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

compensatory awards are substantial,” the court limited each punitive award to a
9:1 ratio to the corresponding compensatory damages. Id. at 963.
In Southern Union Co. v. Southwest Gas Corp., 415 F.3d 1001, 1010 (9th
Cir. 2005), a case involving a public official’s flagrant abuse of his office, the
district court upheld a punitive damages award of $60 million, which represented a
ratio of 153:1 to the compensatory damages award of $390,072. That decision was
reversed by the Ninth Circuit, which agreed that the defendant’s conduct was
highly reprehensible but held that “the ratio [of punitive to] actual damages is too
high” and remanded for further consideration of a more appropriate ratio. 415 F.3d
at 1011. In so holding, the court stated:
[W]e have been reminded that, under established
principles, few awards exceeding a single digit ratio to a
significant degree will satisfy due process. Even an
award more than four times the amount of compensatory
damages might be close to the line of constitutional
impropriety. History points to double, triple, or
quadruple punitives; these ratios are instructive.”
Id. (citations and quotation marks omitted). 6
Finally, in Bains, the defendant had engaged in racial discrimination and
harassment that the court characterized as highly reprehensible: “the conduct was
not an isolated incident but repeated, the target was highly vulnerable financially,
6 In its brief opposing Sunrise’s post-trial motions, CGB relied heavily on the
district court’s opinion in Southern Union. The reversal of that decision renders
the district court’s opinion in this case even more of an outlier.
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