Court Opinion

ID: 9853585
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:50:48.709381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:51.683907
License: Public Domain

Smith, Justice,
dissenting.
Courts allow juries to award damages to plaintiffs for a number of reasons. First, juries award damages to plaintiffs to compensate them for harm caused by the defendant. In other situations, such as Federal Rule 23 (b) (3) class actions, juries award damages for widespread low-level harm to compensate injured plaintiffs, and, primarily, to deter wrongdoers from attempting to profit from activities that harm a large number of people in such a small way that no individual harmed can afford to bring a lawsuit. OCGA § 51-12-6 provides an example of a law enabling juries to compensate plaintiffs for their wounded feelings. Finally, as seen in OCGA § 51-12-5, tort law often allows juries to award punitive, or exemplary, damages to a plaintiff to punish a defendant and to deter him from future wrongdoing. Exemplary damages, unlike the other types of damages, bear no relation to the actual harm that the defendant’s conduct has inflicted upon the plaintiff.
We should not apply punitive damages where the law provides other measures by which society may punish wrongdoers. The legislature provides for uniform punishment of criminal behavior, and in doing so, it speaks for the general public. Each award of punitive damages, on the other hand, constitutes an individual determination of appropriate punishment which speaks for the conscience of a group of twelve almost randomly selected citizens, and which may vary wildly from other awards in similar factual situations.
Where, as here, the requested damages do not relate to the plain*239tiff’s injury, and the legislature, in enacting a criminal statute, has provided a deterrent to the defendant’s conduct, we should not place the bludgeon of punitive damages in the hands of a jury.
Decided November 27, 1985.
Murray & Temple, William D. Temple, William D. Strickland, for appellant.
James E. Butler, Jr., Robert D. Cheeley, for appellee.
Alton D. Kitchings, Manley F. Brown, Charles R. Adams III, amicus curiae.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Marshall and Justice Clarke join in this dissent.