Court Opinion

ID: 9540849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:20:17.407454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:01:11.353155
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree but would allow also the evidence of the two subsequent guilty pleas of drunk driving in May and August following the incident which occurred in January.
Plaintiff sought exemplary damages, as provided by OCGA § 51-12-5 when “there are aggravating circumstances, in either the act or the intention,” in order “to deter the wrongdoer from repeating the trespass.” Relating to the issue of intention, what was in defendant’s mind, there must be evidence to show the state of mind described in the majority’s quote from Ga.-Car. Brick &c. Co. v. Brown, 153 Ga. App. 747 (266 SE2d 531). The contents of a person’s mind, of course, is often very difficult to ascertain and must be deduced from external manifestations.
Is not evidence of two subsequent convictions for DUI shortly thereafter relevant to whether, as to this occasion, defendant’s state of mind was “that entire want of care which would raise the presumption of a conscious indifference to consequences?”
Here, defendant’s behavior in response to the incident in issue, in which he struck a jogger and shattered his leg, was to keep driving drunk. The fact that he kept doing the thing which caused crippling injury to someone tends to show his callousness and the degree of his indifference on this occasion, as opposed to the mind-set of concern which a reaction of remorse and regret would show.
These two subsequent incidents, particularly when they were so close in time as to occur when the terrible incident in question was still fresh on his mind and so should not have receded into the fuzzy and self-forgiving past, point to an utterly irresponsible attitude in the governing of the behavior which caused these injuries. It corroborates the inference of an irresponsible attitude based on his past behavior, with respect to the incident in question.
In fact, the two subsequent incidents may be even stronger evi*335dence of his entire want of care on the date in question than the previous two, because this incident was the first time he hurt somebody. It was the first time, "the consequences” of his chronic drunken driving were, in reality and not just in theory, injuries to another human being. The prior two incidents did not include'this dreadful aspect and so would have left him in that “it’ll never happen to me” state of denial and non-belief in the probability that he would hurt someone. The consequences of the first two incidents were not very dire at all. That, apparently, was much of the reason he continued to drive drunk. That is, he failed to realize or believe or accept, or was indifferent to, the potential consequences of his drunken driving.
But when he did harm someone, and still kept driving drunk repeatedly thereafter, it demonstrates his conscious indifference to the actual consequences of his drunken driving and sheds light on the intention existing when this tort occurred. Is it not relevant to know what he did about his habit? What could better indicate the element of “entire want of care” in the premises than evidence of how defendant governed himself after he saw and had full knowledge, and time for reflection about, the consequences of his actions.
In Ga.-Car. Brick &c. Co., supra, the evidence of what the tort-feasor did and said after the initial tort was committed demonstrated the “aggravating circumstances” by way of “repeated representations.”1
In addition, since the amount of exemplary damages is left to the enlightened conscience of the jury, Curl v. First Fed. Savings &c. Assn., 243 Ga. 842 (257 SE2d 264) (1979), and is to be fixed in an amount necessary to deter future acts, Smith v. Milikin, 247 Ga. 369 (276 SE2d 35) (1981), it would seem most relevant for the jury to know how defendant treated this incident. If his attention and conscience were not sufficiently captured by the results of his behavior on January 13 so as to change that behavior in May and August, that fact would enlighten the jury in its determination of an adequate amount to do just that.
I would hold that the latter two incidents are admissible as relevant. A person’s reaction to his behavior and its results tends, it seems to me, to show his bent of mind towards that behavior. And that is what is at issue with regard to the exemplary damages pleaded for here, not to compensate the victim but expressly to govern the future behavior of the wrongdoer.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Deen joins in this *336special concurrence.
Decided March 12, 1985
Rehearing denied March 29, 1985
James E. Butler, Jr., B. Randall Blackwood, Robert D. Cheeley, for appellant.
William D. Temple, William D. Strickland, for appellee.

 Several foreign cases would allow subsequent occurrences to show malice, ill will, or intention. Kornec v. Mike Horse Mining & Milling Co., 180 P2d 252, 258 (Mont. 1947); Tranchina v. Arcinas, 178 P2d 65, 67 (Cal. 1947); Wilkerson v. Randall, 180 S2d 303, 306 (Miss. 1965); Boyd v. Johnston, 52 A2d 497, 498 (DC 1947).