Court Opinion

ID: 9550692
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:40:36.582233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:11.156882
License: Public Domain

Justice ERICKSON
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
We granted certiorari to determine whether the prejudgment interest statute is applicable to exemplary damages and whether the comparative negligence statute applies to an award of exemplary damages.1
*247I concur with the majority that the prejudgment interest statute is not applicable to an award of exemplary damages. I also agree that exemplary damages are not subject to reduction by application of the comparative negligence statute for the reasons stated in the majority opinion. However, I disagree that exemplary damages are limited to the judgment for compensatory damages after reduction of the jury award for comparative negligence.
The respondent, Jeffrey A. Davis, was severely injured in an automobile accident that occurred in the early morning hours of January 3, 1988. The petitioner, Joel Lira, was driving on 1-25 after he and some friends had been out drinking. Lira and another driver, Edgar Gunn, engaged in a game of “road warriors” on 1-25. They eventually stopped their vehicles in a travel lane of the highway and engaged in a fist fight. After the fight, Gunn and David Gutierrez, a passenger in Gunn’s car, took the keys from Lira’s vehicle and drove away. Lira did not activate the truck’s flashers or otherwise signal oncoming traffic before he abandoned his truck and went to a bar for a few drinks before he went home. Davis drove his car into the rear of the abandoned truck and was seriously injured.
The jury determined that Lira, the defendant in the trial court, was 50% negligent and assessed negligence against Gutierrez in the amount of 23%, Gunn in the amount of 15%,2 and Davis in the amount of 12%. Davis was awarded $87,300 as compensatory damages. The jury also awarded Davis $87,300 in exemplary damages against Lira. Lira was the only defendant who participated in the trial. The trial court entered judgment in favor of Davis and reduced the compensatory damages found by the jury by 50%, to $43,650, in accordance with the comparative negligence statute and the pro rata liability statute. §§ 13-21-111, -111.5, 6A C.R.S. (1987 & 1991 Supp.). Section 13-21-111(3) requires the court to reduce the damages allowed in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to the plaintiff, and section 13-21-111.5 states that no defendant shall be liable for an amount greater than that represented by the degree or percentage of the negligence attributable to such defendant. The trial court also reduced the exemplary damages by 50% to $43,650. It added prejudgment interest of $5,833.50 to the compensatory damages award and later amended the award of exemplary damages by adding $5,833.50 as prejudgment interest on the exemplary damages award.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the court of appeals erred in determining that prejudgment interest applies to exemplary damages. See Seaward Const. Co., Inc. v. Bradley, 817 P.2d 971 (Colo.1991). I write separately because I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the maximum amount of exemplary damages is the amount entered as judgment for compensatory damage after the jury’s award is reduced for comparative negligence and pro rata liability.
Section 13-21-102(l)(a) provides:
In all civil actions in which damages are assessed by a jury for a wrong done to the person or to personal or real property, and the injury complained of is attended by circumstances of fraud, malice, or willful and wanton conduct, the jury, in addition to the actual damages sustained by such party, may award him reasonable exemplary damages. The amount of such reasonable exemplary damages shall not exceed an amount which is equal to the amount of the actual damages awarded to the injured party.
(Emphasis added.) In my view “actual damages awarded to the injured party,” as the phrase is used in section 13-21-102, means those damages assessed and awarded by the jury. Black’s Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990), defines both assess and award:
*248Assess, To ascertain; fix the value of. To fix the amount of the damages or the value of the thing to be ascertained. To impose a pecuniary payment upon persons or property. To ascertain, adjust, and settle the respective shares to be contributed by several persons toward an object beneficial to them all, in proportion to the benefit received.
Award, To grant, concede, or adjudge to. To give or assign by sentence or judicial determination or after careful weighing of evidence. Thus, a jury awards damages; the court awards an injunction; one awards a contract to a bidder. To confer as being deserved or merited.
Id. at 116, 137. The definitions in Black’s Law Dictionary, in my view, support the adjustment of compensatory damage, but not the exemplary damages. Read in context with the entire section 13-21-102(l)(a), the term “awarded” in the last sentence refers to those damages assessed by the jury as set forth in the first sentence of that section. While the use of different terms generally implies that each term has a different meaning, see City of Florence v. Board of Waterworks of Pueblo, 793 P.2d 148, 151 (Colo.1990), the use of “assessed” in the last sentence would have resulted in awkward wording. The phrase “actual damages awarded to the injured party” is thus merely a shortened form of “damages ... assessed by a jury for a wrong done to the person or to personal or real property.”
In addition, the reasonable exemplary damages in the first sentence of section 13-21-102(l)(a) are awarded by the jury. An interpretation that “actual damages awarded to the injured party” means actual damages as reduced by the trial court would require us to interpret “reasonable exemplary damages” in the last sentence to mean those determined by the trial court. The. use of the terms assess and award does not justify interpreting the phrase “reasonable exemplary damages” to have two different meanings.
I would also emphasize that the only participating defendant before the court was Lira and the jury verdict form specifically stated that the jury found “for the plaintiff, Jeffrey Davis, on his claim for exemplary damages and awarded $87,-300.00, against the defendant, Joel Lira, as exemplary damages.” Therefore, the trial court erred in reducing the jury’s award for exemplary damages to the amount of compensatory damages recovered under the comparative negligence statute.
I agree with the majority that the amount of compensatory damages awarded by the jury is reduced by the comparative negligence statute and the pro rata statute and that the comparative negligence statutes do not directly reduce the amount of exemplary damages awarded the jury. However, I disagree that the amount of exemplary damages should be indirectly reduced by limiting the jury’s award of exemplary damages to the amount of compensatory damages established by the court. To do so would be to disregard the legislative intent behind the comparative negligence statute and the pro rata statute as well as the purpose of exemplary damages.
The court of appeals in White v. Hansen, 813 P.2d 750 (Colo.App.1990), correctly analyzed the applicability of comparative negligence to exemplary damages. Exemplary damages are intended to punish the wrongdoer rather than to reward the plaintiff. Leidholt v. District Court, 619 P.2d 768 (Colo.1980). As the majority states, an award of exemplary damages cannot be reduced by the percentage of comparative negligence assessed the plaintiff. Maj. op. at 243; see also, Jacobs v. Commonwealth Highland Theatres, Inc., 738 P.2d 6 (Colo.App.1986); Bodah v. Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc., 724 P.2d 102 (Colo.App.1986).
The General Assembly has provided for an award of reasonable exemplary damages under section 13-21-102 if the “damages are assessed by a jury for a wrong done to the person” and are attended by circumstances of fraud, malice, or willful and wanton conduct. § 13—21—102(1)(a); White, 813 P.2d at 752. Thus, the necessary predicate for an award of exemplary damages is injury or loss “which is monetarily quantified by a jury,” not a receipt of compensatory damages by the plaintiff. *249See id. at 753. The determination of whether a plaintiff may recover exemplary damages is properly made before application of the comparative negligence statute, section 13-21-111, and the pro rata statute, section 13-21-111.5.
The jury here determined that Davis suffered actual damages of $87,300. Applying the comparative negligence statute and the pro rata statute, the trial court calculated the amount of the judgment against Lira for compensatory damages by reducing the actual damages by 50% as determined by the jury, in accordance with Lira’s degree of fault. With regard to exemplary damages, however, the jury’s award of $87,300 for Davis was predicated upon the willful and wanton conduct of Lira and did not relate in any way to the negligence of others. Thus, the jury’s award of exemplary damages should not be reduced.
Accordingly, the trial court erred in reducing exemplary damages and in awarding prejudgment interest on the exemplary damages. I would reverse the court of appeals decision upholding the award of prejudgment interest on the exemplary damages. However, I would affirm that part of the court of appeals decision that reversed the reduction of exemplary damages and upheld the jury’s award of $87,-300 as exemplary damages.
MULLARKEY, J., joins in this concurrence and dissent.

. The precise issues on which the court granted certiorari are:
1. Whether the court of appeals conclusion that prejudgment interest is applicable to exemplary damages is in error; and
2. Whether the refusal of the court of appeals to apply the comparative negligence *247statute to exemplary damages is in conflict with the legislative intent of the statute and contrary to public policy.

. Gutierrez and Gunn were named as defendants but did not participate in the trial. A default judgment was entered against Gunn pri- or to trial.