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: BizMediaLaw Blog from Wahab, Riveles & Medenica LLC

Punished for Punitive Damages--Globalization Has Not Caught On In the Courtroom

As the world becomes increasingly global and markets feel the collective sting of close integration, the legal world is still bragging about its 8-track player in an all digital world. Each nation?s legal system is its own fiefdom that doesn?t play nice with others. Sure, there are treaties with regard to a myriad of topics from child labor to tax treatment of investors, but these are patchwork and often subject to their own set of difficulties.

One of the greatest difficulties facing us all is the enforcement of legal judgments in one nation against a party that resides in another nation. And as our products wind through the production pipeline and have their passports stamped now more than we do, this is a serious issue. More now than ever the incompatibilities between various national litigation frameworks merits attention.

The first stop in the headache express is the enforcement of punitive damages awarded by US courts against foreign manufacturers. Punitive damages, long a foundational concept in English and US law has no analogue in virtually any other part of the world. In short, when it comes to damages above and beyond what is necessary to make a plaintiff ?whole?, everyone else in the world uses metric as opposed to inches.

So where does that leave the US plaintiff? Answer: In a world of worthless paper, as foreign courts, short of expressing contempt for punitive damages can and often do simply refuse to enforce them in any capacity. The foreign courts that deign to try to understand their red, white, and blue neighbors, point to the history of the concept and its goal of deterrence against large scale interests. However, they then declare the logic to be counter to their jurisprudence.

The New York Times ran an interesting and detailed article on the new frontier of legal globalization. To those that have tort cases against foreign corps, take the article as a serious note of caution (the story of a woman who lost her son due to an Italian made helmet and then lost out on her punitive damage award is telling).

Full post as published by BizMediaLaw Blog from Wahab, Riveles & Medenica LLC on March 31, 2008 (boomark / email).