Well, a few trial lawyers would lose income, but punitive damages are fairly rare. If, as you say, this would help insulate punitive damages from appeal, the trial lawyers might get behind this too.

Another brain washed idiot whose hatered of attorneys and conditioned bias against lawsuits leads him to carry water for corporate wrongdoers.

Talk to some victims, idiot. This will only help corporate wrongdoers by making punitive damages not worth the effort. Why bother if all of it goes to the gov? DUH!

Dug- You're new around here, aren't you :) I don't usually get accused of carrying water for "corporate wrongdoers."

Distinguish "pain and suffering" and the range of other extra compensation that plaintiffs should receive, which I fully support without caps, from punitive damages.

Why should one lucky plaintiff get all the money meant to compensate a range of victims? It gives plaintiff lawsuits a bad name. Remember, plaintiffs would still keep 25% of punitive damages here.

And guess what, if punitive damages go to the government, you might actually see state agencies and attorneys generals bring more lawsuits, since they would suddenly become revenue sectors of the government.

I am all for lots of plaintiff lawyers suing on behalf of victims and giving them lots of incentives to do so, but using punitive damages is the wrong way.

Nathan,

This makes punitive damages sound a bit like whistleblower "finders fees," where an employee who tells the government about a company's misuse of government funds gets to keep some of the money recovered by the government.

Nick- A good analogy. California passed a law last year that allows anyone to sue a company that violates labor laws; if they are successful, they keep 25% of the fines that would have gone to the government, plus attorneys fees.

It's also worth remembering that requiring a losing defendant to pay attorneys fees, a feature of a number of laws, helps create incentives to bring lawsuits as well.

I am a persoanl injury lawyer, and I might consider some much smaller amount going to the state, if by awarding the damages, jury's would feel more comfortable in that they thought at least some of the puni's could help the public at large, and thus award them more often, but 75% is crazy.

What you have to understand is that once something goes to trial a plaintiffs lawyer, even if she/he wins, has spent a lot of money working a case up for trial. (Right now I am looking at a cost bill of $72,000.00 on a recent 130,000.00 verdict) Special and general damages represent a huge portion if not entire amount of most awards, and many costs involved in litigation are not recoverable.

Many cases go to trial over the potential for puni's, so if you take the incentive out by giving more than say 30% to the state you will have very few attorneys risking a long expensive fight, and subsequently a lot of injured plaintiffs will lose out.

In addtion the state would have to pay a percentage of the attorneys fees accrued in recovering that money, unless the state became a party to every suit where punitives were involved, and recovered it themselves.

Think of it as the personal injury lawyers Laffer Curve!

Uhhh, technically no. So long as anybody gets the money it can create perverse incentives. The best thing to do with that money is to burn it so that there are no incentives created. And lest I am not clear, all money from punitive damages should be burned/destroyed so that there are no incentive effects.

If your'e going to expound on California's punitive statutory scheme maybe you should know something about it. It's one of strictest in the nation. Most lawsuits in Ca. don't even qualify or are even eligible for punitives. The Defendant has to have acted with malice, fraud, or oppression by a clear and convincing standard to ask for punitive damages in Califronia. Auto cases, Med-mal and negligence are all barred from even getting there!
I bet it never even entered you thought process that, as we speak, "Arnold" is a defendant in a lawsuit for libel and that is an intentional tort and does give rise to a pray for punitive damages. Also you don't mention that "Arnold" wants to limit the punishment for only one offence. Meaning if you deliberatly harm many people you only get punished for one. So much for deterrence. If this law was enacted when our gov. was groping everything in sight, he would have gotten off scott free. The 2 reasons for punitives under california law are 1)punishment, and 2)deterence. Under "Arnie's" Law let's just do away with the second prong. Oh yeah, I find it funny that the only attorneys' fees anyone wants to limit are the "plaintiffs", not the fees that the Attroney's for the defendants hire(Corperations,Insurance Co.s, etc.)
I appreciate your service for consumers and the work you've done, but before you shoot your mouth off, or expound on gutting complex law in California, maybe you at least read our statutes, case law and the newspaper.(ie. articles re:Arnold's lawsuits) We have an extremely important lawsuit on behalf of the State against the energy co.s for the fraud they committed against us during the energy crisis, and Arnold proposal would wreck havoc with the recovery in that instance. But, hey! He met with those assholes during the crisis and they were the ones who wanted him to run for the recall! Stinks doesn't it!

Got a question on this: Once a lawsuit has been successful and the state has taken their 75% share, would anybody who wanted to sue for the same reason sue the state for their share, or the original company or person who was guilty, or both? It seems that this could create quite a ball of wax for the state gov't if the money doesn't just go into its general coffers, untouchable by other victims. And Robin Kay's comments sure seem to say that this proposal would give undue protection to the people that bilked California for billions during the engineered "energy crisis." Certainly seems like some things would need sorting out...

This is a great idea. I can't believe it hasn't been done before, and I always thought it wasn't done that way for some deep legal reason. Every state should do this.