Court Opinion

ID: 9535874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:45:54.957656+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:22.303601
License: Public Domain

*841Bashara, P.J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I concur with the majority’s position in Parts I through V of the opinion, however, I disagree with the majority’s holding in Part VI that the trial court erred in denying plaintiffs’ motion to treble the damage award.
MCL 600.2907; MSA 27A.2907 provides in relevant part:
"Every person who shall, for vexation and trouble or maliciously, cause or procure any other to be arrested, attached, or in any way proceeded against, by any process or civil or criminal action, or in any other manner prescribed by law, to answer to the suit or prosecution of any person, without the consent of such person, or where there is no such person known, shall be liable to the person so arrested, attached or proceeded against, in treble the amount of the damages and expenses which, by any verdict, shall be found to have been sustained and incurred by him.”
Plaintiffs contend that the damage awards in their favor should have been trebled. A plaintiff in a malicious prosecution action must elect to submit the question of exemplary damages to the jury or to have the issue of actual damages only decided by the jury and then to have any damages award trebled pursuant to the statute. LaLone v Rashid, 34 Mich App 193, 201; 191 NW2d 98 (1971), lv den 386 Mich 756 (1971). In the case at bar, plaintiffs elected to have only the question of actual damages decided by the jury. Defendant, however, argues that the court’s instructions, given with plaintiffs’ approval, which provided that plaintiffs were entitled to damages for "mental anguish, denial of social pleasure and enjoyments, embarassment, humiliation, and mortification”, encompassed a form of exemplary damages for hurt feelings. As such, defendant contends that *842the trial court’s failure to treble the jury verdicts was proper.
The issue to be resolved, then, is whether damages for hurt feelings in the context of this case are compensatory or exemplary in nature. It has been held that injuries to feelings represent actual damages, compensatory in nature. Ray v Detroit, 67 Mich App 702, 704-705; 242 NW2d 494 (1976), lv den 397 Mich 828 (1976). However, the idea that such damages are strictly compensatory is belied by the fact that damages for hurt feelings are only recoverable where an injury has been maliciously or wantonly inflicted. Inter alia, Alexander v Detroit, 392 Mich 30, 41-43; 219 NW2d 41 (1974), Ray, supra, Dassance v Nienhuis, 57 Mich App 422, 434-435; 225 NW2d 789 (1975), Kewin v Massachusetts Life Ins Co, 79 Mich App 639, 652; 263 NW2d 258 (1977), rev’d in part 409 Mich 401; 295 NW2d 50 (1980), Riggs v Fremont Mutual Ins Co, 85 Mich App 203, 206; 270 NW2d 654 (1978). If damages for hurt feelings were strictly compensatory in nature, mere negligence which resulted in any of the varieties of injured feelings would be compensable as a normal loss item.
As the Court in LaLone, supra, held, I too conclude that a plaintiff is not entitled to an award encompassing hurt feelings and also to recover exemplary damages. By allowing a trebling of the jury verdicts pursuant to the statute, two enhancements of the damages awards would be permitted plaintiffs on what, in effect, is the same policy consideration. The jury would be allowed to enhance the verdict based on the vague concept of injured feelings due to defendant’s outrageous conduct. Plaintiffs would also receive a second enhancement pursuant to the statute which presumably expresses the legislative determination that a *843defendant should be punished for its outrageous conduct in a malicious prosecution action. Damages should bear some relationship to the harm actually committed and not be totally arbitrary, even where defendant has engaged in the most vile type of conduct. By trebling the verdict in the case at bar, after the jury has been allowed to assess damages for hurt feelings, I believe that the majority opinion ignores the primary purpose of monetary damages.
I would affirm.