Exemplary Damages Practice in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century England.

This article examines the historical development of exemplary (or punitive) damages in English common law from circa 1763 to the early nineteenth century, focusing on the adjudicative practice rather than formal legal doctrine. It argues that despite early cases like *Huckle v Money* and *Wilkes v Wood* (1763) involving jury awards of punitive damages, these decisions did not establish exemplary damages as a recognized legal doctrine; rather, jury determinations remained largely uncontrolled by judges, who showed strong constitutional deference to the jury's role in assessing damages. The article highlights that judicial interventions recommending or demanding exemplary damages were sporadic and motivated by individual judges' moral or political sensibilities, not by settled legal rules. It further explains that the formal legal recognition of exemplary damages was hindered by procedural limitations on judicial review of jury awards, which focused narrowly on excessiveness rather than on misdirection regarding damages, a development that likely did not occur until later in the nineteenth century.