Purpose of Punitive Damages
If you wanted to know the purpose behind punitive damages, this below snippet does a quality job explaining the purpose. When reading this snippet, pay special attention to the last paragraph in red emphasizing that the trial court’s job is NOT to weigh evidence or evaluate witness credibility in the punitive damages proffer. The punitive damages proffer just has to support a reasonable basis without the evaluation of credibility or evidence. When you consider that, consider what your thoughts are on this because without this evaluation, it makes creating that reasonable basis to support a punitive damages proffer quite a bit easier.
Punitive damages are a form of extraordinary relief, reserved for sufficiently outrageous or egregious conduct. The purpose of such damages “is not to further compensate the plaintiff, but to punish the defendant for [his or her] wrongful conduct and to deter similar misconduct by [him or her] and other actors in the future.”
In line with these basic tenets, punitive damages are only authorized where “there is a reasonable showing by evidence in the record or proffered by the claimant which would provide a reasonable basis for recovery of such damages.” § 768.72(1), Fla. Stat. This is because a defendant is afforded a “substantive legal right not to be subject to a punitive damage claim until the trial court rules that there is a reasonable evidentiary basis for punitive damages.” Holmes v. Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., 891 So. 2d 1188, 1191 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005) (citing Globe Newspaper Co. v. King, 658 So. 2d 518 (Fla. 1995)).
We concede that our case law has been less than a model of clarity in this arena. As both parties point out, we have stated on the one hand that “[a] trial court must weigh both parties’ showings when considering whether the evidence or proffer is sufficient . . . .” Gattorno, 390 So. 3d at 136-37 (quoting Manheimer v. Fla. Power & Light Co., 403 So. 3d 257, 261 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023)). Yet on the other hand, we have observed that “[t]he trial court’s gatekeeping function doesn’t ‘weigh evidence or evaluate witness credibility.’ ” McLane Foodservice Inc. v. Wool, 400 So. 3d 757, 761 (Fla. 3d DCA 2024).
The latter statement aligns with our recent decisions and those by our sister courts. See Fed. Ins. Co. v. Perlmutter, 376 So. 3d 24, 34 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023) (“We stress that the preliminary determination of whether the movant made a reasonable showing by evidence of a reasonable basis for allowing a punitive damages claim is to be made without weighing evidence or witness credibility.”); River Front Master Ass’n, Inc. v. N. Inv. Grp., LLC, 399 So. 3d 1106, 1108 (Fla. 3d DCA 2024) (court is not charged with weighing evidence when considering a punitive damage claim); Mercer v. Saddle Creek Transp., Inc., 389 So. 3d 774, 777 (Fla. 6th DCA 2024) (“Like the trial court, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to [movant] . . . . As below, we do not weigh evidence or evaluate witness credibility.”).
Roque v. Swezy, 51 Fla.L.Weekly D146a (Fla. 3d DCA 2026) (internal citation omitted).
Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.
