# State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Campbell

> Supreme Court of the United States · April 7, 2003 · 538 U.S. 408

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434421

## Case

- **Full name:** STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE CO. v. CAMPBELL Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** April 7, 2003
- **Citations:** 538 U.S. 408; 123 S. Ct. 1513; 155 L. Ed. 2d 585; 2003 U.S. LEXIS 2713
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Thomas
- **Judges:** Kennedy, Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, Breyer, Scalia, Thomas, Ginsburg
- **Cited by:** 2,164 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434421

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding a jury award of $145 million punitive damages for a claim that an insurance company engaged in bad faith conduct in its handling of the liability claim filed against its insured was grossly excessive for the compensatory damages award of $ 1 million and was thus revers…
- concluding, somewhat surprisingly, that “[o]ur jurisprudence and the 16 IN RE: LATE FEE & OVER-LIMIT FEE LITIGATION principles it has now established demonstrate . . . that, in practice, few [punitive] awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory dam…
- holding that to the extent compensatory damages are based on the infliction of emotional distress, such “[c]ompensatory damages . . . already contain this punitive element,” and citing the Restatement of Torts for the proposition that “[i]n many cases in which compensatory dam…
- concluding, somewhat surprisingly, that “[o]ur jurisprudence and the principles it has now established demonstrate ... that, in practice, few [punitive] awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages ... will satisfy due process,” and citing a …
- explaining that the reason procedural and substantive restrictions on punitive damage awards exist is because “elementary notions of fairness enshrined in our constitutional jurisprudence dictate that a person receive fair notice not only of the conduct that will subject him t…

## Opinion text

Justice Thomas,
dissenting.
I would affirm the judgment below because “I continue to believe that the Constitution does not constrain the size of punitive damages awards.” Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532 U. S. 424, 443 (2001) (Thomas, J., concurring) (citing BMW of North America, *430 Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559, 599 (1996) (Scalia, J., joined by Thomas, J., dissenting)). Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434421. Public record. Not legal advice.