Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. (532 U.S. 424)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 14, 2001 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 532 U.S. 424 · 121 S. Ct. 1678
- Decided
- May 14, 2001
- Term
- October Term 2000
- Vote
- 8–1
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. A jury found petitioner guilty of unfair competition and awarded respondent $50,000 in compensatory damages and $4.5 million in punitive damages. The District Court held that the punitive damages award did not violate the Federal Constitution. The Court of Appeals concluded that “the district court did not abuse its discretion in declining to reduce the amount of punitive damages.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 4a. The issue in this case is whether the Court of Appeals applied the wrong standard of review in considering the constitutionality of the punitive damages award. I The parties are competing tool manufacturers. In the 1980’s, Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. (Leatherman or respondent), introduced its Pocket Survival Tool (PST). The Court of Appeals described the PST as an “ingenious multi-function pocket tool which improves on the classic ‘Swiss army knife’ in a number of respects. Not the least of the improvements was the inclusion of pliers, which, when unfolded, are nearly equivalent to regular full-sized pliers. ... Leatherman apparently largely created and undisputedly now dominates the market for multi-function pocket tools which generally resemble the PST.” Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. v. Cooper Industries, 199 F. 3d 1009, 1010 (CA9 1999). In 1995, Cooper Industries, Inc. (Cooper or petitioner), decided to design and…
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