question of the defendant's conduct to the inappropriate question of the plaintiff's compensation. Ford, 476 S.E.2d at 570.
54 On a related issue, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that it was error to instruct the jury that damages in a civil antitrust case could be trebled. Instructing the jury as to the multiplier effect would thwart the purpose of treble damages, which is to deter violations and encourage private enforcement of the antitrust laws. The likely result of such an instruction is that "juries will adjust the damage award downward or find no liability, therefore thwarting Congress's purpose, because of some notions of a windfall to the plaintiff." Pollack & Riley, Inc. v. Pearl Brewing Co. (1974), 498 F.2d 1240 at 1243. Although the Pollack & Riley decision does not involve the naming of the recipient, it underscores how irrelevant factors tend to shift the jury's attention away from considerations of punishment and towards adjusting damages or avoiding windfalls.
55 In Honeywell v. Sterling Furniture Co. (Or. 1990), 797 P.2d 1019, the Oregon Supreme Court held that it was reversible error to instruct the jury that a portion of any punitive damage award will be used to pay the plaintiff's attorney or to contribute to a worthy cause. The court further concluded that such an instruction does nothing to further or even to inform the jury as to the proper goals of punitive damage awards. Concluding that such an instruction distracts the jury from the appropriate line of analysis, the court stated:
We agree with the Court of Appeals that the potential effect of the instruction was to "[permit] a jury to consider as a part of its deliberations on punitive damages that a plaintiff should receive a certain amount of money and, in order to ensure that he does, to add additional amounts to pay the attorney fees and contributions to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Account." We also think there is another, perhaps even more serious problem with the instruction: It encouraged the jury to award punit
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