In 2002 Rachelle Jackson, a trained nurse, heard the sound of an auto crash while out walking. When she got there a police car had been hit when another car ran a stop sign. The driver of the police car was unconscious and the other officer was dazed. She pulled the passenger, Officer Kelly Brogan, from the car and helped her to a nearby stoop.

Police at the scene told Rachelle that the driver’s weapon had been stolen and asked her to go to the police station for questioning. Instead of being asked about the accident, she was accused of stealing the gun. She was held for two days with little to drink or eat until she agreed to sign a statement the police had prepared. She was charged and held in jail for ten months waiting for her trial. Her case was thrown out by a circuit court judge and in 2003 she sued the city of Chicago, Officer Brogan and the two officers who interrogated her.

In June, a federal jury found against the city and several officers. They awarded Rachelle 7.7 million dollars for false arrest, malicious prosecution, coercive questioning and intentional affliction of emotional distress.

On Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-3 vote, slashed a punitive punishments award against Exxon Mobil from two and a half billion dollars to about 500 million dollars. It is no surprise that this decision was applauded by business and decried by Alaskans and environmentalists.

This means that victims of the spill who filed a claim may expect to collect an average of $15, 000 each. Under the 2.5 billion dollar judgement they would have collected an average of $75,000 each.

Osa Schultz of Cordova, Alaska, said she was “pretty disappointed” with the amount of the settlement. “On the other hand, I’m relieved they slapped Exxon in the face,” Schultz said, adding that a $15,000 award wouldn’t even begin to cover the losses to her and her husband’s gillnet fishing business.

Justice David Souter wrote for the court that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, $507.5 million, an amount equal to about four days worth of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s profits last quarter.

In an opinion dissenting from the Souter decision, Justice John Paul Stevens endorsed the $2.5 billion figure for punitive damages, pointing out that Congress has chosen not to impose restrictions in such circumstances.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also dissented, saying the court was engaging in “lawmaking” by concluding that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses.

Exxon has been fighting to reduce or erase the punitive damages verdict by an Alaskan jury, a verdict reached because of the crash of the Exxon Valdez super tanker in 1989. That crash dumped eleven million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound fouling 1200 miles of coastline and leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of seabirds and other marine animals.

This case looks to be all about whether the child was adequately watched. When you hand over your child to another for care such as this, the caregiver is many times subject to a higher level of scrutiny. We see this in many states with schools as well.

Timothy Burke was fine when his father dropped him off at the YMCA Childcare Center in Marblehead on the morning of June 9, 2005.

Even though his best buddy wasn’t there that day, Timothy, 3, happily played alone, filling a toy dump truck with mulch, pushing it across the yard and then emptying it. He ended up inside a playhouse built against the side of the Humphrey Street center.

No one’s sure what happened next, but about 15 minutes later, the little boy was found unconscious, face down against the back of the toy truck. Less than a week later, on June 15, his parents “reluctantly” made the decision to take him off life support.

Now his parents have filed a wrongful death suit against the Marblehead-Swampscott YMCA, six of its employees and Northshore Ambulance of Salem.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Salem Superior Court, three years to the day after Timothy’s death, alleges that both the YMCA and its employees and the ambulance company and its workers were negligent. The suit charges that day care center employees failed to watch the child and, when they found him unconscious, failed to provide proper emergency care. It also charges that the ambulance company was negligent by failing to properly train its employees or provide them with proper supplies to treat the child. The ambulance workers never used a defibrillator on the boy.