Court Opinion

ID: 9524249
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:50:55.536195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:09:09.493907
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE NICKELS, dissenting: I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that liability for willful and wanton conduct may be reduced based on the injured party’s ordinary negligence, so long as the tortfeasor’s willful and wanton conduct is merely "reckless” rather than "intentional.” In Burke v. 12 Rothschild’s Liquor Mart, Inc. (1992), 148 Ill. 2d 429, this court held that willful and wanton conduct is qualitatively different from ordinary negligence and carries a degree of opprobrium not found in ordinary negligence. In so holding, the court suggested no distinction, such as the majority draws today, between "intentionally” and "recklessly” willful and wanton conduct. The General Assembly has recently enacted legislation which would appear to have the effect of overruling Burke for future cases. (See Pub. Act 89 — 7, § 15, eff. March 9,1995 (amending 735 ILCS 5/2— 1116 (West 1992)).) However, the new statutory provision does not apply to this case, and the majority does not suggest that the provision is in any way germane to its decision. Nor was Burke’s vitality affected by Ziarko v. Soo Line R.R. Co. (1994), 161 Ill. 2d 267. The six members of the court who participated in the decision of Ziarko were evenly divided on the question of whether Burke should be limited to cases involving "intentionally” willful and wanton misconduct. (Compare Ziarko, 161 Ill. 2d at 279 (plurality opinion), with Ziarko, 161 Ill. 2d at 289 (Harrison, J., concurring) ("I see no justification for revisiting our decision in Burke”), and Ziarko, 161 Ill. 2d at 292 ( Nickels, J., dissenting, joined by Heiple, J.) ("I see no reason to depart from [Burke’s] reasoning finding a qualitative difference between negligence and willful and wanton conduct that prevents application of comparative fault principles”).) Lacking the support of a majority of the members of the court, this suggested limitation did not achieve the status of a precedential holding. (See 20 Am. Jur. 2d Courts § 195 (1965).) Burke supplies the rule of decision for the case at bar, and in my view the majority’s departure from Burke is ill-advised. Citing the plurality opinion in Ziarko, the majority contends that willful and wanton misconduct has developed in Illinois as a hybrid between acts considered negligent and those considered intentionally tortious, and that in some cases willful and wanton acts share similar characteristics with acts of ordinary negligence. (167 Ill. 2d at 47.) The majority maintains that the Burke court failed to consider the "dual characteristics’ ’ of willful and wanton conduct, and that Burke's holding should be limited to cases involving willful and wanton conduct amounting to intentional behavior. (167 Ill. 2d at 47-48.) The resultant rule: liability for "recklessly” willful and wanton conduct may be reduced on account of the plaintiff’s ordinary negligence while liability for "intentionally” willful and wanton conduct may not. I disagree with the majority’s reasoning. As indicated in my dissent in Ziarko, although willful and wanton conduct shares characteristics of both intentional and negligent conduct, it is analytically distinct from either concept. (Ziarko, 161 Ill. 2d at 293 (Nickels, J., dissenting).) Willful and wanton conduct involves acts performed in conscious disregard of a known risk or with utter indifference to the consequences. While such conduct may be less opprobrious than the deliberate infliction of injury, it is still significantly more blameworthy and qualitatively different from ordinary negligence. According to the leading text on the subject of tort law, the terms "willful,” "wanton” and "reckless,” individually or in combination, mean essentially the same thing, and refer to conduct involving a state of mind that has been described as "quasi-intent.” (W. Keeton, Prosser & Keeton on Torts § 34, at 212 (5th ed. 1984) (hereinafter Prosser).) These terms "apply to conduct which is still, at essence, negligent, rather than actually intended to do harm, but which is so far from a proper state of mind that it is treated in many respects as if it were so intended.” (Prosser § 34, at 212-13.) Thus, willful and wanton conduct is properly viewed as "an aggravated form of negligence, differing in quality rather than in degree from ordinary lack of care.” Prosser § 34, at 212. Accordingly, while the majority’s characterization of willful and wanton conduct as a hybrid between intentional and negligent conduct is correct, it does not undermine the reasoning in Burke that all willful and wanton conduct is qualitatively different from ordinary negligence. I see no persuasive reason to depart from or revise Burke, and thus I respectfully dissent. JUSTICES HEIPLE and HARRISON join in this dissent.