Johnson v. Hugo's Skateway

A panel of this court in Mattison v. Dallas Carrier Corp., 947 F.2d 95 (4th Cir.1991), misread the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 1032, 113 L.Ed.2d 1 (1991), constitutionalized under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments the “factors” that Alabama courts may but are not required to consider when reviewing punitive damages awards for excessiveness, effectively incorporated the equivalent of those seven factors into South Carolina law and, to avoid a perceived violation of the Seventh Amendment, required that federal courts instruct…