Court Opinion

ID: 9647639
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:43:40.34069+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:51.537603
License: Public Domain

SCHULTE, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion insofar as it approves exemplary damages under the present wrongful discharge statute. The key language contained in Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 8307c, sec. 2 (Vernon Supp.1986), limits the award to “reasonable damages suffered by an [the] employee.” The court by its charge to the jury in this case defined exemplary damages as follows:
“EXEMPLARY DAMAGES” means an amount which you in your discretion may award as an example to others and as a penalty by way of punishment, in addition to any amount which you may have found as actual damages.
Thus, it appears by the very definition given in this case that exemplary damages constitute an element beyond and not included within the “reasonable damages suffered by an [the] employee.” Punitive damages are “suffered” by no one and are not recoverable under the clear wording of the statute. Under the charge, the jury was asked to award punitive damages as a purely extrinsic independent element, wholly apart from actual damages.
The legislature had no problem spelling out exemplary damages under the same act in those instances where such damages were intended, as in Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 8306, sec. 5 (Vernon 1967). To engraft “exemplary damages” judicially onto the wrongful discharge statute, as the trial court and the majority have done, is a usurpation of legislative power condemned in Seay v. Hall, 677 S.W.2d 19, 25 (Tex.1984). It is the judicial role to enforce the legislative choice of measure of damages, not to redraft the act.
I would sustain Points of Error Nos. One and Two, reverse and. render as to exemplary damages, and affirm the judgment insofar as it awards reasonable damages found by the jury in the sum of $167,464.00, but would reform the judgment to delete the $175,000.00 exemplary damages.