ENROLLED
Senate Bill No. 671
(By Senators Ross and Love)
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[Passed March 11, 2004; in effect ninety days from passage.]
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AN ACT to amend and reenact §4-11A-4 and §4-11A-5 of the code of
West Virginia, 1931, as amended, all relating to the appeal
bond that master settlement agreement signatories must post to
stay the execution of a judgment pending appeal; and providing
for effective date of this amendment.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §4-11A-4 and §4-11A-5 of the code of West Virginia, 1931,
as amended, be amended and reenacted, all to read as follows:
ARTICLE 11A. LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATION OF TOBACCO SETTLEMENT
FUNDS.
§4-11A-4. Limitation on appeal bond.
The bond that any appellant who is a signatory or a successor
to a signatory of the master settlement agreement or who controls
or is under common control with a signatory of the master
settlement agreement may be required to post to stay execution on
a judgment during an appeal in any cause of action shall be set in
accordance with the provisions of section fourteen, article five, chapter fifty-eight of this code and the West Virginia rules of
civil procedure:
Provided, That an appeal bond may not exceed one
hundred million dollars for compensatory damages and all other
portions of a judgment other than punitive damages and one hundred
million dollars for punitive damages unless the appellee proves by
a preponderance of the evidence that the appellant or appellants
are purposefully dissipating or diverting assets outside of the
ordinary course of its business to the effect that the ability to
pay the ultimate judgment is impaired. For purposes of this
section, multiple judgments resulting from cases that have been
consolidated or aggregated for purposes of trial proceedings shall
be treated as a single judgment.
§4-11A-5. Applicability.
The provisions of section four of this article, as originally
passed or later amended, apply to all actions pending in the courts
of this state on the effective date of this section and to any
action filed in this state on or after the effective date:
Provided, That the provisions of section four of this article
providing for the maximum amount of an appeal bond shall not apply
in any action brought by any signatory to the master settlement
agreement seeking to enforce compliance with the terms of the
master settlement agreement or for a breach of the master
settlement agreement.