I’m not a huge fan of punitive damages, but this doesn’t seem like the right outcome, either:

A couple whose home exploded following a natural gas buildup will receive a fraction of the $2 million a jury awarded them in their lawsuit.

The rest will go to the state, The Times of Hammond reported today.

A Porter Circuit Court jury Friday found Northern Indiana Public Service Co. was at fault for the blast that destroyed the Valparaiso home of Joan and Paul Ketchmark in November 2000. Jurors awarded the Ketchmarks more than $700,000 in compensatory damages and ordered the utility to pay $1.5 million in punitive damages.
But a state law passed 11 years ago requires 75 percent of all punitive damages to be paid to the state, said Jack Kramer, one of the attorneys who represented the couple.

[...]

The remaining $375,000 will go to the Ketchmarks and their lawyers.

Which means that after the lawyers take their cut, the couple will have won less than what it will cost them to rebuild their home.

CORRECTION/UPDATE: A few readers point out that I misread the article. The $375,000 comes in addition to the $700,000 in compensatory damages, which means the couple will be more than made whole by the award.

Which means that the outcome here isn’t so bad after all.

Still, I’d rather see punitives done away with than forked over to state governments. I understand the urge to punish, but punishment is the criminal courts’ job. Civil courts’ responsibility is to determine if a wrong has been committed, determin who’s at fault, and to compensate the person wronged.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 12:56 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.