Cite as: 512 U. S. 415 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
provides no procedure for reducing or setting aside that award. This has been the law in Oregon at least since 1949 when the State Supreme Court announced its opinion in Van Lom v. Schneiderman, 187 Ore. 89, 210 P. 2d 461 (1949), definitively construing the 1910 amendment to the Oregon Constitution.5
In that case the court held that it had no power to reduce or set aside an award of both compensatory and punitive damages that was admittedly excessive.6 It recognized that the constitutional amendment placing a limitation on its power was a departure from the traditional common-law approach.7 That opinion's characterization of Oregon's "lonely eminence" in this regard, id., at 113, 210 P. 2d, at 471, is still an accurate portrayal of its unique position. Every other State in the Union affords postverdict judicial review of the
5 The amended Article VII, § 3, of the Oregon Constitution provides: "In actions at law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of this State, unless the court can affirmatively say there is no evidence to support the verdict."
6 "The court is of the opinion that the verdict of $10,000.00 is excessive. Some members of the court think that only the award of punitive damages is excessive; others that both the awards of compensatory and punitive damages are excessive. Since a majority are of the opinion that this court has no power to disturb the verdict, it is not deemed necessary to discuss the grounds for these divergent views." Van Lom v. Schneiderman, 187 Ore., at 93, 210 P. 2d, at 462 (1949).
7 "The guaranty of the right to jury trial in suits at common law, incorporated in the Bill of Rights as one of the first ten amendments of the Constitution of the United States, was interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States to refer to jury trial as it had been theretofore known in England; and so it is that the federal judges, like the English judges, have always exercised the prerogative of granting a new trial when the verdict was clearly against the weight of the evidence, whether it be because excessive damages were awarded or for any other reason. The state courts were conceded similar powers. . . . [U]p to 1910, when the people adopted Art. VII, § 3, of our Constitution, there was no state in the union, so far as we are advised, where this method of control of the jury did not prevail." Id., at 112-113, 210 P. 2d, at 471.
427
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