$79.5 million punitive damage award against Philip Morris returns to the U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review for the third time the $79.5 million in punitive damages that a Multnomah County jury awarded in a tobacco products liability case.  The court today accepted review in Williams v. Philip Morris USA, following the Oregon Supreme Court's decision earlier this year to affirm the punitives award of 97 times compensatory damages.  The state court reached that result by citing a state law defect in a proposed jury instruction on punitive damages, thereby avoiding the question of the instruction's compliance with the federal constitutional standards for due process. 

The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to review only whether the state court was prohibited from, in effect, ignoring its directive to apply the federal constitutional standard.  It will not address whether the punitive damages are excessive under the Due Process Clause.

See the petition for writ of certiorari here , our coverage of the most recent state court ruling here, and the SCOTUS Blog report on the case here.