Punitive damages, or exemplary damages, are damages assessed in order to punish the defendant for outrageous conduct and/or to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit. Although the purpose of punitive damages is not to compensate the plaintiff, the plaintiff will receive all or some of the punitive damages award.
Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), if the emotional distress was caused by a caricature, parody, or satire of the public figure that a reasonable person would not have interpreted as factual.
Hill v Church of Scientology of Toronto February 20, 1995- July 20, 1995. 2 S.C.R. 1130 was a libel case against the Church of Scientology, in which the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted Ontario's libel law in relation to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that established the actual malice standard that must be met for press reports about public officials to be considered libel. The decision defended free reporting of the civil rights campaigns in the southern United States. It is one of the key decisions supporting the freedom of the press. The actual malice standard requires that a plaintiff alleging defamation who is a public official or public figure prove that the publisher of the statement in question knew that the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Because of the extremely high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and the difficulty of proving the defendant's knowledge and intentions, such claims by public figures rarely prevail.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States established the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals. The Court held that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, states are free to establish their own standards of liability for defamatory statements made about private individuals. However, the Court also ruled that if the state standard is lower than actual malice, the standard applying to public figures, then only actual damages may be awarded.
BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559 (1996), was a United States Supreme Court case limiting punitive damages under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In law, false light is a tort concerning privacy that is similar to the tort of defamation. The privacy laws in the United States include a non-public person's right to protection from publicity which puts the person in a false light to the public. That right is balanced against the First Amendment right of free speech.
Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532 U.S. 424 (2001), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the standard of review that Federal Appeal Courts should use when examining punitive damages awards.
Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448 (1976), was a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning defamation suits against public figures.
Modern libel and slander laws, as implemented in many Commonwealth nations as well as in the United States and in the Republic of Ireland, are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), though it is unknown whether any generally applicable criminal process was in place. The first fully reported case in which libel is affirmed generally to be punishable at common law was tried during the reign of James I (1603-1625). Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of dueling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbid libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be patently false. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.
Browning-Ferris Industries v. Kelco Disposal, 492 U.S. 257 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable fines does not apply to punitive-damage awards in civil cases when the United States is not a party.
Carol Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc., was a decision by the California Court of Appeals, which ruled that the "actual malice" required under California law for imposition of punitive damages is distinct from the "actual malice" required by New York Times v. Sullivan to be liable for defaming a "public figure" and that the National Enquirer is not a "newspaper" for the purposes of California libel law.
Goldwater v. Ginzburg was a 1969 United States court ruling on defamation.
Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374 (1967) is a United States Supreme Court case involving issues of privacy in balance with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and principles of freedom of speech.
In United States constitutional law, false statements of fact are an exception from protection of free speech under the First Amendment. In United States law, a false statement of fact will not be exempt from some civil or criminal penalty, if a law has imposed one. This exception has evolved over time from a series of Supreme Court cases that dealt with issues such as libel, slander, and statutes which barred fraudulent solicitation of charitable donations.
Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district
court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.
Harte-Hanks Communications Inc. v. Connaughton, 491 U.S. 657 (1989), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States supplied an additional journalistic behavior that constitutes actual malice as first discussed in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). In the case, the Court held that departure from responsible reporting and unreasonable reporting conduct alone were not sufficient to award a public figure damages in a libel case. However, the Court also ruled that if reporters wrote with reckless disregard for the truth, which included ignoring obvious sources for their report, plaintiffs could be awarded compensatory damages on the grounds of actual malice.
