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Dedicated to providing regular (well, as regular as our workload permits) updates concerning legal and regulatory events impacting the regulation of the business of insurance in the State of California with a particular focus upon the property and casualty and workers' compensation lines.

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Wednesday
16Jul

Caselaw Update: Court of Appeal Affirms Striking of Punitive Damages Claim (Unpublished Decision)

DateWednesday, July 16, 2008 at 02:56PM

Earlier this week, the California Court of Appeal affirmed, among other things, a trial court's striking of a punitive damages claim.   The opinion is unpublished and therefore not citable in California courts.  However, it is worth noting that the ability to strip away the leverage of a potential punitive damages claim early in the litigation is possible and must be considered by defense counsel. 

A succinct post on the salient reasoning of the opinion can be found in Curt Cutting's (of Horvitz and Levy) post here.  (While Curt describes a motion to strike punitive damages as an "underutilized defense strategy," it may actually be the case that it hardly comes up on appeal giving the appearance that it is "underutilized."  I know that this is an option that our office always considers and have seen it regularly raised by other defense firms.)

AuthorSpencer Y. Kook | Comments Off |
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