Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/466

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MOLZOF v. UNITED STATES Opinion of the Court

tainly there is no warrant for assuming that Congress was unaware of established tort definitions when it enacted the Tort Claims Act in 1946, after spending ‘some twenty-eight years of congressional drafting and redrafting, amendment and counter-amendment.’ ” United States v. Neustadt, 366 U. S. 696, 707 (1961) (quoting United States v. Spelar, 338 U. S. 217, 219–220 (1949)). The Government’s interpretation of § 2674 appears to be premised on the assumption that the statute provides that the United States “shall be liable only for compensatory damages.” But the first clause of § 2674, the provision we are interpreting, does not say that. What it clearly states is that the United States “shall not be liable. . . for punitive damages.” The difference is important. The statutory language suggests that to the extent a plaintiff may be entitled to damages that are not legally considered “punitive damages,” but which are for some reason above and beyond ordinary notions of compensation, the United States is liable “in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual.” These damages in the “gray” zone are not by definition “punitive damages” barred under the Act. In the ordinary case in which an award of compensatory damages is subsequently reduced on appeal, one does not say that the jury or the lower court mistakenly awarded “punitive damages” above and beyond the actual compensatory damages. It is simply a matter of excessive or erroneous compensation. Excessiveness principles affect only the amount, and not the nature, of the damages that may be recovered. The term “punitive damages,” on the other hand, embodies an element of the defendant’s conduct that must be proved before such damages are awarded. The Government argues that we must construe the prohibition on “punitive damages” in pari materia with the second clause of § 2674 which was added by Congress just one year after the FTCA was enacted. The amendment provides as follows: