Court Opinion

ID: 9665521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 00:50:25.263948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:16.353793
License: Public Domain

KOEHLER, Justice,
dissenting.
Having authored the opinion of the Court based on what we believe to be the controlling statutory and case law, it may be considered rather unusual that I add a dissent. I do so, however, to express a strong conviction that the application of the automatic trebling of damages provision of TexJns. Code Ann. Article 21.21, Section 16(b) under the facts of this case produced an outrageous result.
In this ease, we have at most a simple misrepresentation, as found by the jury, which in no way resulted in any benefit to either of the Appellants and on which Blau-grund (and therefore Berko), by her own admission, did not detrimentally rely in the sense that she would have done anything different had Hart told her exactly what he claimed he told her. Although I have no quarrel with the jury finding, this case was basically a swearing match which could have easily gone either way. In order to activate the automatic trebling of damages provision, the jury had only to find that Hart “knowingly” committed the act or acts complained of, a finding which would be pretty much “automatic” unless a jury could reasonably conclude that Hart did not know what he was saying. Although Berko’s attorney twice in *513final argument assured the jury that the questions they were being asked to answer were not about punitive damages, that was exactly what the “knowingly” question was about.
Very recently, the United States Supreme Court, in Honda Motor Co., Ltd. v. Oberg, - U.S. -, -, 114 S.Ct. 2331, 2339, 129 L.Ed.2d 336 (1994), reversed an Oregon jury punitive damage awai’d and remanded the case to the courts of that state for further consideration, the court stating that “Oregon’s abrogation of a well-established common law protection against deprivations of property raises a presumption that its procedures violate the Due Process Clause[,]” and adding that “[pjunitive damages pose an acute danger of arbitrary deprivation of property.” Oregon law apparently does not allow judicial review of the size of jury punitive damage awards if there is any evidence to support the award. If punitive damage awards by a jury can sometimes be pernicious and thus require some judicial oversight procedures, then what can be said about mandatory statutory trebling provisions, not subject to judicial scrutiny, especially when applied to eases similar to the one we have just affirmed? Under Honda Motor, the automatic trebling provision may well amount to an unconstitutional deprivation of personal property without due process of law. In this writer’s opinion, the automatic trebling of damages provision of Article 21.21, Section 16(b) needs to be modified to provide for assessment of punitive damages by the fact finder, subject to normal judicial review.