The Significant Association Between Punitive and Compensatory Damages in Blockbuster Cases: A Methodological Primer

This article assesses the relation between punitive and compensatory damages in a data set, gathered by Hersch and Viscusi (H‐V), consisting of all known punitive damages awards in excess of $100 million from 1985 through 2003. It shows that a strong, statistically significant relation exists between punitive and compensatory awards, a relation that replicates similar findings in nearly all other analyses of punitive and compensatory damages. H‐V's claim that no significant relation exists between punitive and compensatory awards in these data appears to be an artifact of questionable regression methodology.