Punitive damage claims remain the rare exception rather than the rule in medical malpractice actions. The likely reason, as the Appellate Division has expressly recognized, is that “[a] doctor in a malpractice case is ordinarily not an actor who intends to inflict an injury on his patient.”1 Indeed, Justice Stanley Sklar, a judge well versed in medical malpractice law, once observed that seeking punitive damages in a medical malpractice action is typically futile: “[m]y years of experience in my medical malpractice part establish that the top practitioners in the field almost never seek punitive damages; the novices frequently do. As is almost always true, seeking punitive damages is a total waste of time….”2
Standard for Award
In Dupree v. Giugliano,3 its most recent pronouncement on the issue in a medical malpractice action, the Court of Appeals reaffirmed that the standard for an award of punitive damages is that a defendant “manifest evil or malicious conduct beyond any breach of professional duty,” and that there must be
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