civ pro Flashcards
choice of law
Federal courts sitting in diversity (as seen here) must apply federal law to procedural issues and state law to substantive issues.
A common substantive issue is the elements of a claim, including the amount of damages available.
As a result, state law—not federal law—governs the amount of punitive damages available in the firm’s claim against the former employee.
The federal court must then determine which state’s law governs the substantive issue by applying the choice-of-law rules of the state in which the court sits. Here, the federal court sits in State A, so it must apply State A’s choice-of-law rules. These rules require a court to select State A’s law, which limits punitive damages to five times the amount of compensatory damages. Therefore, the correct jury instruction submission to the court is that punitive damages are limited to five times the amount of compensatory damages.
