 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Rose v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.9/29/2005
rior to the second phase of the trial, defendants submitted a proposed punitive damage instruction (Court Exhibit 57). Included in the proposed instruction was the following language:
You will recall that I instructed you that, in considering a Defendant's liability for damages to compensate Mrs. Rose for her injuries, you needed to find that the elements of Mrs. Rose's claims were established by a preponderance of the evidence - in other words, that they were more likely than not. A different and more demanding standard applies to liability for punitive damages, which must be proved by clear and convincing evidence. This means evidence that satisfies you that there is a high degree of probability that a Defendant's actions were wanton and reckless, or malicious, as I have defined those terms for you.
Put another way, to decide for Mrs. Rose, it is not enough to find that the preponderance of the evidence is in Mrs. Rose's favor. A party who must prove her case by a preponderance of the evidence only need satisfy you that the evidence supporting her case more nearly represents what actually happened than the evidence which is opposed to it. But a party who must establish her case by clear and convincing evidence must satisfy you that the evidence makes it highly probable that what she claims is what actually happened.
Because the burden of proof that Mrs. Rose must satisfy is greater for punitive than for compensatory damages, it would not be inconsistent for you to find, for example, that a Defendant committed negligence for purposes of requiring it to pay compensatory damages but not for purposes of subjecting it to punitive damages.
Defendants contended that this was a necessary instruction as the burden of proof required to sustain a finding of entitlement to punitive damages is proof by "clear and convincing evidence". Plaintiffs contended that, in the instant case, plaintiff only need prove its entitlement to punitve damages based on a "preponderance of evidence". For the reasons set forth herein, the court denied defendant's request to charge clear and convincing evidence as the standard for punitive damages in this case and instead charged the jury that the burden of proof required a finding by a preponderance of the evidence.
To support their claim, defendants cited Sladick v. Hudson General Corp.(226 AD2d 263 [1st Dept 1996]); Orange and Rockland Utilities v. Muggs Pub Inc., (292 AD2d 580 [2nd Dept 2002]); and Camillo v. Geer, (185 AD2d 192 [1st Dept 1992]). Each of these cases applied the "clear and convincing" evidentiary standard for awarding punitive damages. To support their position, plaintiffs cited Greenbaum v. Svenska Handelsbanken, NY (979 F. Supp 973 [SDNY 1997]). In that case the court applied the "preponderance of the evidence" standard in reviewing an award of punitive damages. A review of the different courts' bases for applying these standards revealed some confusion concerning the proper evidentiary standard on the question of punitive damages that needed to be resolved before this motion could be decided.
The confusion arose from two conflicting New York Court of Appeals cases. In Cleghorn v. The New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company (56 NY 44, 48 ), the court stated that conduct warranting punitive damages must be "clearly established." The issue before the court in Cleghorn was whether the trial court had properly instructed the jury on the question of awarding punitive damages against defendant railroad company for injuries caused by its employee, a switchmen who was intoxicated at the time of the accident. In its charge on damages, the trial court had given the following instruction: "You may add
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 New York Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|