Over the past two decades, the United States has seen a dramatic
increase in the number and magnitude of punitive damages verdicts
rendered by juries in civil trials. Probably the most extraordinary
example is the July 2000 award of $144.8 billion in the Florida class
action lawsuit brought against cigarette manufacturers. Or consider
two recent verdicts against the auto manufacturer BMW in Alabama. In
identical cases, argued in the same court before the same judge, one
jury awarded $4 million in punitive damages, while the other awarded
no punitive damages at all. In cases involving accidents, civil
rights, and the environment, multimillion-dollar punitive awards have
been a subject of intense controversy. But how do juries actually make
decisions about punitive damages? To find out, the authors-experts in
psychology, economics, and the law-present the results of controlled
experiments with more than 600 mock juries involving the responses of
more than 8,000 jury-eligible citizens. Although juries tended to
agree in their moral judgments about the defendant's conduct, they
rendered erratic and unpredictable dollar awards. The experiments also
showed that instead of moderating juror verdicts, the process of jury
deliberation produced a striking "severity shift" toward ever-higher
awards. Jurors also tended to ignore instructions from the judges;
were influenced by whatever amount the plaintiff happened to request;
showed "hindsight bias," believing that what happened should have been
foreseen; and penalized corporations that had based their decisions on
careful cost-benefit analyses. While judges made many of the same
errors, they performed better in some areas, suggesting that judges
(or other specialists) may be better equipped than juries to decide
punitive damages. Using a wealth of new experimental data, and
offering a host of provocative findings, this book documents a wide
range of systematic biases in jury behavior. It will be indispensable
for anyone interested not only in punitive damages, but also jury
behavior, psychology, and how people think about punishment.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226780160
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok