State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408, 5 (2003)

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412

STATE FARM MUT. AUTOMOBILE INS. CO. v. CAMPBELL

Opinion of the Court

Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. We address once again the measure of punishment, by means of punitive damages, a State may impose upon a defendant in a civil case. The question is whether, in the circumstances we shall recount, an award of $145 million in punitive damages, where full compensatory damages are $1 million, is excessive and in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

I

In 1981, Curtis Campbell (Campbell) was driving with his wife, Inez Preece Campbell, in Cache County, Utah. He decided to pass six vans traveling ahead of them on a two-lane highway. Todd Ospital was driving a small car approaching from the opposite direction. To avoid a head-on collision with Campbell, who by then was driving on the wrong side of the highway and toward oncoming traffic, Ospital swerved onto the shoulder, lost control of his automobile, and col-Victor E. Schwartz and Leah Lorber; for the Washington Legal Foundation et al. by Arvin Maskin, Daniel J. Popeo, and Paul D. Kamenar; and for A. Mitchell Polinsky et al. by Dan M. Kahan.

Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the State of Minnesota et al. by Mike Hatch, Attorney General of Minnesota, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Richard P. Ieyoub of Louisiana, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Mike Moore of Mississippi, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Mike McGrath of Montana, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, W. A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma, Hardy Myers of Oregon, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island; for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America by Jeffrey Robert White; for the California Consumer Health Care Council, Inc., by Eugene R. Anderson and Daniel Healy; for Certain Leading Social Scientists et al. by Paul M. Simmons and William M. Shernoff; and for Keith N. Hylton by Garry B. Bryant.

Briefs of amici curiae were filed for Abbott Laboratories et al. by Walter Dellinger; for DeKalb Genetics Corp. by Seth P. Waxman and David W. Ogden; and for the Truck Insurance Exchange et al. by Ellis J. Horvitz, S. Thomas Todd, and Mary-Christine Sungaila.

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