Is a US district court allowed to award punitive damages based on another state&#39;s law? Let's say The plaintiff lives in Florida, US. The defendant lives in California, US. The plaintiff sues the defendant in a Texas District Court due to diversity jurisdiction. The case involves serious fraud and the plaintiff has no contractual relationship with the defendant. Since California law has no cap for punitive damages, can the judge in Texas apply California law with regards to punitive damages? If it is possible, could you cite some cases?
Short Answer At the level of generality presented in the question, it is impossible to know with any meaningful level of comfort, which state's laws regarding punitive damages caps will apply, even if there are prior precedents addressing a similar issue, since the determination is so dependent upon a rich set of relevant facts. Long Answer Does Federal Or State Law Apply? In a diversity case, under what is known as the Erie doctrine, after the U.S. Supreme Court case that established it, a federal district court sitting in diversity applies the substantive law of the state in which it is located (including its choice of law rules) and federal procedural law. A variety of subsequent cases have clarified (or at least made more specific) what counts as substantive law, and what counts as procedural law. A 2018 law review article (open access) uses a five page long flow chart to explain the rule. A simplified partial page flowchart regarding whether state or federal law applies can be found here. To cut a long analysis short, punitive damage limitations generally count as substantive law under this test. So, the question of which state's law to apply to punitive damages caps in a diversity case brought in a U.S. District Court in Texas is precisely the same as the question faces by a Texas state court regarding which state's law to apply. Choice Of Law Analysis At The State Level In general, a state court (or a federal court sitting in diversity) applies the law of the state in which it is located unless a party argues that under choice of law principles that another state's law should apply, and that party shows that the law of the state whose law is proposed is different from the law of the state where the case is being tried. Historically, there were rigid rules that provided that in particular kinds of cases, a particular state's law would apply. Some of those historical rules continue to have full force. For example, the substantive real property law of the state where real property is located almost always applies. But, in other cases, a more vague modern rule for choice of law applies. This is the rule that the law of the state with the most significant relationship to the issue to be decided should apply. Different issues in the same case may end up being governed by different laws as a result. Among the factors to be considered in applying a most significant relationship test are: The place where the event giving rise to the claim occurred. The interest of the state where the person who was harmed resides in controlling the amount of compensation that the person harmed received. The interest of the state where the person who caused the harm resides in encouraging or discouraging business activity that may hurt others. The interest of the state where the insurance company paying some or all of the claim is located in not driving up insurance premiums. The inquiry in this multi-factor balancing test is usually extremely fact intensive. The practical effect of the most significant relationship test has been to make the ultimate decision less predictable and to make it more likely that a judge will decide that the forum state's law will apply. Under the historical rule, about two-thirds of requests to apply a non-forum state's law were granted. Under the modern rule, about one-third of such requests are granted. A law review article from 1987 spells out the choice of law rules in Texas at the time which have probably become somewhat looser since that time that it was written. The article is James P. George, Choice of Law Outline for Texas Courts, 18 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 785 (1987). Available at: https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/255 A short article looking at the case law for choice of law cases with regard to punitive damages can be found here. It opens by observing that: The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged that while states are afforded discretion over the imposition of punitive damages, state law is still subject to &quot;procedural and substantive constitutional limitations on these awards.&quot; State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U.S. 408, 416 (2003). Relying on the Due Process Clause, the Court has provided some basis for determining which state's law applies to the punitive damages question and what conduct is subject to punitive liability. In Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, for example, the Supreme Court held that &quot;for a State's substantive law to be selected in a constitutionally permissible manner, that State must have a significant contact or significant aggregation of contacts, creating state interests, such that choice of its law is neither arbitrary nor fundamentally unfair.&quot; Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U.S. 797, 818 (1985) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Court has also made clear that &quot;[e]lementary notions of fairness&quot; require that a defendant must be given &quot;fair notice&quot; of what conduct is subject to punitive damages, as well as the severity of the penalty that may be imposed. BMW of N. Am. v. Gore, 517 U.S. 559, 574 (1996). It also observes in an analysis that should be taken with a grain of salt, because it comes from a law firm that defends companies that are usually defendants in product liability cases rather than plaintiffs and is not written by a neutral party: a growing number of courts have begun to recognize that an analysis of the Restatement factors points to the application of defendants' home jurisdictions' laws to the issue of punitive damages. See, e.g., Kirchman v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., No. 8:06- cv-1787-T-24-TBM, 2014 WL 2722483, at *4 (M.D. Fla. June 16, 2014) (applying the law of New Jersey to punitive damages claim because that state &quot;is the place of injury-causing conduct,&quot; i.e., the state &quot;where Novartis made its corporate decisions regarding the labeling, packaging and warning of the drugs, which Plaintiff alleges caused Mr. Kirchman's osteonecrosis of the jaw&quot;) (citation omitted); Williams v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., 15 F. Supp. 3d 761, 768 (S.D. Ohio 2014) (&quot;When a plaintiff seeks punitive damages against a manufacturer in a products liability case based on a 'failure to warn' theory, the focus, for purposes of a choice-of-law analysis, needs to be on the place where the defendant's alleged corporate misconduct occurred.&quot;); Braun, 2014 WL 345246, at *5 (California law applied to punitive damages claims against infant sling manufacturer because defendant &quot;designed its products in California&quot; and therefore &quot;all of the actions that would form the basis for punitive damages occurred there&quot;); Dopson-Troutt v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., No. 8:06-CV-1708-T-24-EAJ, 2013 WL 3808205, at *4 (M.D. Fla. July 22, 2013) (&quot;The Court agrees with the reasoning of the other courts who have found that&quot; the Restatement principles &quot;support applying New Jersey law to the punitive damages issue in this case&quot; because &quot;the basic policy underlying punitive damages is to punish and deter [the defendant], whose conduct occurred in New Jersey . . . .&quot;) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). For example, in Irby, a Virginia plaintiff alleged that he developed osteonecrosis of the jaw after ingesting the drug Zometa, manufactured by Novartis. Irby, 2011 WL 5835414, at 2. The parties stipulated that Virginia law governed the plaintiff's compensatory claims for failure to warn, defective design, breach of implied warranty, negligence, and consumer fraud. They disagreed, however, on which state's law should govern plaintiff's punitive damages claim. Virginia law caps punitive damages at $350,000, while New Jersey law bars them completely in cases involving FDA-approved drugs. Plaintiff argued Virginia law should apply as the place of injury, while Novartis argued that the law of New Jersey should apply because its principal place of business is located in that state. To some extent, these choice of law principles apply even in cases where there are arguably procedural rules that apply, rather than merely blindly following a federal procedure and state substantive distinction. Wikipedia's entry on the Erie doctrine concludes in part by stating: Erie has gone in a newer and even more complicated direction than the previous controlling cases, and that instead of selecting either federal or state law for a case, the federal court may be required to somehow blend federal and state law, depending on the issue. This is quite frustrating for those who wish to have a black-letter rule that will point them to the answer. However, the possibility of blending in Erie does not open up an infinitude of possibilities. But even in the context here where it is clear that state law rather than federal law applies, the determination of which state's law applies is itself involved and is frustratingly indeterminate.
Venue The location where you file the claim is the court that will hear it unless: you both agree the judge orders a different venue based on submissions from the parties (unlikely in a small claim) Costs Costs awards in small claims are rare and generally do not extend to the legal fees and if they do, the amount is capped. Costs for reasonable expenses of witnesses are slightly more common. In general, costs are limited to what is reasonable - to get the costs of travel and accommodation for the Liverpool solicitor, the party would have to argue that there was no available equivalent representation available locally. This might be arguable if you need a QC expert in say, international maritime law, it seems unlikely for a small claims matter. Personal Comment Don't go to court for £100 - settle the damn thing or walk away. In the time and worry you spend on it you could earn that sum five times over.
The Answer Depends Upon The Facts Of The Case Related To The Forum Where The Suit Is Commenced The analysis depends upon some key facts that a person asking a question might not know, because they are not intuitively obvious and have actually changed in the last few years, without knowing the relevant law. When The Forum State Has General Jurisdiction Over All Defendants The most important question to consider is this one: Is the state in which the class action suit is brought is home to the headquarters of the US manufacturer (or a state where the manufacturer has a substantial equivalent to a headquarters)? This question matters because, if and only if the answer to this question is &quot;yes&quot; then, &quot;general jurisdiction&quot; would be present under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent established in 2014. If a forum state's courts have &quot;general jurisdiction&quot; over a defendant, this means that the defendant can be sued in that forum on any cause of action against that defendant arising anywhere in the world, regardless of any other relationship that the claim has to the forum state (except for claims in the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts which can be brought in a U.S. District Court located in the same state, or in an arbitration forum pursuant to a valid arbitration clause that binds the parties, an issue beyond the scope of this question and answer). Until recently general jurisdiction over a defendant (i.e. jurisdiction over any lawsuit against a defendant without regard to the particular facts of the case) was present in any state where a company has a permanent office for the conduct of business, under half a century of precedent on the issue that traced back to a U.S. Supreme Court case known as International Shoe v. State of Washington, 326 U.S. 310 (1945). In the case of large corporations doing business nationwide, this usually meant that a plaintiff had a large number of states to choose from in which a defendant could be sued on any matter whatsoever which also facilitated the filing of class action lawsuits with plaintiffs from all over the world covered by a single lawsuit. But, in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U. S. ___ (January 14, 2014), general jurisdiction was limited to the state where the headquarters of the business is located, or another state the defendant is otherwise equally &quot;at home.&quot; (For example, the state where Amazon.com chooses to locate its proposed &quot;HQ2&quot; in the case of a lawsuit against Amazon.) If so, the foreign plaintiff member of the class can probably join the lawsuit, since general jurisdiction is present. When The Forum State Does Not Have General Jurisdiction Over All Defendants But, if the forum of the class action lawsuit is not one of the typically one or two states where the defendant is &quot;at home&quot;, then a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from June of 2017 that significantly changes the law of &quot;specific jurisdiction&quot; probably bars the joinder of the foreign plaintiff as a member of the class. This case holds that specific jurisdiction over a defendant arising solely from the fact that it sold a defective product in a particular state or country which it caused an injury to be limited to plaintiffs who actually purchased the product or suffered an injury in that state. So, if there is more than one defendant, the forum state must have general jurisdiction over all of the defendants, or must have specific jurisdiction over all defendants over whom it does not have general jurisdiction for a reason that applies to all members of the class bringing the lawsuit. For example, if the defective product was an airplane that crashed in California as a result of a defective product, everyone hurt in the crash could sue in a single action in California because that is where the injury occurred to all of them, even if the people on the plane who were injured or died came from different states and countries. Similarly, if the product was defective as a result of design work conducted by multiple large corporate defendants with different home states outside Colorado that took place entirely at a design collaboration workshop at the University of Colorado at Boulder, a class action including all persons injured globally by the defective products could be brought in Colorado, even if the injuries were dispersed all over the world at places where the defective products were delivered. The case adopting this radical change in the law of specific personal jurisdiction is Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of Cal., San Francisco Cty. (U.S. June 19, 2017) in which the court finds that &quot;specific personal jurisdiction&quot; (as opposed to &quot;general jurisdiction&quot;) is lacking with regard to the claims of members of the class of plaintiffs who are not California residents in this case brought in a California state trial court (in an 8-1 decision with Justice Sotomayor dissenting). According to the official syllabus of that case: A group of plaintiffs, most of whom are not California residents, sued Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS) in California state court, alleging that the pharmaceutical company’s drug Plavix had damaged their health. BMS is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York, and it maintains substantial operations in both New York and New Jersey. Although it engages in business activities in California and sells Plavix there, BMS did not develop, create a marketing strategy for, manufacture, label, package, or work on the regulatory approval for Plavix in the State. And the nonresident plaintiffs did not allege that they obtained Plavix from a California source, that they were injured by Plavix in California, or that they were treated for their injuries in California. The California Superior Court denied BMS’s motion to quash service of summons on the nonresidents’ claims for lack of personal jurisdiction, concluding that BMS’s extensive activities in the State gave the California courts general jurisdiction. Following this Court’s decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U. S. ___, the State Court of Appeal found that the California courts lacked general jurisdiction. But the Court of Appeal went on to find that the California courts had specific jurisdiction over the claims brought by the nonresident plaintiffs. Affirming, the State Supreme Court applied a “sliding scale approach” to specific jurisdiction, concluding that BMS’s “wide ranging” contacts with the State were enough to support a finding of specific jurisdiction over the claims brought by the nonresident plaintiffs. That attenuated connection was met, the court held, in part because the nonresidents’ claims were similar in many ways to the California residents’ claims and because BMS engaged in other activities in the State. The high court finds that the absence of an in-state injury or injury to a resident plaintiff is controlling. It is not sufficient in the high court's analysis that the corporation is already subject to suit in California as a result of its conduct in California to most of the people in the suit. Instead of analyzing whether California has jurisdiction over the product liability situation, in general, the high court decides that the determination regarding whether California has jurisdiction over a suit against a particular defendant must be made on a plaintiff by plaintiff basis when &quot;specific jurisdiction&quot; rather than &quot;general jurisdiction&quot; is involved. Sotomayor's dissent in this case emphasizes implications of this ruling in the kind of situation posed by this question at Law.SE: Three years ago, the Court imposed substantial curbs on the exercise of general jurisdiction in its decision in Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U. S. ___ (2014). Today, the Court takes its first step toward a similar contraction of specific jurisdiction by holding that a corporation that engages in a nationwide course of conduct cannot be held accountable in a state court by a group of injured people unless all of those people were injured in the forum State. I fear the consequences of the Court’s decision today will be substantial. The majority’s rule will make it difficult to aggregate the claims of plaintiffs across the country whose claims may be worth little alone. It will make it impossible to bring a nationwide mass action in state court against defendants who are “at home” in different States. And it will result in piecemeal litigation and the bifurcation of claims. None of this is necessary. A core concern in this Court’s personal jurisdiction cases is fairness. And there is nothing unfair about subjecting a massive corporation to suit in a State for a nationwide course of conduct that injures both forum residents and nonresidents alike. . . . It “does not offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice,’” International Shoe, 326 U. S., at 316, to permit plaintiffs to aggregate claims arising out of a single nationwide course of conduct in a single suit in a single State where some, but not all, were injured. But that is exactly what the Court holds today is barred by the Due Process Clause. This is not a rule the Constitution has required before. I respectfully dissent. The most serious issues arise in one of the situations that Justice Sotomayor addresses which the majority does not adequately consider in the rebuttal in its own opinion, which is the situation where there are multiple possible defendants with different home states, whose relative liability is unknown or independent or mutually dependent. For example, suppose that the product has two kinds of defectively manufactured components manufactured by companies with two different home states in the U.S. (e.g. an electronic device charging bay and a battery) that are assembled by the customer after they are delivered independently, which, when acting together, cause the assembled product to be dangerous and cause injury even though the design itself is not defective. Under Bristol-Myers, there is no U.S. forum with jurisdiction over all injuries caused by these compound manufacturing defects that can allocate responsibility between the responsible manufacturers on a consistent basis. Why Didn't It Matter That The Drugs Were Distributed By A California Distributor? The high court is also unimpressed with the fact that the drug giving rise to the product liability was distributed by a California company, presumably because the cause of action in question in the case was brought against the manufacturer as a strict liability defective product claim, rather than as a claim against a seller of the product arising from a warranty that the product was free of defects arising under the Uniform Commercial Code or an express warranty. This makes sense if the California distributor was a wholesale company not in direct privity with the retail buyers of the products from retail pharmacies who were injured by the products. The wholesaler could be sued under the Uniform Commercial Code on its warranty to the buyers of the drugs, only by the intermediate wholesalers or retail pharmacies that bought the drugs. The wholesaler could also be sued on its warranty only if those direct buyers themselves suffered injuries as a result of the defective product. For example, a retailer might have injuries in the nature of breach of warranty liability in suits brought against retail sellers by injured consumers under the Uniform Commercial Code that the retail sellers would be seeking indemnification of from the California based wholesale distributor. But, Bristol-Meyers does mean that it is basically impossible for injured consumers who were not injured in the forum state to sue both the manufacturer of the defective drugs (where jurisdiction would be present in New York and New Jersey) on a tort theory, and the distributor of the defective drugs (where jurisdiction would be present in California) in the same action. So, it is effectively impossible in this case for all people injured by the defective drugs to sue all of the potential Bristol-Meyers case defendants in a single lawsuit. Statutory Considerations Existing statutory limits on federal court jurisdiction limit the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Courts in most cases of cases to cases in which a state court in the state where the U.S. District Court is located would have either general jurisdiction or specific jurisdiction of the defendant (without regard to the fact that the case might be within the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts as a matter of subject matter jurisdiction which pertains to the nature of the cause of action asserted rather than the ties of the defendant to the forum state). But, the decision leaves Congress with the option of potentially changing that statute which currently limits the personal jurisdiction of federal trial courts to that of a state court of general jurisdiction in the same state, as it already does in cases that are predominantly &quot;in rem&quot; (e.g. interpleader cases and interstate boundary and real property title disputes), in bankruptcy cases, and with respect to the subpoena power of U.S. District Courts. The official syllabus also notes that: The Court’s decision will not result in the parade of horribles that respondents conjure up. It does not prevent the California and out-of-state plaintiffs from joining together in a consolidated action in the States that have general jurisdiction over BMS. Alternatively, the nonresident plaintiffs could probably sue together in their respective home States. In addition, since this decision concerns the due process limits on the exercise of specific jurisdiction by a State, the question remains open whether the Fifth Amendment imposes the same restrictions on the exercise of personal jurisdiction by a federal court. Constitutionally, Congress still has the authority to vest all U.S. District Courts with jurisdiction over any case in which the United States treated as a single state for purposes of general jurisdiction and specific jurisdiction analysis. This would leave the question of which particular U.S. District Court was the proper one to file in as a question of venue (which does not have a constitutional dimension) rather than a question of jurisdiction (which is subject to constitutional considerations), and many legal scholars have urged Congress to do just that. But, so far, Congress has not altered a status quo that does not give U.S. District Courts the maximal jurisdiction allowed under the United States Constitution. But, so far, Congress has instead taken an intermediate position on the geographic scope of federal court jurisdiction in the jurisdictional portion of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (which also limits the extent to which &quot;coupon settlements&quot; of class action cases are permitted). In particular (per the link in this paragraph): The Act permits federal courts to preside over certain class actions in diversity jurisdiction where the aggregate amount in controversy exceeds $5 million; where the class comprises at least 100 plaintiffs; and where there is at least &quot;minimal diversity&quot; between the parties (i.e., at least one plaintiff class member is diverse from at least one defendant). The court, however, may decline jurisdiction under certain circumstances, and is required to decline jurisdiction in certain others. But, while the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 allows many class action lawsuits which would otherwise be brought on exclusively state law claims in state court to be brought in federal court, or removed from state court to federal court, it does not authorize class action lawsuits that could not be brought in a state court which a U.S. District Court is located due to lack of either general jurisdiction or specific jurisdiction from being brought in that federal court either. The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 was favored by businesses likely to be defendants in future class action lawsuits (such as manufacturers), because state civil procedure law in some U.S. states such as California, is more favorable to class action plaintiffs than federal civil procedure laws related to class actions.
It isn't worth litigating a $60 fine for a non-moving violation that isn't likely to recur. You have a less than 50-50 chance of prevailing (something that is almost always true when you are appealing the decision of a judicial officer in a context like this one), you have no real long term harms as you would in the case of "points" for a moving violation, and you are even less likely to get costs of litigation or attorneys' fees if you prevail, so not having to pay a $60 fine would be a pyrrhic victory from an economic perspective. Even if it is free (and it probably isn't) it would easily take many hours to litigate that isn't worth you time. Any lawyer who would take the case would be cheating you because they would only leave you worse off than you are to start with due to their fees.
Your personal liability depends on your state law regarding the family car doctrine, so the answer there is "maybe" (Texas is not a state with that doctrine, so simple ownership of the car does not confer liability). You would be liable if your supervision of the child was negligent, which means approximately that you knew or should have known that she was a bad driver and would cause damage. Still, the insurance company is suppose to indemnify you (plural) against such loses, as long as they are legally required to do so. That would include many considerations, such as whether the driver was covered under the policy, whether the car was being used contrary to the terms of the policy (being used commercially), and so on. The insurance company is entitled to make a reasonable determination of whether they are responsible for the loss (and if so, to what extent). If they actually decline to cover the loss, you would need to sue them to make them comply with the terms of the policy (and your lawyer would give you a detailed explanation of why they are not liable, in case they aren't). The plaintiff works with his insurance company to recover his insured losses, and with his lawyer to recover any uninsured losses. His insurance company works with your insurance company, up to a point, and then the lawyers get involved. Your daughter does not work with his insurance company, and your insurance company probably has said something along the line "only talk to us". The insurance that a driver typically has may cover some of their own medical costs, but does not provide a payment for "pain and suffering": that is an uninsured loss. It is not generally required that drivers carry insurance to cover their own medical expenses – it is required that they insure against damages, in general, suffered by other parties (if the defendant is at fault). So there is probably nothing for the plaintiff to work out with his insurance company. In Texas, if the defendant is entirely at fault, defendant will be liable for 100% of plaintiff's damages. If defendant is 90% at fault, defendant will be liable for 90% of plaintiff's damages. If defendant is 49% at fault, defendant is not liable. Defendant can, in any event, also sue for damages, so if defendant is 49% at fault, defendant can recover 49% of her damages. The insurance companies might be able to talk it out and reach a clear resolution of the matter, but it could be more in their interest to throw the dice and work it out in court. One can always sue at the very start, and drop the suit if it becomes advantageous.
The main legal question is, whose law applies? According to Krauss v. Globe Int'l, Inc., 1995 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 787, where Krauss (in all-party PA) was recorded by Globe (in one-party NY). Krauss sued Globe in NY under PA law. The court found that the &quot;law of the place of injury&quot; determines which laws hold. Since the recording took place in NY and not in PA, NY law applies, case dismissed. A similar setup (and different outcome) arose in Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, 137 P.3d 914 where SSB (in one-party GA) recorded Kearney (in all-party CA). The CA Supreme Court reached the opposite decision, finding that &quot;the failure to apply California law in this context would impair California's interest in protecting the degree of privacy afforded to California residents by California law more severely than the application of California law would impair any interests of the State of Georgia&quot;. It is unlikely that functioning in the capacity of an officer of a NJ company at work would be found legally relevant. The main questions would be, where was the recording made, and which court system is deciding the matter? Assuming that the suit is filed in PA and given that Pennsylvania no longer follows the lex loci delicti rule (Griffith v. United Air Lines,416 Pa. 1), the prospects are greater, following the persuasive precedent of the California ruling would tip the sales in favor of a finding against the NJ person making the recording of a party who is in PA (and who files the suit). In a somewhat related PA Supreme Court case Pennsylvania v. Britton, 229 A.3d 590 there arose a &quot;two jurisdictions&quot; problem of recording – involving California and Pennsylvania – the court observes that when an issue implicates substantive laws, such as the privacy rights asserted by Appellant, a conflict-of-law analysis requires the forum court to apply the law of the state with the most interest in the outcome of the controversy which is to say, the PA Supreme Court agreed (indirectly) with the reasoning in Kearney v. SSB.
No. Generally speaking, the deadline to appeal a decision is jurisdictional. The exact details of the rules differ depending upon the jurisdiction in which the case was conducted. Colorado's rules are not precisely the same as California's, the federal rules are different again, and the rules are slightly different in civil, criminal, and other kinds of cases (mostly administrative law cases). Sometimes, failure to meet a deadline to appeal can be excused for &quot;excusable neglect&quot;, which is a very high standard. Generally, excusable neglect must involve circumstances that made an appeal (or a timely request for an extension of time to appeal) impossible and were beyond any reasonable ability of the party seeking to appeal the decision to control. For example, if a natural disaster shut down the courts in the week leading up to the deadline, or if the attorney for the party seeking to appeal died shortly before the deadline, this could constitute excusable neglect. There is often a limit on the duration of the extension that is available even then (e.g. 30 days). In the case of a judgment that is not appealed, it is still possible to bring a post-judgment motion to set aside the final judgment in the case in the trial court that entered the judgment (in the federal rules of civil procedure this is codified at Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60 in civil cases and in a parallel provision of the rules of criminal procedure that was historically denominated as a habeas corpus petition) for grounds such as correction of a clerical error or newly discovered evidence. There is a time limit on most grounds for this relief set forth in these rules, although some grounds, such as a claim that the court lacked of jurisdiction over the case, can be raised at any time. Errors regarding legal conclusions made by a judge that are manifestly apparent on the face of the decree issued by the judge almost never fall within the exceptions for which a motion to set aside a judgment after it is final and the appeal deadline has lapsed (or an independent legal action to do so) is available. Exceptions might apply if the judge in a criminal case in Iowa failed to advise the defendant of the defendant's right to appeal. See Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure § 2.23(3)(e). Also, illegal criminal sentences and clerical errors in a judgment in a criminal case may be corrected at any time. See Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure §§ 2.23(3)(g) and 2.24(5)(a).
The damages should be granted. The “dirty hands” doctrine is only applicable when seeking equitable relief - motor vehicle damages fall under the tort of negligence.