Court Opinion

ID: 9552381
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:09:47.961015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:26:15.957538
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
concurring.
If liability for malicious prosecution requires both lack of probable cause and malice, as the court has repeatedly held, it becomes important to explain how *137these are two distinct elements rather than two names for the same thing. I do not believe that the distinction is adequately explained in the passage from Crouter v. United Adjusters, Inc., 266 Or 6, 10, 510 P2d 1328 (1973), quoted in the majority opinion. The quoted passage reads:
... In an action for damages for wrongful attachment the plaintiff, in addition to showing that the defendant did not have probable cause for the attachment, must also prove that the defendant acted with malice. Although the fact that a defendant did not have probable cause for an attachment does not necessarily mean that he acted with malice, the evidence which shows a lack of probable cause may also be considered on the issue of malice. If that evidence alone convinces the jury that the defendant acted with malice, it may so find. But the jury must find, from either that evidence or from other evidence, that in causing the attachment to be made the defendant acted with bad motives or ill will so as to constitute malice.
This passage, and the majority opinions in Gustafson v. Payless Drug Stores, 269 Or 354, 525 P2d 118 (1974) , and in the present case, focus attention on the evidence adequate to support a finding of "malice” more than on what is to be found. They do this somewhat inconsistently, stating at one point that the same evidence that shows lack of probable cause may also be evidence sufficient to show malice, and at another point that the lack of probable cause can be sufficient evidence of malice.
I have no doubt that the same evidence may prove that a defendant lacked probable cause to prosecute the plaintiff and also acted with malice. But it is a different proposition that the jury may infer malice "from the lack of probable cause,” when the latter conclusion may arise from non-malicious causes such as negligence. While the second phrasing may have originated merely as elliptical shorthand for the first, its effect is to invite the jury to find "malice” whenever they find that the defendant initiated the prosecution of plaintiff without probable cause.
*138To define "malice,” defendant invokes the formula of Restatement of Torts §668, that "the proceedings must have been initiated primarily for a purpose other than that of bringing an offender to justice.” This states the required malicious attitude of the defendant by exclusion rather than affirmatively, as the epithets "bad motives” and "ill will” do. Perhaps together they would help to clarify the point that something more than lack of probable cause is required.1 Perhaps a more informative formulation is possible. However, the present case does not offer a proper occasion to pursue a better definition of "malice,” since defendant does not object to the jury instructions but to the denial of a directed verdict. I agree with the majority that there would have been sufficient evidence to let the case go to a jury even under a more extensive definition of "malice” and therefore concur.
Denecke, C. J., joins in this concurring opinion.

 The relationship is further complicated by the statement in Gustafson, 269 Or at 357, that a subjective and reasonable belief in the guilt of the accused is necessary for probable cause, citing Hryciuk v. Robinson, 213 Or 542, 326 P2d 424 (1958). This in effect states that "malice” may be sufficient evidence of lack of probable cause rather than vice versa.