| Court: | WI Supreme Court |
| Facts: | Steenberg moved a mobile home across the Jacque property, in spite of explicit warnings not to do so. |
| Posture: | A ticket was issued by the Sherrif, then the Jacques sued in tort: got $1 in nominal damages, $100,000 in punitives. |
| Issue: | Can there be punitive damages when no real nominal damages are found? |
| Holding: | Yes. |
| Rule: | The right to exclude others is a defining characteristic of property. A right is hollow if the legal system does not provide means to protect it. |
| Reasoning: | The court just sort of announces that punitives are OK here, without explaining why they're not OK in libel. But there are a lot of factors in play here. |
| Dicta: | |