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Dicta suggests complaint need not demand punitive damages

By: dmc-admin//March 31, 2008//

Dicta suggests complaint need not demand punitive damages

By: dmc-admin//March 31, 2008//

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Must punitive damages be demanded in the complaint in federal court?

The safer course of action is to ask for them, but dicta from the Seventh Circuit suggests that it is probably not necessary.

Christina Soltys and Danuta Pauch filed suit in federal court (Illinois, later transferred to Indiana), alleging that they were injured in a head-on collision as a result of Yvonne Costello driving while legally intoxicated.

The complaint did not specifically ask that punitive damages be awarded.

Later, as a sanction for failure to comply with discovery by the plaintiffs’ counsel, the district court excluded all the plaintiff’s experts, expert reports, and medical records, save what had been produced up to that point.

Two weeks prior to trial, plaintiffs moved to amend the complaint, to add a demand for punitive damages.

The district court denied the motion as untimely.

Because the defendant admitted liability, evidence of Costello’s intoxication was also excluded as irrelevant.

Although the plaintiffs suffered extensive injuries, in the absence of medical evidence, the jury awarded minimal damages — $10,000 for Soltys and $5,000 for Pauch.

The plaintiffs appealed, but the Seventh Circuit affirmed in a decision by Judge Michael S. Kanne, but expressed regret at having to do so.

The court first held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to amend their complaint. The case had already been pending for 14 months, and the untimely motion was not made until two weeks before trial.

However, the court suggested that there was no need for plaintiffs to amend their complaint in the first place.

The court acknowledged that Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 9(g) requires that a claim for special damages be specified in the complaint.

On the other hand, FRCP 54(c) provides that every final judgment “should grant the relief to which each party is entitled, even if the party has not demanded that relief in its pleadings.”

The court interpreted this rule as contemplating an award of punitive damages if appropriate, regardless of whether they are demanded in the complaint.

The issue has not previously been decided in the Seventh Circuit, and because counsel for plaintiffs did not properly raise the issue, the court declined to decide the question definitively.

In dicta, however, the court stated, “given our stance that ‘district courts should afford the prevailing party the relief to which it is entitled without regard to errors in the pleadings,’ the fundamental legal error in this case may have been the parties’ and the district court’s shared assumption that a prayer for punitive damages had to appear in the complaint in order to sustain an award of such damages.”

The court added that, had punitive damages been properly sought, the evidence of intoxication would have been highly relevant and admissible.
But, the court continued, “alas, [the attorney] did not raise this challenge below or on appeal, so we have no occasion to explore the interplay of Rule 54(c) and Rule 9(g) with respect to punitive damages.”

The court acknowledged that the result was “unfortunate,” as the plaintiffs were injured by an intoxicated driver, and suffered serious injuries, but were denied proper relief, “because their attorney did not comply with discovery orders and did not raise valid legal issues that would likely have led to adequate relief for his clients.”

The court concluded by stating that if the plaintiffs are to secure additional relief, they must look to that attorney.

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