Evan Tager will serve as editor-in-chief, and Andy Frey, Lauren Goldman, and Miriam Nemetz will serve as editors. Scott Chesin, Richard Katskee, Carl Summers, Daniel Jones, and Breanne Gilpatrick will be regular contributors to the blog.
“For nearly four decades, Mayer Brown has contributed to the favorable development of punitive damages law and remains at the forefront of efforts to control punitive damages,” said Mr. Frey. “Guideposts will aim to keep readers up to date about important developments in this complex and ever-changing area of law.”
Added Mr. Tager: “The members of Mayer Brown’s Punitive Damages Group have collectively devoted more time and energy to issues bearing on punitive damages than any other lawyers in the country. The goal of our blog is to provide readers with the benefit of our decades of experience litigating punitive damages cases. We hope to educate readers about the cutting-edge issues in punitive damages law, as well as to provide bench and bar with the kind of sophisticated thinking necessary to rationalize the law in this area.”
Members of Mayer Brown’s Punitive Damages Group have represented a party or written an influential amicus brief in all of the landmark punitive damages cases in the Supreme Court. Notably, Mayer Brown represented BMW in the landmark Supreme Court case BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, in which the Court ruled for the first time that a punitive damages award was so excessive as to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The firm also represented Honda in Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg, in which the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause requires states to provide judicial review of the amount of punitive damages awarded by a jury. And in Philip Morris USA v. Williams, Mayer Brown persuaded the Supreme Court to rule that juries may not use their punitive damages awards to punish defendants for harms suffered by persons who are not parties to the litigation.
Additionally, lawyers in the Group have vast experience representing business defendants in punitive damages litigation in federal and state courts throughout the country. They have assisted clients at all stages of punitive damages litigation, from developing defenses and drafting motions in limine and jury instructions to briefing and arguing post-trial motions to handling appeals.
“Guideposts will provide us with a broader platform to discuss and analyze individual decisions and broader trends in a timely way, as well as to provide practical advice for litigating punitive damages issues both at trial and on appeal,” said Ms. Goldman. “We expect that it will be a valuable resource for both in-house lawyers and outside counsel.”
Ms. Nemetz added: “As appellate lawyers who specialize in punitive damages, we see many ‘low-risk’ cases that nevertheless produced huge verdicts because punitive damages were imposed. We hope that Guidepost readers will be better equipped not only to secure the reduction of those inflated judgments, but also to avoid them in the first place.”
Lawyers in Mayer Brown’s Punitive Damages Group are sought-after speakers on the subject of punitive damages and have written numerous scholarly works on the topic, including, most prominently, the chapter on punitive damages in the multi-volume ABA treatise Business and Commercial Litigation in Federal Courts. Members of the Group are consistently ranked in Chambers, Legal 500 and Benchmark Litigation, among other prestigious guides and lists.
