Punitive Damages Award Not Remitted In First MDL Pelvic Mesh Trial
In the first jury trial within the seven MDLs related to surgical mesh products to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence assigned to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, a jury awarded a plaintiff $250,000 in compensatory damages and $1.75 million in punitive damages. The defendant drug manufacturer moved the court to remit the punitive damages award and the plaintiff asked the court to declare Georgia’s punitive damages statute unconstitutional.
The court concluded that Georgia’s punitive damage statute, which provides that 75% of any amounts awarded as punitive damages in product liability cases, less a proportionate part of the costs of litigation including reasonable attorneys’ fees, as determined by the trial judge, be paid into the Georgia state treasury. The plaintiff argued that the statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment. The West Virginia federal court rejected these arguments and concluded that the Georgia statute passed constitutional muster. Four prior cases had dealt with the constitutionality of this statute–one Georgia federal court case finding the statute unconstitutional in 1990 and three subsequent Georgia Supreme Court cases finding that it was constitutional. The West Virginia federal court quoted the Georgia Supreme Court’s analysis in finding that the statute was rationally related to a legitimate state interest: “As the risk and harm are distributed between the individual plaintiff and all citizens of Georgia, the legislature has seen fit to distribute a portion of the damages awarded to those at potential risk–all citizens of the state.” Further, the Takings Clause argument failed because Georgia has expressly held that a plaintiff has no vested property rights in the amount of punitive damages that can be received in any case.
The court also denied the defendant’s request to remit the punitive damages award. Citing the permanent physical harm experienced by the plaintiff, the indifference and reckless disregard of the health and safety of the plaintiff by the defendant given evidence of knowledge of the product’s risks and the conscious decision not to mitigate the risks, the court explained that the required reprehensibility analysis corroborated the jury’s award. The ratio of 7:to:1 punitive damages:compensatory damages was a single-digit multiplier that the court found did not violate due process (notably, because the court found the 7:to:1 ratio constitutional in this case, the court did not have to address whether the actual ratio was 1.31:to:1 instead of 7:to:1 as the plaintiffs had argued given that 75% of the award was going to the State of Georgia). The court explained that the BMW v. Gore guideposts weighed in favor of upholding the jury’s punitive damages award and denied the defendant’s motion to remit.
