430
Opinion of the Court
the conscience" test to damage awards on claims governed by New York law,10 " 'substantial' variations between state and federal [money judgments]" may be expected. See Hanna, 380 U. S., at 467-468.11 We therefore agree with the Second Circuit that New York's check on excessive damages implicates what we have called Erie's "twin aims." See supra, at 428.12 Just as the Erie principle precludes a federal court from giving a state-created claim "longer life . . . than [the claim] would have had in the state court," Ragan,
10 Justice Scalia questions whether federal district courts in New York "actually appl[y]" or "ought" to apply the "shock the conscience" test in assessing a jury's award for excessiveness. Post, at 465-466 (collecting various formulations of review standard). If there is a federal district court standard, it must come from the Court of Appeals, not from the over 40 district court judges in the Southern District of New York, each of whom sits alone and renders decisions not binding on the others. Indeed, in Ismail v. Cohen, 899 F. 2d 183 (1990), the authority upon which Justice Scalia relies, the Second Circuit stated that district courts test damage awards for excessiveness under the "shock the conscience" standard. See id., at 186 ("A remittitur, in effect, is a statement by the court that it is shocked by the jury's award of damages."); see also Scala v. Moore McCormack Lines, Inc., 985 F. 2d 680, 683 (CA2 1993) ("[I]n the federal courts, a judgment cannot stand where the damages awarded are so excessive as to shock the judicial conscience.") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
11 Justice Scalia questions whether application of CPLR § 5501(c), in lieu of the standard generally used by federal courts within the Second Circuit, see supra, at 422, will in fact yield consistent outcome differentials, see post, at 465, 466. The numbers, as the Second Circuit believed, are revealing. See 66 F. 3d 427, 430 (1995). Is the difference between an award of $450,000 and $100,000, see supra, at 421, or between $1,500 per transparency and $500, see supra, at 421, n. 2, fairly described as insubstantial? We do not see how that can be so.
12 For rights that are state created, state law governs the amount properly awarded as punitive damages, subject to an ultimate federal constitutional check for exorbitancy. See BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559, 568 (1996); Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U. S. 257, 278-279 (1989). An evenhanded approach would require federal-court deference to endeavors like New York's to control compensatory damages for excessiveness. See infra, at 435, n. 18.
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