Hong, Peter Y. (27 August 1999). "Judge Cuts Award Against GM to $1.2 Billion". Los Angeles Times. $4.8 billion was the largest non-class action judgment for punitive damages according to one study. See Joni Hersch and W. Kip Viscusi, "Punitive Damages: How Judges and Juries Perform", 33 J. Legal Stud. 1 (January 2004), available on SSRN.
Hong, Peter Y. (27 August 1999). "Judge Cuts Award Against GM to $1.2 Billion". Los Angeles Times. $4.8 billion was the largest non-class action judgment for punitive damages according to one study. See Joni Hersch and W. Kip Viscusi, "Punitive Damages: How Judges and Juries Perform", 33 J. Legal Stud. 1 (January 2004), available on SSRN.
Proximate cause means that you must be able to show that the harm was caused by the tort you are suing for.[29][30] The defendant may argue that there was a prior cause or a superseding intervening cause. A common situation where a prior cause becomes an issue is the personal injury car accident, where the person re-injures an old injury. For example, someone who has a bad back is injured in the back in a car accident. Years later, he is still in pain. He must prove the pain is caused by the car accident, and not the natural progression of the previous problem with the back. A superseding intervening cause happens shortly after the injury. For example, if, after the accident, the doctor who works on you commits malpractice and injures you further, the defendant can argue that it was not the accident, but the incompetent doctor who caused your injury.
Dignitas is a generic term meaning 'worthiness, dignity, self-respect', and comprises related concerns like mental tranquillity and privacy. Because it is such a wide concept, its infringement must be serious. Not every insult is humiliating; one must prove contumelia. This includes insult (iniuria in the narrow sense), adultery, loss of consortium, alienation of affection, breach of promise (but only in a humiliating or degrading manner), violation of chastity and femininity (as in the cases of peeping toms, sexual suggestions in letters, indecent exposure, seduction, wrongful dismissal of an employee in humiliating terms and unwarranted discrimination on grounds of sex, colour or creed).
