Court Opinion

ID: 9798031
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:35:14.273673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:00:36.767489
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(dissenting):
¶ 35 I am baffled by the trial court’s award of damages and by the majority’s affirmance of the entire award. I have no problem with the award of some $16,000 to compensate the tenant for personal property that came up missing while the landlord was wrongfully in possession of the premises. Likewise, I have no qualms about an award of $53,000 to compensate the tenant for damage to its lasers while in the landlord’s “care.” I fail to see, however, how damages for conversion and damages for trespass to chattels can be trebled pursuant to a statute that permits the extraordinary remedy of tripling the amount of actual damages for the forcible detainer of a real estate leasehold.
¶ 36 The severe remedy of treble damages is available because of the special status of real estate, and it is a remedy that is pretty well limited to real property contexts. See Utah Code Ann. § 78-38-2 (2002) (providing for trebling of damages for waste of real estate); id. § 78-38-3 (providing for trebling of damages to owner of land whose trees are cut down without authorization); id. § 78-36-10(2)(a)-(d), (3) (providing for trebling of damages for forcible entry, forcible or unlawful detainer, and waste, but not for unpaid rent). It subverts the purpose of that longstanding policy favoring real estate to treble all damages in an action between a tenant and landlord just because forcible detainer of the leasehold is one aspect of that litigation. See Forrester v. Cook, 77 Utah 137, 292 P. 206, 214 (1930) (“The provision for damages in three times the amount of [actual] damages is highly penal and therefore subject to strict construction. While the statute provides for recovery of rents, damages, and waste, it is damages only that are to be trebled_The plaintiff is entitled to recover such damages as are the natural and proximate consequences of the unlawful de-tainer.”), overruled in part on other grounds by P.H. Inv. v. Oliver, 818 P.2d 1018, 1020-21 (Utah 1991).
¶ 37 The measure of general damages for forcible detainer is the reasonable rental value of the premises for the time during which they were unlawfully detained. See id. at 211, 214. Accord Monroc, Inc. v. Sidwell, 770 P.2d 1022, 1025-26 (Utah Ct.App.1989) (relying on Forrester, appellate court af*33firmed unlawful detainer damages of $300, representing the “reasonable rental value” of the premises for the period they were unlawfully detained, but directed trebling in accordance with statute because such “rental value” is damages for unlawful detainer rather than rent, as trial court assumed). Such general damages appear not to have been awarded in this case. Insofar as the damages that were awarded might be viewed as consequential damages resulting from forcible detainer, it is settled law that consequential or “special” damages are available, if at all, only if general damages are awarded.1 See 22 Am.Jur.2d Damages § 43 (2d ed. 2003) (“As a general rule, a verdict for special damages without an allowance for general damages is improper.”). Cf. Martineau v. Anderson, 636 P.2d 1039, 1041-43 (Utah 1981) (noting that jury assessment of special damages without general damages is irregularity on face of verdict); Cohn v. J.C. Penney Co., 537 P.2d 306, 307 (Utah 1975) (stating that if judge had believed jury’s verdict only assessed special damages and not general damages, judge would not have accepted verdict) (Utah 1975); Baden v. Sunset Fuel Co., 225 Or. 116, 357 P.2d 410, 411 (1960) (citing “the well-established rule” that, in order for there to be an award of special damages, there must also be an award of more than nominal damages).
¶ 38 More bizarre is the award of over $118,000 in depreciation. So far as I am aware, depreciation is not a measure of recoverable damages at all; rather, it is an offset against what would otherwise be the amount of damages. See generally Dan B. Dobbs, Law of Remedies § 5.12 at 392 (1973) (“Cost of replacement or repair, with suitable adjustment for the fact that the damaged or destroyed property was old and had depreciated in value, is perhaps the factor most commonly considered in fixing value of property without market.”); id. § 5.12 at 394 (“A ... number of ... courts have ... allow[ed] replacement cost less accrued depreciation[.]”). To award a plaintiff depreciation as damages is bad enough, but to treble that amount on a theory that depreciation was occasioned by the forcible detainer of a real estate leasehold is untenable given the very nature of depreciation. See Blaek’s Law Dictionary 441 (6th ed.1991) (defining depreciation as the “decline in value of property caused by wear or obsolescence”).
¶ 39 I would remand this matter with instructions to comprehensively reassess — and substantially reduce — the amount of damages awarded to the tenant.

. Which is not to say that I necessarily agree that all consequential damages stemming from forcible detainer must be trebled along with general damages.