The Supreme Court has said punitive damages must bear a reasonable relationship to actual damages.
As a rule of thumb, 10:1 is usually unconstitutional. 1000000:1 is off the charts.
$1 in compensatory damages means the jury decided that yes it was technically defamation, but that it was literally the smallest, tiniest, itty-bittiest amount of defamation that is possible. That it did about the same amount of damage to the scientist's career and reputation, as if he'd ordered delivery and discovered a can of soda was missing.
The idea that you could do $1 of damage and your punishment is $1,000,000 is just nonsensical. Either it did extensive damage to his career (years' worth of salary lost) and a million dollars is appropriate additional punishment, or it didn't and he wins a dollar because he was defamed but it did virtually no damage and the defendants merely have to pay his court costs or something.
What? It was my impression that scientists draw salary directly out of the grant, and that many scientists do not earn any salary other than what comes out of their grants.
That's why it was tricky for Mann to prove damages here - Penn State was likely harmed, but Penn State didn't sue.
If someone posts all over Twitter that I'm a fraudster and an asshole, and I feel like I'm having fewer prospective customers choose me to tile their bathroom and I'm getting fewer dates on Grindr - am I supposed to be able to prove that, and the causality in court?
Even if I somehow have detailed records of exactly how all of my dates have gone and how many prospective clients I've given quotes to - maybe there's just another tile guy who started asking for less, and I'm getting fewer dates because I got this garish pink mohawk.
Yes, they are hard to prove, but the jury gets to take that into account. It could have picked almost any number ($1m, $10m, etc.) for reputation damages, but that would go in the "actual" damages line on the form.
The "punitive" damages really are just to discourage future bad conduct. And it will be difficult to support the idea that it takes a $1m penalty to prevent future bad conduct worth $1.
Can you imagine if firing a gun into a crowd was only illegal if you actually hit someone? I think you have to take intent into account and here it's so blatantly purposeful.
In a criminal one you are correct -- if you try to rob a bank and try but fail to kill a bunch of hostages, you're still going to jail for possibly the rest of your life.
But in a civil trial, the main point is the damages. Yes there can be a punitive element on top, but only if there are damages in the first place. If you attempt something bad but don't succeed, a civil suit can't punish you. It's not like a criminal trial.
No, it has nothing to do with elements of criminality.
It's the simple fact that if civil actions resulted in only restitution and nothing more, then everybody would be committing torts whenever they could, because sometimes you'll get away with it and sometimes you won't, but statistically you'll always come out ahead. Because sometimes people don't bring charges, sometimes they're too hard to prove, etc.
So the additional punishment is a way to correct that, to ensure that civil suits still function as deterrence. To ensure that if we only count the suits successfully brought and prosecuted, the tort-committer will still lose overall in the end.
There's nothing to do with criminality here, which is prosecuted by the state rather than by a private party.
> So the additional punishment is a way to correct that, to ensure that civil suits still function as deterrence
That's exactly what I mean by elements of criminality. You're not just saying that you harmed someone and have to make them whole but also that you did something wrong and have to be punished so you won't do it again. It's a fine by another name.
Yes, there is typically differences in law between reckless endangerment, manslaughter, premeditated murder, hate crime additions, etc.
If one were to balance benefit/harm, if the jury found that the would-be defamers benefited Mann personally and professionally in the manner of the "Streisand Effect," would Mann need to pay them?
As the great Sideshow Bob put it [1]: "Attempted murder", now honestly, what is that!? Do they give a Nobel prize for "attempted" chemistry? Do they?