482
O'Connor, J., dissenting
lip the Court observed that an $840,000 punitive award, representing four times compensatory damages, may have been "close to the line" of "constitutional impropriety." Id., at 23-24. If the quadruple damages, $840,000 award in Haslip was "close to the line," absent a convincing explanation, this $10 million award—over 500 times actual damages—surely must cross it.
A comparison of this award and prior ones in West Virginia confirms its unusual nature: It is 20 times larger than the highest punitive damages award ever upheld in West Virginia history for any misconduct. See App. to Brief for Petitioner 1a-3a (listing punitive damages awards affirmed on appeal in West Virginia). That figure is particularly surprising if one considers the nature of the offense at issue. This is not a case involving grave physical injury imposed on a helpless citizen by a callous malefactor. Rather, it is a business dispute between two companies in the oil and gas industry. TXO was accused of slandering respondents' title to a tract of land—that is, impugning their claim of ownership—in an attempt to win concessions on a pre-existing contract. Although TXO's conduct was clearly wrongful, calculated, and improper, the award in this case cannot be upheld as a reasoned retributive response. Not only is it greatly in excess of the actual harm caused, but it is 10 times greater than the largest punitive damages award for the same tort in any jurisdiction, id., at 5a-8a (listing all recorded punitive damages awards for slander of title affirmed on appeal), and orders of magnitude larger than authorized civil and criminal penalties for similar offenses, see Brief for Petitioner 19, nn. 17-18, and App. to Brief for Petitioner 9a-21a (collecting statutes). By any "objective criteria," Haslip, 499 U. S., at 23, the award is "grossly out of proportion to the severity of the offense" and bears no "understandable relationship to compensatory damages," id., at 22. It is, at first blush, an "extreme resul[t] that jar[s] one's constitutional sensibilities." Id., at 18.
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