What precedent are you basing your "Excessive award." comment on? Are you a lawyer or something?
How do you know what "should have been" awarded? The jury awarded more than twice what the plaintiff asked for in punitive damages because their behavior was so outrageous.
The Sandia officials responsible for this mess should be held accountable for their actions. Where the heck is Congress in all of this? Where is the DOE Inspector General? Where is the National Nuclear Security Administration officials? Don't they have some kind of site office on Kirtland for the express purpose of Sandia oversight?
These people are simply out of control, and have been for some time.
The verdict *will* most likely get reduced on appeal, but your 3x "rule" is pure BS.
The most helpful guidance in the U.S. Supreme Court's April 7 punitive damages decision is the observation that punitive damages in a single-digit ratio to compensatory damages are more likely to survive due process scrutiny for excessiveness, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama declared April 24 in a diet supplement case (McClain v. Metabolife International Inc., N.D. Ala., No. 01-AR-1801-S, 4/24/03).
Acting on that signal, Judge William M. Acker Jr. reduced one punitive award that was 20 times the compensatory damages on a product liability claim to a ratio of 9:1, while leaving unscathed other awards at various single-digit ratios, as well as one $25,000 punitive award at a 25:1 ratio.
The case was brought by four consumers of Metabolife 356 diet pills. They alleged that the pills, which contain ephedra and caffeine, were defective and unsafe, and that the labels on the bottles misrepresented that the pills had been "independently laboratory tested for safety."
The jury found in favor of each of the consumers, awarding one of them $500,000 actual damages on her product liability claim under the Alabama Extended Manufacturers Liability Doctrine and $1 million punitive damages. The second consumer was awarded $50,000 actual AEMLD damages and $1 million punitive damages on that claim, plus $150,000 actual damages for fraud and nonduplicative punitive damages of $1 million on that claim. The third consumer was awarded $1,000 actual AEMLD damages and $25,000 punitive damages on that claim, plus $10,000 fraud damages and $75,000 punitive damages for fraud. The fourth consumer was awarded $7,500 actual AEMLD damages and no punitive damages.