State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company v. Inez Preece Campbell and Matthew C. Barneck, Special Administrator and Personal Representative of the Estate of Curtis B. Campbell (538 U.S. 408)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 7, 2003 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 538 U.S. 408 · 123 S. Ct. 1513
- Decided
- April 7, 2003
- Term
- October Term 2002
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Kennedy
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. We address once again the measure of punishment, by means of punitive damages, a State may impose upon a defendant in a civil case. The question is whether, in the circumstances we shall recount, an award of $145 million in punitive damages, where full compensatory damages are $.1 million, is excessive and in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. I In 1981, Curtis Campbell (Campbell) was driving with his wife, Inez Preece Campbell, in Cache County, Utah. He decided to pass six vans traveling ahead of them on a two-lane highway. Todd Ospital was driving a small car approaching from the opposite direction. To avoid a head-on collision with Campbell, who by then was driving on the wrong side of the highway and toward oncoming traffic, Ospital swerved onto the shoulder, lost control of his automobile, and collided with a vehicle driven by Robert G. Slusher. Ospital was killed, and Slusher was rendered permanently disabled. The Campbells escaped unscathed. In the ensuing wrongful death and tort action, Campbell insisted he was not at fault. Early investigations did support differing conclusions as to who caused the accident, but “a consensus was reached early on by the investigators and witnesses that Mr. Campbell’s unsafe pass had indeed caused the crash.” 65 P.…
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