Limitations on Punitive Damages Against Insurers Since State Farm v. Campbell: Lessons for Insurers
This article focuses on the limitations imposed on punitive damages awards by the United States Supreme Court, concentrating tm how these limitations have been applied by lower courts in actions against insurance companies. The article begins by examining the Supreme Court's three "guideposts" for determining whether a punitive award complies with due process. The article focuses on the compensatory damages predicate for determining a punitive award pursuant to the second "guide­ post" requiring trial courts to examine the ratio between actual and potential harm and the punitive award. The article examines what types of damages have been included in the predicate in bad-faith claims against insurers, and argues that under black-letter contract law, only the plaintiff's bad-faith tort damages should be included in the actual or potential harm side of the ratio. Finally, the article examines how the "reprehensibility" of insurers' conduct has affected punitive awards against insurers.
Tort Reform and Insurance Markets
Proposed tort reforms have focused on punitive damages and noneconomic damages, each of which pose problems for jury decision making. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in State Farm v. Campbell will greatly limit very large punitive damages awards, and will affect smaller punitive awards to a lesser degree. Noneconomic damages caps enacted by state legislatures have greatly enhanced insurance market performance. Insurers operate within the context of a highly imperfect, regulated market in which there is substantial price rigidity induced by regulation. Reform efforts should strive to establish greater predictability and stability in these awards components rather than simply being concerned with imposing specific numerical caps.
Insuring September 11th: Market Recovery and Transparency
The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center caused unprecedented economic and structural ramifications in the insurance markets, resulting in considerable uncertainty and informational asymmetry. We test several theoretical models of how markets respond to and recover from extreme capital shocks. Using the capacity constraint, post-loss investment and implicit insurance contract models, we develop testable hypotheses predicting the temporal and cross sectional variation in insurance company stock prices following September 11th. We find evidence consistent with the models' predictions, in particular, the predictions regarding relations between net losses and leverage and stock price performance after the shock.