Giddings v. Zellan, 9336.

• Decision Date: 24 March 1947
• Docket Number: No. 9336.,9336.
• Parties: GIDDINGS v. ZELLAN.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

82 US App. DC 92, 160 F.2d 585 (1947)

GIDDINGS v. ZELLAN.

No. 9336.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia.

Submitted January 8, 1947.

Decided March 24, 1947.

Mr. Paul J. Sedgwick, of Washington, D. C., submitted on the brief for appellant.

Mr. Harry Friedman, of Washington, D. C., submitted on the brief for appellee.

Before GRONER, Chief Justice, and CLARK and PRETTYMAN, Associate Justices.

GRONER, C. J.

This is an action brought by appellee, plaintiff in the court below, to recover from appellant, defendant, damages for personal injury sustained by him in an automobile collision. The action was tried to a jury and a verdict in the sum of $13,311 was returned and judgment entered thereon. The circumstances of the accident were these: About 1 o'clock at night in September, 1945, appellee, accompanied by a woman companion, left an eating house on the Bladensburg Road, in Maryland, and entered a nearby parking lot to get his car. Appellee's companion had taken her seat in the car and appellee was at the moment standing at the right front fender of the car with the door open when appellant, who about the same time had left another eating house to get his car from the same parking lot, drove by and the left end of his front bumper hit the door of the appellee's car, forcing it back against the front fender, catching appellee's leg in the jam and seriously injuring him.

On this appeal appellant assigns 14 separate alleged errors occurring in the trial. But in the view we take of the case it is necessary to notice but one of these. In his charge to the jury the trial judge said: "* * * The Court is not expressing an opinion about this defendant's condition at the time of this accident, but the Court says to you that there is evidence in the case, if you believe it, that the defendant was drunk to the extent that he was staggering, that he was drunk to the extent his speech was confused, and if you believe that to be true, if you believe that he operated his vehicle when he was in that condition, then, in your discretion, in addition to compensatory damages, you can award exemplary damages; that is damages which will tend to deter him and other people from being guilty of like conduct."

It is obvious to us, and in point of fact may be said to be practically admitted, that a considerable portion of the amount of the verdict was responsive to that portion of the court's charge which authorized the jury to award punitive damages. In the brief and in the argument in this court appellant admits that the evidence sustains plaintiff's claim to conpensatory damages and the question, therefore, is whether under the applicable law the court was correct in permitting the jury to add to the amount of actual damages an additional amount "to deter him defendant and other people from being guilty of like conduct."

As we have seen, the accident and the resulting injury occurred in Maryland, and in such circumstances the law is well settled that the right of recovery and the amount of damages depend upon the law of that State. This we held in Rubenstein v. Williams, 1932, 61 App.D.C. 266, 61 F. 2d 575, and again in Paxson v. Davis, 1933, 62 App.D.C. 146, 65 F.2d 492; and this rule has been recognized and applied by the Supreme Court in Western Union Tel. Co. v. Brown, 1914, 234 U.S. 542, 547, 34 S.Ct. 955, 956, 58 L.Ed. 1457, in which it is said: "Whatever variations of opinion and practice there may have been, it is established as the law of this court that when a person recovers in one jurisdiction for a tort committed in another, he does so on the ground of an obligation incurred at the place of the tort that accompanies the person of the defendant elsewhere, and that is not only the ground but the measure of the maximum recovery."

It remains, therefore, to determine the rule as to the recovery of punitive damages recognized and applied by the Supreme Court of Maryland. Fortunately, the answer to this question is not difficult, for it is set at rest by a long line of Maryland cases, beginning in 1884 and running continuously to 1944. The first of these, and the one from which the Maryland rule stems, is Philadelphia W. & B. R. Co. v. Hoeflich, 1884, 62 Md. 300, 50 Am.Rep. 223. That was an action for damages for the ejection from a railroad train of a child and her companion. On the trial the jury were told that if they found that the child was wrongfully ejected, she was entitled to recover proper compensation for the unlawful invasion of her rights as a passenger and the injury to her person and feelings. On appeal this much of the charge the court approved, but disapproved that portion which told the jury that if plaintiff was forcibly and deliberately ejected, they might find exemplary damages as punishment for the conduct of the railroad. As to this the Supreme Court of Maryland said: "The force and deliberation with which the wrongful act is done, are not necessarily the tests by which the question of punitive damages is to be determined. On the contrary, to entitle one to such damages there must be an element of fraud, or malice, or evil intent, or oppression entering into and forming part of the wrongful act. It is in such cases as these that exemplary or punitive damages are awarded as a punishment for the evil motive or intent with which the act is done, and as an example or warning to others." Id. at 307.

Again, in Philadelphia, B. & W. Ry. v. Green, 1909, 110 Md. 32, 43, 71 A. 986, 989, an action to recover...