Court Opinion

ID: 9865184
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:26:27.239232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:37:49.864280
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Hilliard,
dissenting1.
I dissent from so much of the opinion of the court as affirms the award of exemplary damages. The only basis for the awarding of such damages in this jurisdiction is found in the provisions of section 6307, C. L. 1921, enacted in 1889. That section, of which I have italicized certain words, reads: ‘£ That in all civil actions in which damages shall be assessed by a jury for a wrong done to the person, or to personal or real property, and the injury complained of shall have been attended by circumstances of fraud, malice or insult, or a wanton and reckless disregard of the injured party’s rights and feelings, such jury may, in addition to the actual damages sustained by such party, award him reasonable exemplary damages. ’ ’
Before the enactment of that statute there was, we held in French v. Deane, 19 Colo. 504, 507, 36 Pac. 609, ££no principle * * * better settled in this state than that punitive or exemplary damag-es could not be allowed in any civil case.” The principle was based upon the opinion, expressed by the court in Greeley Ry. Co. v. Yeager, 11 Colo. 345, 350, 18 Pac. 211, that “the rule of compensation is sufficient to give the injured party all that he is entitled to.” However veiled in obscurity the origin and growth of the doctrine of exemplary damag-es may be, it *452seems it may be safely said that it is in derogation of the common law and should be so construed. “We cannot believe that it was ever a principle of the ancient and genuine common law, that damages should be punishment, or that the civil remedy for a wrong done should be punitive to the wrongdoer as well as compensative to the sufferer.” 3 Parsons on Contracts (6th Ed.) 171.
The record here discloses only that the cause “came on regularly for hearing before the- court, a jury being-waived.” From this the court has argued that the defendants waived the right to have exemplary damages, if awarded, assessed by a jury, and conferred that right upon the trial judge. Leahy v. Dunlap, 6 Colo. 552, is relied upon to sustain this view, but I think it holds directly to the contrary. There, at page 554, the court said: “It is scarcely necessary for us to even announce what we have understood to be a doctrine so well settled and familiar to the profession, that in civil proceedings a party may waive a right which exists solely for his own benefit.” Exactly so. Here in the absence of the statute, the plaintiffs could not have recovered exemplary damages. If they are to have them should it not be held that the statute which gives them should be, if not strictly construed, construed at least in the obvious light of its own language? The statute provides that “in all actions in which damages shall be assessed by a jury * * # such jury may * * # award * * * exemplary damages.” Is it not more reasonable to say that the plaintiffs waived their right to have exemplary damages when they waived a jury trial than to say the defendants waived the right to have such damages assessed by a jury by going to trial before the judge alone?
The court has said that “There is no language in the section that compels a construction that only a jury may try the issue as to exemplary damages,” but it seems to me that no construction otherwise can be gathered from it. It is true that the section does not provide that an action to recover exemplary damages must in all cases be *453tried by a jury, but tbe answer is found in tbe opinion of the court itself where it is said that the section “merely provides that in such actions a jury, if one is impaneled, may, in addition to actual damages, also award exemplary damages.” It does not follow from that that any but a jury may award such damages; in fact it would appear that any but a jury is necessarily precluded.
It is my opinion, having in mind the seemingly plain language of the statute, and the background of the decisions handed down before its enactment, that the judgment should, so far as exemplary damages are concerned, be reversed.