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Over the last decade, the U. S. Supreme Court has been putting the brakes on excessive punitive damages awards, seemingly limiting such award to a single-digit multiple of any compensatory damage award. It appears that a 3 to 1 or 4 to 1 ratio is in the proper range for cases with a sizable compensatory damage award. Despite the Highest Court’s previous warning to lower courts to limit punitive damages, however, in Williams v. Philip Morris, Inc., Oregon’s Supreme Court permitted a punitive damages award nearly 100 times greater than the compensatory damages judgment. The Oregon Court found an exception for huge awards where the conduct is analogous to a crime and is particularly reprehensible. The U. S. Supreme Court has taken that case up for review, and its decision will either re-iterate the direction it wants these cases to be going, i.e. limitations on punitive damages, or will create an exception that may swallow the rule.