Court Opinion

ID: 9580648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:07:14.973123+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:25.642714
License: Public Domain

ROSE, Justice,
partially concurring, and partially dissenting.
I concur in the result, while withholding my agreement from two portions of the majority opinion. First, I cannot agree that the award of .punitive damages is so excessive as to appear to have been given under the influence of passion or prejudice, and that this court should second-guess the jury and reduce them. Secondly, I am not in accord with the majority’s treatment of the insurance issue.
PUNITIVE DAMAGES
The majority says:
“However, when it comes to the consideration of punitive damages, it would shock our collective conscience to approve them in the amount awarded. . . . ”
It does not shock my conscience for a police officer ,to have to pay a penalty of *1259$10,000 instead of $2,000 for hasseling a-citizen in public and arresting him without probable cause. We said in Petsch v. Florom, Wyo., 538 P.2d 1011, 1014, that we would hesitate to interfere with an award of punitive damages “except in extreme cases.” Where, in Petsch, it was argued that the punitive-damage verdict was excessive and prompted by passion and prejudice, we said, at 538 P.2d 1013-1014:
“. . . As said in Booth v. Hackney, Wyo.1973, 516 P.2d 180, 181:
* * * It is settled law in this state that, before a verdict of a jury will be set aside as excessive, it must appear to be so excessive as to denote passion, prejudice, bias, or some erroneous basis. Holly Sugar Corporation v. Perez, Wyo., 508 P.2d 595, 601; Hack v. Pickrell, Wyo., 515 P.2d 134 (handed down 10/25/73); State Highway Commission v. Peters, Wyo., 416 P.2d 390, 391; Pan American Corporation v. Like, Wyo., 381 P.2d 70, 76.’
No reasons are advanced why the verdict is excessive. It was for the jury to decide. There is no expert who can tell us what punitive damages should be any more than one can tell us what pain and suffering is worth. The amounts here, in themselves, strike no sensitive nerve, as unconscionable.”
As I view the matter, when we undertake to announce that a $10,000.00 punitive-damage verdict is unconscionable but $2,000.00 is not, in an appeal where the jury also found actual damages to be in the sum of $5,000.00, we are doing nothing more than substituting our personal and collective opinions and prejudices of what is a proper damage figure for the jury’s damage-determining task. This is not our function.
Before we overturn a jury verdict, we must have a good reason. I find no such reason here. This is not a case like Hall Oil Company v. Barquin, 33 Wyo. 92, 237 P. 255, where the award of punitive damages was three times the value of the real property in question and twenty times the amount of actual damages awarded by the jury. In addition, we are not here faced, as we were in Hall Oil Company v. Barquín, with the possibility that the jury premised its award solely on the respective wealth of the various defendants. Even in Hall Oil Company, we only directed a remittitur from twenty-to-one to an eight-to-one difference between actual damages and punitive damages. In this case the jury gave punitive damages which were only twice the amount of actual damages given, yet we are arbitrarily reducing that to less than one-half the actual-damage figure.
The punitive-damage award in this case is not disproportionate to the award of actual damages, nor is it unrelated to damages claimed or the cause thereof. We have no basis upon which to conclude the jury to have been inspired by passion or prejudice. We have heretofore steadfastly adhered to the principle that the amount of punitive damages is largely in the discretion of the fact-finder. Wilson v. Hall, 34 Wyo. 465, 244 P. 1012; and Petsch v. Florom, supra. We do so for a fundamentally sound reason. As stated in Petsch v. Florom, supra, at 538 P.2d 1014:
“. . . Since the fact-finding function is passed on to the jury and it is left up to that body representing the sense of the community and its view of such matters, the quantity is for the most part then within its discretion.”
Certainly, such discretion is not unlimited and, in appropriate cases, the remittitur procedure embraced by the majority opinion can be utilized. Hall Oil Company, supra. I do not believe this is such a case, especially when the trial court itself did not see fit to grant a remittitur.
I am, therefore, greatly troubled by the majority’s cavalier reduction of the award from $10,000.00 to $2,000.00. I cannot subscribe to the belief underlying the majority opinion that this court is in a better position than a jury or trial judge to determine what amount of punitive damages will have a deterrent effect — or will adequately punish the defendant-officers for their unwarranted arrest. The jury — representing the sense of the community — has already exercised that function in a reasonable fashion. We should not interfere.
*1260THE INSURANCE ISSUE
I concur in Justice Thomas’ treatment of the insurance issue. The plaintiff was, in the trial of the issues of this case, permitted to rely upon a waiver of sovereign immunity of the town. We, therefore, should not have considered the issue in the majority opinion. It is only obiter dicta and of no force and effect, either here or as precedent.
Further, my position on the question of sovereign immunity is well known. See Jivelekas v. City of Worland, Wyo., 546 P.2d 419, 423-433; and had it been necessary to treat with the question of immunity, my position here would be the same as my dissent in Jivelekas. I would have held that the town must answer for its wrongdoing in the same manner as do private citizens and that it enjoys no immunity therefrom.