PHILADELPHIA – A federal judge has slashed a $5.1 million defamation verdict against West Publishing down to just $400,000 after finding that the jury’s award of $2.5 million in punitive damages to each of the two law professor plaintiffs was unconstitutionally excessive.
In Rudovsky v. West Publishing Corp., No. 09-cv-00727, professors David Rudovsky of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Leonard Sosnov of Widener Law School claimed they were falsely identified as the authors of a December 2008 supplement, or “pocket part,” to their book, “Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure: Law, Commentary and Forms.”
