To Keep Corporations in Check

(Letter to the Editor as it appeared in The Washington Post on Sunday, July 13, 1997; Page C06)

The article on the Rand study concerning punitive damage awards brought something novel to the continuing tort reform debate -- namely, the facts ["Juries in 1990s Reluctant to Make Punitive Awards," news story, June 17].

While corporate America's attack on the civil justice system involves attempts to place caps on awards to injured persons in tort cases, the Rand study revealed that although the average amounts of punitive damage awards have increased, such damages are awarded increasingly less often (less than 4 percent of civil cases). Moreover, most cases in which punitive damages were awarded in recent years were claims involving financial harm, such as employees suing employers or individuals and corporations suing insurers (i.e., not product liability or other tort cases). The Rand study thus belies the arguments of the so-called tort reformers, that an explosion of punitive damage verdicts in tort cases has brought American business to its knees.

The occasional awarding of punitive damages in serious tort cases began three decades ago when it was discovered in a case against Ford Motor Co. that the powers that be at Ford had made a cost benefit analysis of the cost of lengthening a fuel tank pipe, making an alteration in the plant and redesigning the part and the assembly, vs. the cost to them in lawsuits for human lives caused by fuel ignited fires. Ford decided to forgo the cost of the redesign because it was cheaper to defend the lawsuits it anticipated. It remains the landmark decision that integrated punitive damages into the American culture. Ford was punished for its decision beyond what it was forced to pay to compensate the families of the victims.

It is the agenda of corporate America to turn back the clock and to deform the civil justice system so that even egregious corporate conduct would be left unpunished. We should not be fooled by the argument that this fight is about trial lawyers and their money. It is about the rights of individuals to punish egregious acts where criminal punishment is unavailable, and it is also about the benefits to society that occur when the threat of financial harm motivates a corporation not to cut corners on issues of safety.

KENNETH M. TROMBLY

Washington

The writer was president of the D.C. Trial Lawyers Association in 1994-95.