Hospital Authority of Gwinnett County v. Jones
| Decision Date | 18 October 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 46956,46956 |
| Citation | 409 S.E.2d 501,261 Ga. 613 |
| Parties | , 60 USLW 2295 HOSPITAL AUTHORITY OF GWINNETT COUNTY v. JONES. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
W. Meade Burns, Jr., Milton B. Satcher III, Glenn E. Kushel, Long, Weinberg, Ansley & Wheeler, Harold N. Hill, Jr., Albert M. Pearson III, Hurt, Richardson, Garner, Todd & Cadenhead, Atlanta, for Hospital Authority of Gwinnett County et al.
James E. Butler, Jr., Columbus, Robert D. Cheeley, Butler, Wooten, Overby & Cheeley, Michael H. Schroder, Swift, Currie, McGhee & Hiers, Atlanta, for R. Stanford Jones, Admr., et al.
In the previous appearance of this case, this court sustained a punitive damage award against the hospital authority.Hospital Authority of Gwinnett County v. Jones, 259 Ga. 759, 386 S.E.2d 120(1989).1The United States Supreme Court vacated that judgment and remanded the case to us for reconsideration in light of Pacific Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U.S. 1, 111 S.Ct. 1032, 113 L.Ed.2d 1(1991).
1.William Harold O'Kelley was severely burned in an automobile accident and was taken to Joan Glancy Hospital in Gwinnett County by ambulance, where he was stabilized.Shortly thereafter, in an attempt to airlift him by helicopter to a hospital with a burn unit, the helicopter crashed.Although others were killed, O'Kelley was only slightly injured, but died several days later as a result of the burns suffered in the automobile accident.
The administrator of O'Kelley's estate sued the hospital authority and was awarded $5,001.00 in nominal damages and $1,300,00.00 in punitive damages.This court observed:
A policy of bypassing emergency care at a nearby hospital or diverting patients from an institution whose specialty would have been beneficial to a patient in order to utilize the authority's own hospitals supports a jury's finding of wanton disregard for the rights, and a conscious indifference to the best interests, of its injured patients....[B]ecause the jury could decide that the patient's slight injuries in the helicopter incident would not have occurred but for the emergency care policy, the award of nominal damages was authorized and it was not inappropriate that the jury act to deter such conduct through the use of punitive damages under OCGA § 51-12-5.
Hospital Authority of Gwinnett County v. Jones, 259 Ga. at 761, 386 S.E.2d 120.This court approved the award of punitive damages, finding it neither excessive nor violative of due process.
In so holding, we pointed out that, in Georgia, the purpose of punitive damages is to deter the repetition of reprehensible conduct by the defendant or others.OCGA § 51-12-5.2Because deterrence is based on factors other than the actual harm caused, we rejected the notion that punitive damages must necessarily bear some relationship to the actual damages awarded by the jury.3Id., at p. 762, 386 S.E.2d 120.We adhere to this ruling today.
While the Supreme Court in Haslip analyzed the punitive damages award by comparing it to the actual award, nothing in the opinion mandates such a comparison.In fact, the Court approved the Alabama review standards which include "whether there is a reasonable relationship between the punitive damages award and the harm likely to result from the defendant's conduct as well as the harm that actually has occurred."[Emphasis supplied.]While comparison to the actual damages may be appropriate in one case, e.g., Colonial Pipeline v. Brown, 258 Ga. 115, 123, 365 S.E.2d 827(1988), it may not in another.We think Jones is one of the latter cases.The actual harm to O'Kelley was slight, but the potential harm to other patients supports the punitive damages award here.The purpose of punitive damages, after all, is to deter such conduct.This award, therefore, is consistent both with the nature of the authority's conduct and the potential ensuing injuries.Surely the process is not rendered unconstitutional by permitting the deterrence of potentially dangerous conduct at a point in time when the injury is slight and when only nominal damages may be involved.Society's interest would seem better served by deterring objectionable conduct at the first opportunity so that the potentially greater injury which might otherwise be caused by such conduct might be avoided.
2.The authority's principal argument on remand is confined to the issue discussed in Division 1.We note, however, that in approving the Alabama procedures, the United States Supreme Court focused on the jury instructions, the post-trial procedures by the trial court, and the post-trial procedures by the state supreme court.Haslip, supra, 111 S.Ct. at 1044-46.4While Georgia jury instructions may be said to be quite similar to those given in Alabama, it is clear that the Alabama post-trial review by both the trial and appellate court is more structured.See, e.g., Hammond v. City of Gadsden, 493 So.2d 1374(Ala.1986), andGreen Oil Co. v. Hornsby, 539 So.2d 218(Ala.1989).
For example, among the guidelines for the review by the Alabama Supreme Court are
(c) The profitability to the defendant of the wrongful conduct and the desirability of removing that profit and of having the defendant also sustain a loss; (d) the 'financial position' of the defendant; ...
Haslip, supra, 111 S.Ct. at 1045.We know of no Georgia courts, trial or appellate, which have reviewed these factors.This is not surprising, of course, since no evidence pertaining to either factor would have been submitted to the jury.Nor was such evidence offered in Haslip or in any of the other cited Alabama cases.5Of what benefit, then, is scrutiny of those elements by the reviewing courts?Any review of them in an effort to ensure that punitive awards are not grossly out of proportion to the conduct and the ensuing damages would be entirely a matter of conjecture or, at least, a matter of opinion based on extraneous factors.Consequently, the verdict in this case would not be more successfully challenged if subjected to Alabama's analysis rather than our own.
Punitive damages do not survive court scrutiny because they can be accurately measured and adjusted by court imposed guidelines.6They survive, as...
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