Court Opinion

ID: 9644119
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:48:17.138489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:08.904898
License: Public Domain

RICKHOFF, Justice,
concurring.
The Court’s opinion is well-researched and attempts to follow established case law. The evidence from the trial supports the jury’s findings only if we are correctly interpreting the ill-defined standard for reviewing the actions of municipal officials. The difficulty begins with separate rules of recovery of exemplary damages based on classifications of tortfeasors as set forth in Burk Royalty Co. v. Walls, 616 S.W.2d 911 (Tex.1981). See also Tex.Civ.PRAc. & Rem. Code Ann. §§ 41.001-009 (Vernon Supp. 1993); City of Gladewater v. Pike, 727 S.W.2d 514 (Tex.1987). In the former, a plaintiff need only show a defendant knew the peril but did not care in suits involving corporations, while in the latter, a plaintiff must show at least that amount of conscious indifference which would “tend to show malice or evil intent” when examining the actions of municipal officials. The Gladewater standard should be revisited, better-defined and become the sole standard for all Texas tortfeasors. Acts, or as in this case inaction, which tend to show malice, supported by clear and convincing evidence, should be required to accompany the actions of all tortfeasors in Texas before punitive damages can be awarded.
The difficulty with applying the standard begins when the court in Gladewater progressively elevates the gross negligence standard for municipal officials. The opinion begins by stating their review of Texas eases reveals the following rule: “As a general rule a municipality may not be held liable for exemplary damages; however, if the plaintiff can show that there is intentional, willful, or grossly negligent conduct which shows an entire want of care to his rights” one may award punitive damages. Gladewater, 727 S.W.2d at 522. The court then adopts the vague either/or test used by the Fifth Circuit in Peace v. City of Center, 372 F.2d 649 (5th Cir.1967). There the court held that liability will result only if it is “pleaded and proved that the acts giving rise to the claim were committed with such malice or evil intent, or such gross negligence as to be equivalent to such intent.” Id. at 650. Is malice required or not? Then the opinion states the test: “Thus, in order to recover the plaintiff must show at least that amount of conscious indifference which would tend to show malice or evil intent on the part of the actor.” Although I’m not sure of the meaning of the “evil intent” option, this record could support a jury award under this “tends to show” or, as this trial judge charged, “so as to indicate” standard. Gladewater continues by making the rule apply to “exceedingly few situations where the actions of persons in authority show utter disdain for the protection of the citi*566zens’ rights.” The pleadings, evidence, charge, and award are supportable under this standard. Then we come to the final statement of the test, “To reiterate: Unless the plaintiff can show intentional acts which show maliciousness or evil intent, ... no exemplary damages can be awarded.” Does this mean the evidence in the instant case must show city officials were so malicious or so full of evil intent that they intended to drown citizens?
The trial judge attempted to satisfy the Gladewater standard when considered in the context of the full opinion. The jury was required by the charge to follow the two-prong Gladewater test and identify individual city officials and then allowed to find whether their acts were intentional, willful, wanton or grossly negligent “so as to indicate” maliciousness or evil intent.
The facts here are far more compelling than Gladewater, where the court reversed the punitive damage award because the only act of negligence was the failure to keep burial records. The Supreme Court of Texas surmised future plaintiffs would not be able to meet their newly established “exceedingly difficult” burden. This jury, however, found sufficient facts, though they charged the deceased with 25% of the blame. While the plaintiffs are entitled to have the evidence and all reasonable inferences which can be drawn from it viewed in the light most favorable to this verdict, there must nevertheless be evidence in the record to satisfy the Gladewater standard.
The record here reflects that successive city administrations decided their citizens should learn to tolerate major intersections covered by fast-moving high water during common annual rainfalls and they should learn to resist the temptation to drive into them. The record demonstrates this assumption ignored quickly rising water and human nature not to mention the visitors the city cultivates who are invincibly ignorant of this danger.
Significant, if not determinative, testimony was provided by Henry Cisneros who acknowledged he was the city’s mayor from 1981 to 1989 and the couneilperson from 1975 to 1981 in the district where the drowning occurred. He testified the city was prone to flooding, and, “For many years, the city was relatively inatten-tive_ The intersection in question certainly was one that was a regular flooding place ... Our Public Works staff knows pretty well what areas are going to flood in advance because ... they’re the same areas year in and year out.... The rainfall is predictable; the threatened sites are predictable.” His testimony was tantamount to confessing error on behalf of the city and is fairly cumulative of the plaintiff’s case. The record taken as a whole supports the award of punitive damages, unless the Supreme Court of Texas in Glade-water meant plaintiffs must prove these officials intentional acts “show” maliciousness or evil intent. That would be tantamount to showing they intended to drown citizens. That has not been shown and would indeed be an exceedingly difficult burden. Because I construe the Gladewa-ter opinion as entirely defined and not as finally defined I affirm the award. More precisely, at the risk of becoming lost in Gladewater’s semantics, I find the evidence falls between “tending to show” and “shows” malice and evil intent.
TEXAS MULTIPLE TORTFEASORS UNDER GLADEWATER
The vague, subjective, arbitrary, shifting standard of fault found in the Texas common law system for awarding punitive damages is difficult enough to apply and review without Gladewater further blurring the standard for each tortfeasor. Public officials and publishers enjoy “an exceedingly difficult” to meet standard while corporations and automobile operators suffer under an exceedingly easy to meet standard.
Without retracing the historical development of gross negligence from the time when it was founded upon criminal behavior and intent, as the court did in Burk Royalty, or restating the two-prong standard for punitive damages from Gladewa-ter, I would simply ask if municipal corporations should enjoy a different standard of care than any other corporation before pu*567nitive damages may be awarded. If it is simply because taxpayers pay rather than customers it could be as logical to assume taxpaying jurors would be more careful when they can more clearly identify with the payor, a reaction demonstrated by this jury. If deterrence is the reason, our voter- and media-regulated democracy causes municipal officials to often suffer the consequences of their omissions, at least to the same degree as corporate officials who cannot as easily be removed from policy-making positions. In the 1990s in Texas individuals do not personally pay punitive damages so as to be deterred. The payors are those peers in the actor’s insurance pool. What is the justification for exposing private corporations and not municipalities? The distinction between building autos or roads should not justify a different standard. Municipalities, insurers and auto manufacturers all employ or serve the same citizens whose potentially negative acts can injure other citizens in their day-to-day lives, whether they manufacture or insure automobiles as private corporate officials, or as municipal officials, or build roads upon which these citizens ride. Indeed, it is often just as ruinous for a community to loose a major employer to an unreasonable punitive damage award as it is to open the replenishable city treasury. Therefore, if there no longer exists a logical public policy reason for the distinction, all Texas tortfeasors, public and private, should be judged by the same standard when punitive damages are awarded, a standard that includes the identification of an official, whose action tended to show malice, all supported by clear and convincing evidence. The facts of this case support even this elevated new standard.