Stroud v. Lints’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 federal appellate · 9 state decisions

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 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “An award that not only hurts but permanently cripples the defendant goes too far. A life of financial hopelessness may be an invitation to a life of crime. Perpetual inability to get the financial burden of a judgment off his back leaves a defendant with few alternatives.... [A] staggering punitive damages award is not merely a useless act. It also traps the plaintiff and defendant forever in a creditor-debtor relationship that offers little if any financial reward to the plaintiff and seems far more likely to lead to nothing but travail for both.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Clark v. Simbeck

2. ““(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.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Catt v. Skeans

3. “[u]nlike the measure of actual damages suffered, which presents a question of historical or predictive fact, the level of punitive damages is not really a 'fact' 'tried' by the jury.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Lindenberg v. Jackson Nat'l Life Ins. Co.