How aware of patient confidentiality are you?
CASE ON POINT: Randi A. J. v. Long Island Surgi-Center, NYAPP2 2007-06953-(09/25/2007)--NY. ISSUE: Is protecting patient confidentiality part of a nurse's job? Yes! A breach in confidentiality can result in punitive damages. CASE FACTS: A 20-year-old unmarried woman who lived with her parents decided to...

How to manage the risk of punitive damages: companies that manage punitive damages as a separate category of risk are frequently better able to limit their exposures.
Despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, punitive damage awards continue to make headlines as juries grant colossal amounts to plaintiffs. It's become so bad that companies need a clear-cut strategy to contain these runaway jury verdicts. With annual punitive awards now totaling in the billions of...

Renowned Attorney Willie Gary Announces $1 Billion Punitive Damages Lawsuit Against Bridgestone/Firestone.
STUART, Fla., June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- B Willie Gary, internationally recognized trial lawyer, will hold a press briefing June 18, 2001 at 11:00 a.m. in the first floor conference room of the Martin County Circuit Court, Stuart, Florida. The press conference will announce a $1 billion punitive...

State farm and punitive damages: call the jury back.
INTRODUCTION The jury sits at the center of our democratic republic, of our constitutional system of checks and balances, and of the guarantees of liberty set out in our Bill of Rights. If this proposition seems remarkable, it is because Americans' right to trial by jury in...

After surveying punitive damages law in U.S. and other common law systems, Supreme Court of Canada rules that, with compensatory damages properly set at $345,000, jury's punitive award of $1 million against insurer for baselessly resisting claims of low income family whose home and contents were destroyed by fire was within rational limits.
After midnight in January 1994, Daphne Whiten and her husband Keith saw a fire in the addition to their $157,000 house in Haliburton County, Ontario. The parents and their daughter had to run out of the house wearing only their night clothes although the temperature was about four below...

New South Wales appellate court rules that neither judicial "merger" of law and equity proceedings nor sound policy empower it to change domestic law that bars equity award of punitive damages for breaches of fiduciary duties.
Beginning in 1996, Digital Pulse Pty. Ltd. (Digital or plaintiff) ran a small information technology business in Australia, apparently headquartered in New South Wales. It specialized in supplying computer-based multimedia services to its clients. In April 1998, a Mr. Harris began working for the plaintiff, and, in October 1999,...

Settlement Reached In Corpus Christi Rezulin Trial; No Punitive Damages Rendered; Earlier Compensatory Damage Verdict to Be Vacated; Settlement Is Substantially Below Compensatory Award.
NEW YORK -- Plaintiffs Margarita Sanchez and her family have reached a settlement agreement with Pfizer Inc, the company announced. Finalization of the agreement is expected next week. The settlement will vacate a jury verdict rendered earlier today in the District Court of Nueces County (214th Judicial...

Nurses fail to disclose decubitus ulcers: punitive damages awarded. (Nursing Law Case of the Month).
CASE ON POINT: NME Properties, Inc. v. Rudich, 2003 WL 289415 So.2d -FL ISSUE: Despite all of the advances in medical technology one of the oldest and most recurring complaints of patients relates to decubitus ulcers. In this unusual case, nurses failed to chart a patient's decubitus...

U.S. Appeals Court: PUNITIVE DAMAGES COMPENSATORY DAMAGES DELIBERATE INDIFFERENCE.
Daskalea v. District of Columbia, 227 F.3d 433 (D.C.Cir. 2000). A former District of Columbia jail inmate who had been forced to perform a striptease in front of other prisons and male and female guards, sued the District and corrections officials for [sections] 1983 violations. The district court entered...

Marsh and regulators expected to settle by February: bargaining points include bid-rigging, restitution and punitive damages.
The New York Attorney General's office and the New York Insurance Department are expected to settle outstanding civil complaints against Marsh by late this month, says a well-placed source. "The goal is to settle all civil complaints and citations in one, final agreement," the source said. "All...