Treble damages under the Michigan Regulation of Collection Practices Act (MCL 445.257(2)) & Michigan’s conversion statute (MCL 600.2919a(1)); Calculation of a punitive damages award; State Farm Mut Auto Ins v Campbell; Whether the district court should have considered treble damages under the due process standard for statutory damages; Attorney fees; Hensley v Eckerhart; Fox v Vice

[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] The court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying plaintiff-McPherson treble damages for defendant-Suburban Ann Arbor’s violation of the Michigan Regulation of Collection Practices Act and conversion statute, concluding it “acted within its discretion in finding that treble damages were ‘not necessary to achieve a just result.’” McPherson sued Suburban under both Michigan and federal law, claiming that it violated her consumer rights by repossessing her car and taking more than $2,000 in a practice known as “yo-yo financing” or “spot delivery.” A jury found Suburban liable, awarding “McPherson $15,000 in actual damages, $23,000 in damages for the value of the converted property, and $350,000 in punitive damages.” The district court awarded her most of her requested attorney fees, $418,995, as well as $11,212.61 in costs and expenses, and $6,433.65 in prejudgment interest. But it declined to treble her damages under the Michigan statutes. McPherson argued that the district court erred by denying her treble damages and not awarding all her requested attorney fees. Suburban cross-appealed, contending the fee award was excessive. The court noted that while the Michigan “statutes permit trial courts to award treble damages under certain circumstances, neither statute requires it.” Treble damages here “would serve only one role under Michigan law: to ‘punish[]’ Suburban and ‘set[] an example for similar wrongdoers.’” The district court found that her $350,000 punitive damages award “already ‘vindicated’ those interests.” It also determined that the “marginal value of these treble damages . . . did not justify raising any constitutional concerns.” In State Farm, the Supreme Court held that few punitive damages awards that significantly exceed a single-digit ratio between punitive and actual damages will satisfy due process. In this case, the ratio without treble damages was 9.2–to–1; with treble damages it would rise to 11.6–to–1. And the court rejected McPherson’s argument that the district court should have considered treble damages under the “due process standard for statutory damages,” concluding that “the due process standard for punitive damages supplied the proper constitutional yardstick for these treble damages.” It also affirmed the attorney fee award, explaining that the district court was not required to “comb line-by-line” through the “nearly 700-page bill to ‘achieve auditing perfection,’ and we need not ‘micromanage[]’ the district court by demanding it.” Affirmed.