Court Opinion

ID: 9570427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:23:04.795056+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:07:49.494539
License: Public Domain

GRODIN, J.
Like Justice Reynoso, I concur in the judgment, but would rest the decision on even narrower grounds than suggested in his concurring opinion. In my view, it is inappropriate in this case to permit plaintiff to maintain a tort cause of action for intentional interference with prospective economic advantage because of the broad authority which the Legislature has granted to the California Horse Racing Board to regulate, and to devise remedies for, misconduct by participants within the horse racing industry. (Bus. & Prof. Code, § 19440.) In the absence of such legislation, I am not convinced that it would necessarily be appropriate to bar tort recovery simply because defendant’s intentional misconduct occurred during the course of a sporting event.
Although in the sporting context there certainly will be some instances in which the relationship between the defendant’s intentional misconduct and damages would be too speculative to support recovery under ordinary tort principles, it is not difficult to imagine other instances—e.g., a horse shot just before it crosses the finish line, 10 lengths ahead of the field—in which the causal relationship will be no more speculative than in many other financial settings in which tort recovery is routinely permitted. If tort recovery is properly to be barred in such circumstances, it would have to be for reasons other than the “speculativeness’’ of the injury.
The majority suggests that, apart from the “speculative nature” of the damages, tort recovery should be barred in the field of sports as a matter of “public policy.” In the absence of any legislative declaration of such a public policy, however, I have difficulty understanding the source from which the majority draws this policy. The majority points to nothing in the *85current fabric of laws or regulations which suggests that the public interest demands that professional gamblers or others who may have much to gain by “fixing” the results of sporting events should generally be permitted to engage in intentional misconduct with impunity from ordinary principles of civil liability. Under the circumstances, I see no reason for the court to go out of its way to grant broad immunity to such intentional misconduct, particularly when such a rule is unnecessary to the decision in this case.
Finally, I also, again like Justice Reynoso, would withhold any decision on the question whether the Horse Racing Board has the statutory authority to provide compensatory relief to a person who has been injured through an intentional violation of one of the board’s regulations, by, for example, conditioning the reinstatement of a wrongdoer’s license on his payment of wrongfully obtained gains to the victim. Because plaintiff never sought such relief from the board, the question of the board’s power to afford that remedy is not presented here.