Abstract
A study addressing jury decisions regarding punitive damages awards in civil litigation was carried out. Two issues explored were the feet that jurors typically do not have a good metric for assigning a value to such damages and the concept of “leakage.” The latter concept refers to decisions regarding compensatory damages and punitive damages influencing each other; in the law they are supposed to be independent. Forty-two participants were given three scenarios describing accidents, injuries, liability outcomes, and the amounts of economic and non-economic (pain and suffering) awards. Their task was to decide on punitive damages awards. Two variables manipulated in the scenarios were the presence or absence of defendant profit information and the amount (high or low) of the pain and suffering award. Results indicated the main effects of the two variables were not statistically significant. A significant interaction between the profit-information and pain-and-suffering-amount variables indicated that when profit infonnation was available, low pain and suffering awards led to higher punitive damage awards. When profit information was not available, high pain and suffering awards led to higher punitive damage awards. The results indicate that decisions regarding compensatory and punitive damages are not independent as the law intends; an outcome that may be due, at least in part, to the uncertainty associated with these types of decisions. These findings have implications for judicial procedures, particularly jury instructions.
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