As we noted in this post, California courts have made conflicting statements about whether a punitive damages award is presumptively excessive when it exceeds 10 percent of the defendant’s net worth. A few decades ago, our courts consistently followed that rule, but more recently some courts have questioned it.
The Supreme Court will not be resolving that conflict anytime soon. Today it denied the petition for review in Team Makena v. Lasso, a case in which the Court of Appeal declined to follow the 10 percent rule.
