Cite as: 509 U. S. 443 (1993)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
III
In support of its submission that this award is "grossly excessive," TXO places its primary emphasis on the fact that it is over 526 times as large as the actual damages award. TXO correctly notes that state courts have long held that "exemplary damages allowed should bear some proportion to the real damage sustained." 25 Moreover, in our recent decision in Haslip, supra, in which we upheld a punitive damages award of four times the amount of compensatory damages, we noted that that award "may be close to the line" of constitutional permissibility. Id., at 23. Following that decision, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals had also observed that as "a matter of fundamental fairness, punitive damages should bear a reasonable relationship to compensatory damages." Garnes v. Fleming Landfill, Inc., 186 W. Va., at 668, 413 S. E. 2d, at 909.
That relationship, however, was only one of several factors
that the state court mentioned in its Garnes opinion. Earlier in its opinion it gave this example:
"For instance, a man wildly fires a gun into a crowd. By sheer chance, no one is injured and the only damage is to a $10 pair of glasses. A jury reasonably could find only $10 in compensatory damages, but thousands of dollars in punitive damages to teach a duty of care. We
of course, make that Clause "the secret repository of all sorts of other, unenumerated, substantive rights," post, at 470 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). Indeed, it is ironic that Justice Scalia acknowledges that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates substantive guarantees of the Bill of Rights while relying on the enumeration of one of those rights (the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment) as evidence that such a right has no counterpart in the Due Process Clause. Post, at 470-471.
25 Grant v. McDonogh, 7 La. Ann. 447, 448 (1852); Hunter v. Kansas City R. Co., 213 Mo. App. 233, 245, 248 S. W. 998, 1002 (1923); Mobile & Montgomery R. Co. v. Ashcraft, 48 Ala. 15, 33 (1872); P. J. Willis & Bro. v. McNeill, 57 Tex. 465, 480 (1882).
459
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