Court Opinion

ID: 9791356
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:09:35.0768+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:35.728925
License: Public Domain

O’CONNELL, C. J.,
dissenting.
I dissent. I would adopt the rule presently accepted in the majority of American jurisdictions① that no allegation of proof of “special damages” is required to recover for malicious prosecution of a suit known to be groundless. I would do so because, as stated by Dean Prosser:
* * [T]here is no policy in favor of vexatious suits known to be groundless, which are a real and often a serious injury; and the heavy burden of proof upon the plaintiff, to establish both lack of probable cause and an improper purpose, should afford sufficient protection to the bona fide litigant and adequate safeguard against a series of actions.” Prosser on Torts 855 (4th ed 1971).
There is no more reason to require “special damages” here than in cases based, for example, on outrageous conduct.
The present case, however, does not require us to go that far. The alleged loss of the sale of plaintiff’s business constitutes “special damage” in any but the most refined and arbitrary sense. To hold, as the majority does, that plaintiff’s alleged damages are not “special” because they are an indirect rather than a direct result of the suit itself is to perpetuate a distinc*96tion long since abandoned in other legal contexts and utterly devoid of support on the basis of policy.

 See Prosser on Torts 855 (4th ed 1971) and cases cited there.