Donald Trump said he wants to bring on new lawyers for an appeal in the E. Jean Carroll case. Whether or not any attorneys are interested in taking the case, the announcement raises the question of what might be accomplished legally by challenging the $83.3 million defamation verdict. One question is whether the punitive damages would stand, because they’ve been cut in previous cases.
For some guidance on this question, we can look at a 2003 Supreme Court case called State Farm v. Campbell. There, the high court said punitive damages of $145 million violated due process in part because the number was so much higher than the compensatory damages of $1 million. That’s obviously a much bigger gap than in Trump’s case, with $65 million in punitive damages and $18.3 million in compensatory damages.
The court said in the State Farm case that “few awards exceeding a single-digit ratio between punitive and compensatory damages, to a significant degree, will satisfy due process,” adding that punitive damages of more than four times the compensatory amount “might be close to the line of constitutional impropriety.” The punitive damages for Carroll are less than four times the compensatory amount, so that shouldn’t be a problem here. Yet, the court also said that when compensatory damages are “substantial,” then a punitive amount equal to those damages might be more appropriate. Even if the punitive damages Trump owes were reduced in that way, he would still be on the hook for $18.3 million in punitive damages.
At any rate, the court said awards “must be based upon the facts and circumstances of the defendant’s conduct and the harm to the plaintiff.” So it would be a case-specific analysis, which might not help the former president in light of his repeated defamation of Carroll in speeches and social media posts.
Also notable in the State Farm case is that it was a divided ruling with only one of the justices on that court still on it today: Clarence Thomas. He dissented in that case, reiterating his view that the Constitution doesn’t constrain the size of punitive damage awards.
Whatever Thomas and the rest of the Roberts Court would say about this case, if it gets to them some day, first we’ll see which lawyers, if any, take up the appeal to begin with. Given Trump’s track record in court recently, the best appellate lawyers in the country may not be exactly jumping at the opportunity.
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