Opening Brief for Appellant/Cross-Appellee - Appellate.net

In State Farm, the Supreme Court identified five non-exclusive factors that
bear on the degree of reprehensibility of a defendant’s conduct: whether (i) “the
harm caused was physical as opposed to economic”; (ii) “the tortious conduct
evinced an indifference to or reckless disregard of the health or safety of others”;
(iii) “the target of the conduct had financial vulnerability”; (iv) “the conduct
involved repeated action or was an isolated incident”; and (v) “the harm was the
result of intentional malice, trickery, or deceit, or mere accident.” 538 U.S. at 419.
Importantly, the Court added, “[t]he existence of any one of these factors weighing
in favor of a plaintiff may not be sufficient to sustain a punitive damages award;
and the absence of all of them renders any award suspect.” Id.
Here, not a single one of the five reprehensibility factors is present. And
there is much mitigating evidence on the other side of the ledger. Under
Pennsylvania law, punitive damages are available only for conduct that was
“outrageous, because of the defendant’s evil motive or his reckless indifference to
the rights of others.” Martin v. Johns-Manville Corp., 494 A.2d 1088, 1096
(1985). To the extent that Sunrise’s conduct crossed that threshold at all, it surely
did so only by the thinnest of margins, and hence falls on the far low end of the
reprehensibility spectrum.
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