Court Opinion

ID: 9627379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:42:52.401064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:45.408714
License: Public Domain

SCHWARTZMAN, Judge,
specially concurring.
I concur in the opinion and result reached herein. I believe, however, that the central issue in this case relates not to the intent element of malice, but rather to the question of causation. Defendant’s act of breaking the lock and valve is clearly malicious as that term is defined in our statute. His argument should have focused on the issue of causation, i.e. whether the malicious act caused damages in an amount exceeding $1,000. Where a specific result is required, such as damages to another’s property over a certain amount, criminal liability requires that the defendant’s act be the but for and proximate cause of that result. 1 LaFave & Scott, Substantive Criminal Law, § 3.12(a) at 392 (1986). In this context, a cause of the damages must be a malicious act that sets in motion a chain of events that produces as a direct, natural and probable consequence of said act the damages complained of and without which said damages would not have occurred. See CALJIC (Cal. Jury Instr.) § 3.40 (6th ed.1996). Such is clearly the case here, despite defendant’s lack of a specific intent to cause the extent of damage ensuing from his malicious act.