Court Opinion

ID: 9789758
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:40:50.238235+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:34:08.930889
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
specially concurring.
I concur in the decision of the court except for the segment regarding consequential damages in tort. I do not understand the tort theory of malicious or improper intent failure to pay construction payments when due to have been presented as a pleaded claim in the initial pleadings or now to be presented as an appellate issue for this litigation. Consequently, if this understanding of the state of our present appellate record is correct, any present *1199opinion discussion is dictum.1
I have a direct concern about any effort to broaden the non-recovery of the consequential damage reach of Continental Ins. v. Page Engineering Co., 783 P.2d 641 (Wyo.1989), for which my dissent remains unremitted.
The more encompassing concern is the broad conclusion developed from any unlimited rule that delayed payments cannot, in properly confined circumstances, create a tort liability. It is my perception that the litigant can state a claim in tort if accompanied by proof of the requisite malice or tortious ulterior purpose which extends damage beyond the economics of purely delayed or denied payments, which would be, generally, the value of the present payment of money. While there may be unusual and scattered cases, the philosophic concept involving the tort of delay or nonpayment, when properly proved, addresses the same generic rationale as first-party or third-party bad faith torts which we considered in McCullough v. Golden Rule Ins. Co., 789 P.2d 855 (Wyo.1990) (first-party) and in Western Casualty and Surety Co. v. Fowler, 390 P.2d 602 (Wyo.1964) (third-party bad faith failure to settle).
Tortious conduct resulting from bad faith failure to pay for ulterior purposes or malicious intent should not be excluded from the arsenal of protection available to the wronged party by any assumptive conclusions in this decision where the subject is not essentially presented by a pending pleading, briefing or oral argument. I do not find the cited cases in the majority decision of Bowdish v. Johns Creek Associates, 200 Ga.App. 93, 406 S.E.2d 502 (1991) and Preferred Marketing Associates Co. v. Hawkeye Nat. Life Ins. Co., 452 N.W.2d 389 (Iowa 1990) to be counter-indicative. See, e.g., Woods Petroleum Corp. v. Delhi Gas Pipeline Corp., 700 P.2d 1023 (Okl.App.1983) and the cases cited therein; Hall Jones Oil Corp. v. Claro, 459 P.2d 858 (Okl.1969) and Oklahoma Natural Gas Co. v. Pack, 186 Okl. 330, 97 P.2d 768 (1939). “It is well settled, however, that a tort may arise in the course of the performance of a contract and that tort may then be the basis for recovery even though it is the contract that creates the relationship between the parties.” Woods Petroleum Corp., 700 P.2d at 1027. For comparison, see Z.D. Howard Co. v. Cartwright, 537 P.2d 345 (Okl.1975) (misrepresentation or fraud damages instead of contract breach recoveries). Cf. Zenith Drilling Corp. v. Internorth, Inc., 869 F.2d 560, 565 (10th Cir.1989), where the tort concept was introduced, not for the recovery of compensatory damages, but only to seek a punitive damage award. A non-payment tort case, although reaching relationships with third-parties, is considered in Mississippi Interstate Exp., Inc. v. Transpo, Inc., 681 F.2d 1003 (5th Cir.1982).
The foundational concept authored in dis-positive fashion for bad faith insurance *1200cases in Crisci v. Security Ins. Co. of New Haven, Conn., 66 Cal.2d 425, 58 Cal.Rptr. 13, 18, 426 P.2d 173, 178 (1967) recognized:
Fundamental in our jurisprudence is the principle that for every wrong there is a remedy and that an injured party should be compensated for all damage proximately caused by the wrongdoer. Although we recognize exceptions from these fundamental principles, no departure should be sanctioned unless there is a strong necessity therefor.
Consequently, I concur in this court’s decision, but would neither: foreclose for this case, if provident, proper or within time limitation provided by statutes of limitation; nor, create for future litigation, an absolute preclusion in this jurisdiction against the injured party’s alternative right to the remedies provided by the tort of delayed payment based on particularized malice or ulterior purpose. Salem Engineering and Const. Corp. v. Londonderry School Dist., 122 N.H. 379, 445 A.2d 1091 (1982).

. The subject of delayed payments was the basis for the thirty percent arbitration award which is directly included as a subject in this appeal. The events, however, from which that award flowed to now be reversed by this decision, occurred after the July 1987 date when this lawsuit was instituted and also after the Cheyenne, Wyoming Board of Public Utilities se: cured the initiation of the arbitration proceedings provided in the parties' contract. Piecemeal arbitration awards were made from time-to-time thereafter, but not actually paid by the city. The neutral arbitrator found, as clearly justified within the record, that the Board of Public Utilities used a defensive mechanism for the justification of non-payment by withholding amounts admittedly due accompanied by the contention of a work deficiency retainage. This nullification of both payments already made or proof of right to additional payments was an apparent maneuver to escape budgetary funding deficiencies encountered by the contracting owner, the Board of Public Utilities.
This non-payment by justification of work deficiencies — when, in reality, the problem was shortage of funds for payment — obviously bothered the neutral arbitrator. He said so and assessed the thirty percent "surcharge.”
This dispute, however, developed during arbitration long after the district court complaint and amended complaint had been filed and is not present, as far as I can discern, as a pending pleaded complaint stated in either tort or contract. The facts are not in much dispute and particularly so with finalization of the arbitration award defining basic amounts due from the owner to the contractor. The future potential for further pleadings, including a tort non-payment theory or its constituency criteria or legal effect, has neither been briefed nor argued during this appeal.