A motion to strike punitive damages (the pleading-stage challenge to a Civil Code § 3294 prayer) is a coin flip at first glance. In 762 rulings, the court struck the punitive allegations at least in part in 422 (55%) and denied the motion in 340 (45%).
What a defendant gets when it wins is less clear-cut. Of the 422 strikes, 220 (52%) came with leave to amend, up to 127 (30%) came without leave to amend, and 75 (18%) struck some punitive allegations and left others in. Counted against all 762 rulings, that is up to 17% ending punitive damages at that hearing without leave. The firm number is lower: only 53 of the 127 say "without leave" in the ruling's disposition, 41 more say so elsewhere in the ruling, and 33 are our reading of a final strike. So the range is 7% to 17% of all rulings. We can't yet say how often a struck-with-leave claim comes back and survives on the amended complaint; that hasn't been measured.
Seven reasons courts gave
We coded the reason each court gave for its ruling. These are the courts' own stated reasons, not our view of the pleading.
1. Specific facts showing malice, oppression or fraud (321 rulings; the reason in 298 of the 340 denials, and the other 23 were partial strikes). The court found the complaint alleged facts: what the defendant knew and what it did. Case No. 26STCV06903 (Los Angeles County Superior Court), a habitability case with a knowing failure to abate after repeated notice: "Therefore, the complaint properly prays for punitive damages."
2. Conclusory labels (223 rulings; 222 struck at least in part, 142 with leave and 63 without, 17 in part). "Malicious, oppressive, despicable," with no facts behind it. Case No. 26NWCV00226 (Los Angeles County Superior Court), a DUI collision where the complaint alleged driving over the limit plus malice language: "Accordingly, Defendant's motion to strike is GRANTED with 30 days LEAVE TO AMEND."
3. A company defendant, and no officer, director or managing agent (80 rulings; 75 struck at least in part, 49 with leave and 13 without, 13 in part, and 5 denied because ratification was adequately pled). Against an entity, § 3294(b) requires tying the conduct to someone in management. Case No. 25STCV10453 (Los Angeles County Superior Court): "Plaintiff's complaint does not allege acts made by the officers, directors, or managing agents of 502 Harvard. Without this, Plaintiff has not adequately pled punitive damages for a corporate defendant." The flip side, Case No. 25TRCV01816 (Los Angeles County Superior Court): the amended complaint identified a customer-service manager who authorized a pretextual claim denial, and the court held "Plaintiff has alleged ratification. Therefore, the Court denies the Motion to Strike."
4. Negligence or contract claims only (51 rulings; 21 without leave). The underlying claims can't support punitive damages. Case No. 25STCV18185 (Los Angeles County Superior Court): faulty gates and unanswered complaints were, at most, negligence. The court granted the motion "WITHOUT LEAVE TO AMEND." Note that this complaint described an ignored problem and still lost; detail that reads as carelessness, even repeated carelessness, is not malice. (The unanswered complaints here came after the injury, not as advance warning of the danger. That is a different, weaker pattern than the notice-then-inaction cases below.)
5. An intentional tort that itself carries punitive damages (29 rulings; 28 denied). Usually fraud.
6. Health care provider and religious-corporation gatekeeping statutes (22 rulings; struck, 16 without leave). Code of Civil Procedure §§ 425.13 and 425.14 require court permission before punitive damages can be pleaded against these defendants. Section 425.13 does not apply to elder abuse claims seeking the Elder Abuse Act's own heightened remedies (Covenant Care, Inc. v. Superior Court (2004) 32 Cal.4th 771). In Case No. 25CHCV03171 (Los Angeles County Superior Court), punitive damages against a physician were struck from the amended complaint because the plaintiff never obtained the § 425.13 order first. Better facts don't fix this one.
7. Procedural and other reasons (36 rulings; mixed).
Where the average misleads: negligence cases with a warning
A river can average three feet deep and still have a spot that's twenty feet deep. Overall, punitive damages survived the motion in 340 of 762 rulings (45%). In car-accident, premises and similar negligence cases, they survived in only 29 of 99 (29%). That lower rate is what you'd expect, since negligence alone can't support punitive damages.
Inside that group, one allegation made a large difference. When the complaint alleged the defendant was told about the danger and did nothing, punitive damages survived in 14 of 19 rulings (74%). Without that allegation, they survived in 15 of 80 (19%).
Two caveats. The negligence group is an approximate grouping built from keywords, not a hand-coded category. And the notice split is an association: the allegation and the outcome go together, but this doesn't show the allegation caused the ruling. Still, the same lesson as the rest of this data applies here: specific facts beat labels. If you have a warning and a failure to act, plead them in specific terms rather than leaving them implicit.
What this means for you
If you're pleading punitive damages: describe the conduct in specific terms (what the defendant knew, when, and what it did about it), and check the other buckets before you file. Against a company, name the manager. Against a health care provider, get the § 425.13 order, unless the claim is elder abuse seeking the Act's own heightened remedies, where § 425.13 doesn't apply at all (Covenant Care, Inc. v. Superior Court (2004) 32 Cal.4th 771). If the underlying claim is only negligence, the label "punitive" won't carry it.
If you're moving to strike: read the complaint for those same things. The grounds that most often succeeded: labels with no facts (222 of 223), no managing-agent link (75 of 80), negligence- or contract-only claims (51 of 51), and a skipped gatekeeping order (22 of 22). But weigh the payoff: about half of the strikes came with leave to amend, and a motion to strike is a pleading-stage ruling, not a preview of the evidence.
Methodology note: 762 hearing-level rulings (one per case and hearing date; 745 distinct cases) deciding a defendant's motion to strike punitive damages, drawn from California superior court tentative rulings in seven counties (Los Angeles 548, Orange 121, Contra Costa 32, Santa Clara 24, Riverside 23, San Bernardino 11, San Mateo 3), mostly from May to September 2026. Data as of 2026-09-26. Other California counties, including San Francisco, Alameda, San Diego and Sacramento, are not in the set. "Struck" means the court granted the motion as to punitive allegations; "without leave" means leave to amend was denied or the ruling read as a final strike. Each ruling was coded for the court's stated reason by an AI model reading the full ruling. Every quoted disposition was checked against the source text; a hand check of 43 rulings found no wrong-direction outcomes, one in-part versus full-grant mislabel, and two rulings of the wrong motion type, which were then filtered out. In that check, none of the 41 genuine motions to strike had a reason code that contradicted the court's stated reason, and two were borderline two-reason rulings; each code was compared against the verified quote and the model's reason note, not a fresh full read of every ruling. Department was recorded for 633 of the 762 rulings across roughly 100 departments, and no department accounts for more than 3.5% (the largest, 27 rulings). The set counts motions that were actually heard and posted, not every complaint that prays for punitive damages, and those tentatives can change at argument. About 37% of the rulings involve fraud or concealment counts, many of them repeat automaker lemon-law motions, so the overall rate reflects that mix. Case numbers are cited so you can pull the docket; the rulings are non-precedential tentatives. Nothing here is legal advice.