The reader might be inclined to regard this is a game of semantics, but I dont think it is. Ask yourself: What sort of award will be sufficient to cause State Farm and other well-heeled insurance companies to take notice that, when in Utah, they had better behave themselves? A very big number might come to mind, perhap even one in the hundreds of millions. Now ask yourself: How much money are the Campbells entitled to extract from State Farm, on top of damages for any losses they suffered, in recognition of the fact that State Farm consciously shirked its duty to protect their interests so that it might serve its own? Monetizing is a subjective business, but whatever number we might come up with as an answer to the latter question, I cant believe that it's going to run into the multi-millions. $10,000, or S100,000, might constitute an appropriate number. But $10 million or $100 million? No way. In short, if we ask a different question about punitive damages -a question prompted by a conception of tort law as a law of private redress, we get a different order of answer than if we ask questions that presume a conception of tort law as public regulatory law Of course the Court in Campbell reached the conclusion that the $145 million award was excessive. So in that sense the hazards of treating tort law as public law were not realized. But why werent they? The answer may be that, despite its disparagement by legal academics, the notion of tort law as private law still has some hold on judges, even Supreme Court Justices The Court's principal stated reason for knocking down the punitive award was that the jury heard a lot of evidence about misconduct by other State Farm employees9 The reader might be inclined to regard this is a game of semantics, but I don’t think it is. Ask yourself: What sort of award will be sufficient to cause State Farm and other well-heeled insurance companies to take notice that, when in Utah, they had better behave themselves? A very big number might come to mind, perhaps even one in the hundreds of millions. Now ask yourself: How much money are the Campbells entitled to extract from State Farm, on top of damages for any losses they suffered, in recognition of the fact that State Farm consciously shirked its duty to protect their interests so that it might serve its own? Monetizing is a subjective business, but whatever number we might come up with as an answer to the latter question, I can’t believe that it’s going to run into the multi-millions. $10,000, or $100,000, might constitute an appropriate number. But $10 million or $100 million? No way. In short, if we ask a different question about punitive damages – a question prompted by a conception of tort law as a law of private redress, we get a different order of answer than if we ask questions that presume a conception of tort law as public regulatory law. Of course the Court in Campbell reached the conclusion that the $145 million award was excessive. So in that sense the hazards of treating tort law as public law were not realized. But why weren’t they? The answer may be that, despite its disparagement by legal academics, the notion of tort law as private law still has some hold on judges, even Supreme Court Justices. The Court’s principal stated reason for knocking down the punitive award was that the jury heard a lot of evidence about misconduct by other State Farm employees