Las Vegas jury awards $500 million in punitive damages in hepatitis case

Earlier today we reported on the plaintiff’s request for $2.5 billion in punitive damages in this case.  The jury has just returned a verdict for $500 million in punitive damages, according to KLAS-TV. That’s $270 million against one defendant and $230 million against another.  While that isn’t nearly as much as the plaintiffs requested, the combined punitive damages are still about 21 times the compensatory damages, which seems to present a serious constitutional excessiveness problem.