Marc Mayerson has a good new post on punitive damages. I've got a punitive damages case pending now. The Supreme Court and some other state courts have been limiting punitive damage awards in recent years. Mayerson discusses that at length.
I haven't read them recently, but my recollection of Gore v. BMW and the State Farm case that he discusses is that the conduct was not sufficiently rotten to justify really big punitive damage awards, and so the Supreme Court limited punitive damages to a set multiple of the compensatory damages (how much the victim was actually hurt). The cases discussed certain factors that would have to be in place to allow for larger awards. These factors included whether the defendant was recidivist (repeating prior offenses); and also the need to consider what government penalties are appropriate.
It so happens that in my punitive damages case, the bad guy had previously settled with a government agency for big money, and then repeated some of that behavior with my clients. So I'm hoping if I actually get a big punitive damages award, I'll pass those tests and not get reduced on appeal.
There has been substantial criticism of the Supreme Court's approach, limiting punitive damages. If I remember correctly, the Court asserted that big punitive damages awards affected the substantive due process rights of the defendant. Seems like a pretty big stretch of substantive due process doctrine to me, and I actually think I know something about the topic. I wrote an article on substantive due process a few years ago.