Court Opinion

ID: 9539650
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:07:55.344897+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:07.535818
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
I concur in all of the majority’s opinion except its holding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to award punitive damages. If ever there were a case justifying imposition of such damages, and if ever there were a case where the district court abused its discretion in not awarding them, this is it. The test for justifying an award of punitive damages was established in Cheney v. Palos Verdes Investment Corp., 104 Idaho 897, 905, 665 P.2d 661, 669 (1983), wherein this Court stated:
An award of punitive damages will be sustained on appeal only when it is shown that the defendant acted in a manner that was “an extreme deviation from reasonable standards of conduct, and that the act was performed by the defendant with an understanding of or disregard for its likely consequences____” The justification for punitive damages must be that the defendant acted with an extremely harmful state of mind, whether that state be terms “malice, oppression, fraud or gross negligence.” (Citations omitted.)
Here we have Mr. Golder defrauding his wife out of $166,000 through acts of deceit, threats, and grand-scale bullying. It is inconceivable to view Mr. Golder’s acts as being anything but unreasonable; they extremely deviate from any “reasonable standards of conduct.” Id. Only an individual possessing “an extremely harmful state of mind,” id., could have committed the acts of fraud Mr. Golder committed in this case.
*63Mr. Golder deserves to be punished — one of the purposes of punitive damages. As this Court has stated, “the public purpose behind punitive damages is both to punish and to deter.” Abbie Uriguen Oldsmobile Buick, Inc. v. United States Fire Ins. Co., 95 Idaho 501, 504, 511 P.2d 783, 786 (1973); see also Shields v. Martin, 109 Idaho 132, 706 P.2d 21, 27 (1985) (“Punitive damages are not awarded for purposes of compensating the plaintiff, but to punish the defendant and deter others from following defendant’s example.”)
As this Court stated in Boise Dodge, Inc. v. Clark, 92 Idaho 902, 909, 453 P.2d 551, 558 (1969): “Exemplary damages are more likely to serve their desired purpose of deterring similar conduct in a fraud case ... than in any other area of tort.” Quoting Walker v. Shelton, 10 N.Y.2d 401, 223 N.Y.S.2d 488, 492, 179 N.E.2d 497, 499 (1961), cited with approval in Cheney, supra, 104 Idaho at 905, 665 P.2d at 669.
The facts in this case speak for themselves. Punitive damages should have been imposed. I would therefore affirm, but remand to the district court for a hearing on the amount of deference which might reasonably be expected to deter such future conduct.
HUNTLEY, J., concurs.