Court Opinion

ID: 9675045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:40:28.647363+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:31.195443
License: Public Domain

EICH, C.J.
(dissenting). Because § 895.035, Stats., is in derogation of common law, it must be construed "narrowly and strictly." Van v. Town of Manitowoc Rapids, 150 Wis. 2d 929, 934, 442 N.W.2d 557, 559 (Ct. App. 1989). The statute's purpose is not to compensate victims but to "[g]iv[e] parents a financial incentive to prevent their minor children from inflicting personal injury and property damage." First Bank Southeast, N.A. v. Bentkowski, 138 Wis. 2d 283, 289, 405 N.W.2d 764, 766 (Ct. App. 1987).
I agree with my colleagues that the statute's use of the seemingly singular word "act" is problematic. But dictionary definitions do not provide the answer to our inquiry. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1976), for example, defines the term in a full foot of small-print text, and the definition recited in the concurring opinion — "one of the successive parts or performances each complete in itself' — does not tell the whole story, for it continues: "making up an entertainment program (as of a variety show or circus)." Id. at 20. The same dictionary also defines the term as "a sequence of human behavior considered as a unit that is *728directed toward a goal and is regulated by standards of conduct." Id. (emphasis added). Webster's may thus be read either as support for the trial court's ruling or, at best, as an inconclusive source for interpretation of the statute.
The noncompensatory purpose of the law would be thwarted, I feel, by allowing the plaintiff in this case to recover twenty times the stated amount — as would allowing a plaintiff in another case to recover twenty times over for a child's "act" of breaking twenty windows. Such an interpretation would be an expansive, rather than a narrow, construction of the statute and would change it from one of parental deterrence to one providing compensation for damages suffered as a result of the child's conduct — a remedy readily available to the injured party in a civil proceeding.
Interpreting the statute "narrowly and strictly," as the trial court did — and as Van and similar cases require — to limit the damages recoverable for the child's series of assaults to $2,500 is a reasonable application of the law consistent with its purpose and the manner in which we are directed to construe it. I would do so in this case and affirm the judgment.