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Ark. Code Ann. § 16-55-206

Standards for award of punitive damages

Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case Curtis Lumber Co. v. Louisiana Pacific Corp. (2010)

Most recently applied in 2024 Ark. App. 513 - Richard Mays, Jr.; Mays, Byrd & Associates, P.A.; Derrick Stephens; D. Stephens Management & Consulting, LLC; And Olena "lola" Korneevets v. Viva La Vegan Grocery, Inc. (October 2024)

Acts 2003, No. 649, § 9.

How often courts cite this section

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citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

In order to recover punitive damages from a defendant, a plaintiff has the burden of proving that the defendant is liable for compensatory damages and that either or both of the following aggravating factors were present and related to the injury for which compensatory damages were awarded:

(1) The defendant knew or ought to have known, in light of the surrounding circumstances, that his or her conduct would naturally and probably result in injury or damage and that he or she continued the conduct with malice or in reckless disregard of the consequences, from which malice may be inferred; or

(2) The defendant intentionally pursued a course of conduct for the purpose of causing injury or damage.

Current official text: Arkansas General Assembly. Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Arkansas statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.