rejecting employer's reliance on use of word "punitive damages" elsewhere in human rights statutes to "[buttress] its position that the word 'damages' standing alone does not include punitives" because existence of specific provisions capping or flooring punitive damages "presupposes their general availability"
How later courts described this case
- rejecting employer's reliance on use of word "punitive damages" elsewhere in human rights statutes to "[buttress] its position that the word 'damages' standing alone does not include punitives" because existence of specific provisions capping or flooring punitive damages "presupposes their general availability"
- noting that the availability of the remedy of punitive damages does not make a statute penal in nature and that “a law is not penal merely because it imposes an extraordinary liability on a wrongdoer in favor of a person wronged, which is not limited to damages suffered by him”
- finding that ch. 4112 provides “broad relief which is sufficiently comprehensive to vindicate the policy goals set forth in that statute.”
- finding that the term “damages” in R.C. 4112.99 is “an inclusive term embracing the panoply of legally recognized pecuniary relief’ such as compensatory and punitive damages
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Declined to follow by Cleveland Mobile Radio Sales v. Verizon, Unpublished Decision (10-13-2005), 2005 Ohio 5439 (2005)
Rice, supra. Accordingly, we decline to apply the holding of Usternal to the instant case.
The opinion
Lundberg Stratton, J.,
concurring. I concur in the syllabus and judgment only.