BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore’s Empirical Analysis
1996
Citation profile
859 federal appellate · 404 district · 1,710 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,466 later decisions (39 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Neder v. United States (1999), State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Campbell (2003)
859 federal appellate · 404 district · 1,710 state decisions — followed in 46 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Daniels v. Williams · Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. · San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon · Solem v. Helm
Cited together with State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Campbell · Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. · TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp. · Pacific Mutual Life Insurance v. Haslip · Browning-Ferris Industries of Vermont, Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 4,466 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(1) the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's misconduct; (2) the disparity between the actual or potential harm suffered by the plaintiff and the punitive damages award; and (3) the difference between the punitive damages awarded by the jury and the civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable cases.”
215 later decisions quote this exact passage“Perhaps the most important indicium of the reasonableness of a punitive damages award is the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct.”
204 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“' "(1) the reprehensibility of [the defendant's] conduct; (2) the relationship of the punitive-damages award to the harm that actually occurred, or is likely to occur, from [the defendant's] conduct; (3) [the defendant's] profit from [its] misconduct; (4) [the defendant's] financial position; (5) the cost to [the plaintiff] of the litigation; (6) whether [the defendant] has been subject to criminal sanctions for similar conduct; and (7) other civil actions [the defendant] has been involved in arising out of similar conduct.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.