David Cameron has promised shareholders a binding vote on directors' pay packages as a way of curbing excessive awards.

Pointing out that every state already allows judges to revise excessive punitive-damage awards, they argue that there is no real basis for an arbitrary ceiling.

The Los Angeles Times clucks that "public trust in product liability cases tried by juries might well be going down the drain with these excessive awards ."

The punitive damages are at the heart of complaints that the legal system is out of control with juries capriciously making excessive awards.

The Washington Post used the occasion to reopen the debate over excessive punitive-damage awards.

Reductions on this scale will not be achieved by weeding out inappropriate claims or excessive awards: on any reasonable estimate the numbers are on a quite different scale.

Making it more difficult to file malpractice suits and imposing caps on excessive awards for pain and suffering, as the surgeons in West Virginia are demanding, is a start.

When excessive monetary awards are given in such lawsuits, we all pay higher prices.

We enacted civil justice reforms in Texas to guard against frivolous litigation and excessive awards.

Maybe excessive and erratic awards are the fault of the jury.