Author: Hans Smit**
Published: September 1995
Description: One of our attentive readers and authors, Joseph E. Becker, has called to my attention an assumption made in my comment on the Mastrobuono case. In footnote 8, in commenting on Acting New York Supreme Court Justice Solomon’s decision in Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc. v. Trimble, I noted that Justice Solomon had failed to consider whether applicable federal law permitted punitive damages. And in the text, on page 58, I suggested that, in Mastrobuono, the arbitrators might have found that applicable federal securities law would authorize an arbitral award of punitive damages.
*Notes and Comments
**Fuld Professor of Law and Director, Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law, Columbia University in the City of New York.