Appeals court slashes $50m from J & J stapler suit damages

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) subsidiary Ethicon had approximately $50 million slashed from punitive damages it owes in a product liability suit over its PPH 03 hemorrhoid stapler, according to recently released court documents. In December 2015, a California state jury awarded the plaintiff in the case, Florence Kuhlmann, $70 million in punitive damages on top of an initial $9.8 million in compensatory damages. This week, the Court of Appeals for the State of California’s First Appellate District, Division Five, cut the punitive damages down to $19.6 million, or two times the compensatory damages it owes. The court argued that $70 million is a “constitutionally excessive award,” Though Ethicon had argued that the maximum should be one times the compensatory damages, the appellate judges disagreed. “While we must . . . assess independently the wrongfulness of a defendant’s conduct, our determination of a maximum award should allow some leeway for the possibility of reasonable differences in the weighing of culpability. In enforcing federal due process limits, an appellate court does not sit as a replacement for the jury but only as a check on arbitrary awards.” judges wrote in their opinion “We conclude the constitutional maximum in this case is two times the compensatory damages award, approximately $19.6 million.” The case was decided in the Alameda County Superior Court in 2015, according to the plaintiff’s counsel, the Alexan...
Source: Mass Device - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Product Liability Surgical Ethicon johnsonandjohnson Source Type: news