Last Thursday, the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals ruled that Ohio's Tort Reform Act required the reduction of $43M in punitive damages to no more than $7M (which was twice the amount of compensatory damages awarded by the jury) in a retaliatory discharge case brought under the Ohio Civil Rights Act. Luri v. Republic Servs., Inc., 2011-Ohio-2389. In that case, the plaintiff general manager alleged that his employer manufactured a reason to fire him in April 2007 in violation of Ohio Revised Code § 4112.02(I) after he refused to fire the company's three oldest employees in November 2006. He had protested that one of the older employees had strong performance evaluations and could sue the company for age and disability discrimination. In addition, the plaintiff presented evidence that the defendants had altered and/or fabricated evidence to support its illegal termination decision and then refused to waive his non-competition agreement after firing him.
The Court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to bifurcate the trial (between liability and damages) because the evidence that proved liability was also relevant to the defendant's bad faith, justifying punitive damages. In particular, evidence that the defendants had manufactured evidence proved not only guilty intent in the termination decision, but also bad faith. The Court refused to find an error in the jury instructions because the defendants had failed to ask in the jury interrogatories or instructions for the economic and non-economic damages to be separately specified. In addition to the $3.5M in compensatory damages awarded by the jury, the trial court also awarded over $1M in attorney fees and prejudgment interest. However, the Court of Appeals found that the Tort Reform Act at Ohio Revised Code § 2315.21(D) limited the punitive damages to twice the amount of compensatory damages and those damages should be imposed collectively, rather than per plaintiff. Otherwise, the amount of the $43M punitive damage award did not shock the Court's conscience or constitute a violation of due process under the circumstances.
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