Mississippi Jury Instruction - Punitive Damages

There is no fixed standard for determining the amount of punitive damages in a California personal injury case.

We found that 98 percent of the large punitive damages awards were made by juries and only two percent by judges. The jury awards in these large cases were highly unpredictable and were weakly correlated with compensatory damages.

Judges may reduce punitive damage awards when it looks like juries have not followed instructions.

In many courts, a plaintiff must request punitive damages in the complaint. If there is no prayer for punitive damages in the pleadings before trial, an appellate court may reverse a punitive damages award. It is possible to challenge a punitive damages award on the basis that it is excessive under common law.

If juries award greater compensatory damages than do judges for any given case type, then that higher award will boost punitive damages as well. This analysis indicates that juries generate higher compensatory damages as well as higher punitive damages controlling for compensatory damages.

According to this theory, the jurors use the amount of compensation that the plaintiff is seeking as a starting point during deliberations. For example, if a plaintiff is seeking $500,000 in damages, the jury may begin deliberations by discussing whether they should award the full $500,000.

Punitive damages, also known as exemplary damages, may be awarded by the trier of fact (a jury or a judge, if a jury trial was waived) in addition to actual damages, which compensate a plaintiff for the losses suffered due to the harm caused by the defendant.

To determine the amount of punitive damages to award, the Book of Approved Jury Instructions (BAJI) states that the jury should consider: (1) The reprehensibility of the conduct of the defendant.The other twodefendant's financial condition and the relationship to actual damagesare objective measurements.