1.   Failure to rein in police aggression exacts millions of dollars in damage judgments against the city and a huge cost in public trust.

2.   In the first fallout from that decision, the Supreme Court today ordered reconsideration of four punitive damage judgments that had been pending at the high court.

3.   Since then, U.S. courts have awarded damage judgments in a number of cases against terrorist countries, including Iran and Cuba.

4.   The fight is another chapter in the ongoing effort by business groups to put more restrictions on civil suits and damage judgments awarded by the state courts.

5.   The question of whether punitive damage judgments stemming from fraud are dischargeable in a bankruptcy proceeding has divided the lower courts for years.

6.   Still, Japanese companies do not face anything close to the kind of multimillion-dollar damage judgments that American companies have complained about.