Court Opinion

ID: 9598243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:07:02.571929+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:22.050616
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, J.,
concurring.
According to the majority, the sending of two copies of a single demand letter does not entitle plaintiff to an award of attorney fees on more than one action under ORS 20.080(1).11 agree. The statute is aimed at notifying putative *729defendants so they can settle when the amount sought is $4,000 or less. The majority then holds that plaintiff is entitled to attorney fees on one action under the statute even though plaintiff subsequently filed two separate actions for $4,000 each that were eventually consolidated for trial. It reasons that, even without consolidation, plaintiff would have been entitled to attorney fees under the statute on only one of the two actions because plaintiff did not make a written demand as to both actions. It follows, according to the majority, that the statute does not require a different result merely because the separate actions are consolidated for trial.
I agree with the majority’s result in this case only because plaintiffs actions are based on discrete operative facts and plaintiff effectively sent only one notice. If plaintiffs causes of action had been based on the same set of operative facts, then I would hold that her pleading of aggregate claims of damages in excess of $4,000 would disqualify her from any entitlement to attorney fees under the statute. Under those circumstances, the pleading of multiple causes of aggregate damage claims in excess of $4,000, whether in a single complaint or multiple complaints, are subject to ORS 20.080’s limitation, unless pled alternatively in an amount that complies with the statutory limit. In her complaint for false imprisonment, plaintiff alleges, in part:
“On or about February 23,1995, defendants, through their agents and employees, detained plaintiff on the stated grounds that they believed plaintiff had committed theft. Following reasonable explanation of the circumstances by plaintiff, defendants’ agents and employees then unreasonably continued to detain and falsely imprison plaintiff, to severely ‘grill’ or attempt to intimidate plaintiff and tried to force her to admit to a crime that she did not commit, causing plaintiff extreme humiliation, embarrassment, severe anxiety and mental anguish, and further required her to subsequently appear in court and endure a trial, at which time she was found not guilty. All of the above caused plaintiff noneconomic damages in the sum of $4,000.”
*730In her other complaint for “malicious prosecution,” plaintiff alleges, in part:
“6.
“On or about February 23,1995, plaintiff was caused to be arrested and charged with a crime by defendants’ employees and agents. Based on the conduct of defendants’ agents, plaintiff was formally charged, went through trial and was acquitted of all charges.
“7.
“Despite being informed by plaintiff of the circumstances surrounding her detention, defendants’ employees and agents, without taking any additional steps to verify the truth or accuracy of plaintiffs explanation, willfully and maliciously caused plaintiff to be charged and prosecuted with the crime of‘Theft III[.’l Plaintiff was required to hire an attorney to represent her, was compelled to attend a formal trial, obtain evidence and witnesses to confirm her testimony to prove her innocence, subjecting plaintiff to embarrassment, humiliation, interference with her normal and usual activities, and subjecting her to scorn and ridicule by acquaintances. All of the above was to her nonecon-omic damage in the sum of $4,000.”
Plaintiff’s false imprisonment action focuses, for the most part, on her detention for shoplifting. In contrast, her malicious prosecution claim focuses on what occurred after her detention at the store when defendants pursued the prosecution of her in court. In other words, defendants committed an additional tort by prosecuting her after detaining her wrongfully. Her damages resulting from the detention are discrete from the damages suffered as a result of the prosecution. That distinction is important because ORS 20.080 should not be understood to permit a plaintiff to plead multiple claims and recover amounts in excess of the statutory limit, of $4,000, but yet be entitled to attorney fees under the statute when the gravamen of the claims arise out of the same operative facts.
The policy underlying ORS 20.080 “is to encourage settlement of small claims, to prevent insurance companies *731and tortfeasors from refusing to pay just claims, and to discourage plaintiffs from inflating their claims.” Rodriguez v. The Holland, Inc., 328 Or 440, 446, 980 P2d 672 (1999). It is counter-intuitive to that policy to permit the award of attorney fees when the recovery of damages is based on liability arising out of the same set of operative facts and the recovery exceeds the $4,000 limit of the statute merely because the plaintiff has pled the claim in separate causes of action.
When the Supreme Court interprets a statute, that interpretation becomes part of the statute as if it were written into the statute at the time of its enactment, Holcomb v. Sunderland, 321 Or 99,105, 894 P2d 457 (1995), and we are bound by the court’s interpretation. In my view, the outcome of this case is controlled by the juxtaposition of two Supreme Court cases interpreting ORS 20.080, Atkinson Corp. v. Lumbermen’s Cas. Co., 236 Or 405, 389 P2d 32 (1964), and Johnson v. White, 249 Or 461, 439 P2d 8 (1968). Atkinson involved multiple actions arising out of multiple incidents of paint damage to vehicles. The damages allegedly occurred during the painting of a bridge over a several month period. The cars crossing a nearby bridge were damaged by the paint spray. The defendant was the insurer of all of the damaged vehicles. The court held that each claim of damage, if under the statutory limit, could support a claim for attorney fees under ORS 20.080, whether pled as a separate actions or pled as separate counts in a single action. Atkinson, 236 Or at 412.
Atkinson was followed by Johnson, in which counts for personal injury and property damage arising out of the same tortious conduct were pled in the same action. The property damage claim was under the statutory limit, but the personal injury claim exceeded the limit. The plaintiff argued, based on Atkinson, that the claims should not be aggregated for purposes of the limit. The court rejected that argument, suggesting that, although interpreting the statute in that manner could lead to a multiplicity of actions being filed, that potential problem was for the legislature to resolve.
There is nothing in the language of ORS 20.080 that suggests that the legislature had multiple actions in mind when it promulgated the statute. The statute refers to an *732“action,” not “actions.” Based on its plain language, the statute applies to “any action * * * where the amount pleaded is $4,000 or less.” The statute also contemplates the possibility that certain multiple claims can be alleged in the “action.” It provides for attorney fees “[i]n any action * * * for an injury or wrong to the person or property, or both.” The “or both” language evidences a recognition by the legislature that more than one claim for injury or damage may arise out of the same incident and that for purposes of the monetary limitation of the statute, they are to be treated in a combined manner. The language of the statute says nothing about pleading requirements. It focuses only on the total amounts pled in an “action,” and, if they exceed $4,000, then the statute eliminates the opportunity for an award of attorney fees.
Accordingly, the Atkinson court had it right. Each paint damage incident constituted a separate set of operative facts that could have given rise to discrete actions by the owners of the vehicles. Under the statute, attorney fees were available on each discrete damage claim, and it mattered not whether the claims were brought in a single action or multiple actions. The court’s result in Johnson was also correct. There, a single tort gave rise to the plaintiffs claims for personal injury and property damage. The language of the statute plainly contemplates the aggregation of personal injury and property damage claims arising out of the same operative facts giving rise to liability for purposes of the monetary limit.
In Steele v. A & B Automotive & Towing Services, Inc., 135 Or App 632, 899 P2d 1206 (1995), we extended the Supreme Court’s holding in Johnson to an action in which the plaintiff sued the defendant in a single action with separate counts to recover the value of personal property and for damages under the Unfair Debt Collection Practices Act because of the defendant’s subsequent efforts to collect towing and storage costs. Although the plaintiffs claims arose from discrete sets of operative facts, we aggregated the total amounts alleged in the separate counts for purposes of the monetary limitation of ORS 20.080. In Steele, we went astray by extending the rationale of Johnson to two sets of operative facts giving rise to separate claims. Although we acknowledged in Steele that Johnson did not address the propriety of *733aggregating claims from different sets of operative facts, we reasoned that, because the Johnson court recognized that the wording of the statute could cause a multiplicity of actions, the legislature must have intended that the statutory limit could be avoided by pleading multiple actions. However, the language from Johnson, on which we relied in Steele, was in response to an argument made by the plaintiff based on the holding in Atkinson. The plaintiff in Johnson argued that the holding in Atkinson meant that each count in an action that was under the statutory limit could be the subject of an award of attorney fees if the plaintiff prevailed and that no aggregation of the total amounts plead was ever required under the statute. The Johnson court said that the plaintiffs interpretation of Atkinson, a case involving multiple sets of operative facts, was too broad. Thus, the Johnson court’s rejection of the plaintiffs interpretation ofAtkinson, must be understood in light of the fact that Johnson concerned a single set of operative facts. Accordingly, we were wrong to have applied the holding in Johnson in Steele, which, like Atkinson, involved separate sets of operative facts.
This case is also like the facts in Atkinson. Plaintiff pled different operative facts in each action. The fact that her causes of action were consolidated for trial makes no difference to the analysis. Because plaintiff was making discrete claims against defendants, she was required to satisfy the statutory requirements for each cause of action as a predicate to the recovery of attorney fees under ORS 20.080. Her failure to do so defeats one of her claims for attorney fees.

 ORS 20.080(1) provides, in pertinent part:
“In any action for damages for an injury or wrong to the person or property, or both, of another where the amount pleaded is $4,000 or less, and the plaintiff prevails in the action, there shall be taxed and allowed to the plaintiff, at trial and on appeal, a reasonable amount to be fixed by the court as attorney fees for *729the prosecution of the action, if the court finds that written demand for the payment of such claim was made on the defendant not less than 10 days before the commencement of the action!.]”