Tuttle v. Raymond

• Citation: 494 A.2d 1353
• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)
• Decision Date: 21 June 1985
• Parties: , 54 USLW 2035 Hattie TUTTLE v. Ralph RAYMOND, III.

Page 1353

494 A.2d 1353

58 A.L.R.4th 859, 54 USLW 2035

Hattie TUTTLE v. Ralph RAYMOND, III.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Sept. 19, 1984.

Decided June 21, 1985.

Murphy & Coyne, Coleman G. Coyne, Jr., (orally), Paul P. Murphy, Lewiston, for plaintiff.

Hunt, Thompson & Bowie, James M. Bowie, (orally), M. Roberts Hunt, Portland, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., and ROBERTS, VIOLETTE, WATHEN, GLASSMAN and SCOLNIK, JJ.

VIOLETTE, Justice.

This action arises out of the serious injuries sustained by the plaintiff in an automobile collision involving the defendant. After a jury trial, the Superior Court, Androscoggin County, entered a final judgment ordering the defendant to pay the plaintiff $50,000 in compensatory damages and $22,000 in punitive damages. On appeal, the defendant challenges only the award of punitive damages. First, the defendant urges this Court to abolish common law punitive damages in Maine. Alternatively, the defendant contends that punitive damages are inappropriate as a matter of law on the facts underlying this case. Finally, should both of those arguments fail to persuade the Court, the defendant argues that several errors in the trial below nevertheless require reversal of the punitive damages award.

In several recent decisions, this Court has indicated its willingness, should the proper occasion arise, to re-examine "the judicially created rule of punitive damages ... in light of modern considerations and authorities." Braley v. Berkshire Mutual Insurance Co., 440 A.2d 359, 361 n. 4 (Me.1982); see, e.g., Hanover Insurance Co. v. Hayward, 464 A.2d 156, 158 n. 2 (Me.1983); Oliver v. Martin, 460 A.2d 594, 595 n. 2 (Me.1983). This case presents such an occasion. ¹ We refuse to abolish common law punitive damages in Maine. We do take this opportunity, however, to redefine and clarify the type of tortious conduct necessary to justify an award of exemplary damages. Furthermore, we heighten the standard of proof incumbent upon a plaintiff seeking such an award. We hold that, in order to recover punitive damages, a plaintiff must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant acted with malice. We conclude that the conduct of the defendant in this case does not justify the imposition of an exemplary award. ² Accordingly, we sustain the appeal.

I.

On July 6, 1977 the plaintiff, Hattie Tuttle, was seriously injured when a Lincoln driven by the defendant, Ralph Raymond, III, struck the Plymouth in which she was a passenger. The force of the impact sheared the Plymouth in half. Based on the evidence presented at trial, the jury could have found that the defendant was driving at an excessive speed in a 25 mile per hour zone when he struck the Plymouth, and that the defendant went through a red light just before the impact.

The defendant conceded liability at trial and focused instead on the amount of damages the jury should properly award. From the outset of the litigation, the defendant asserted both that punitive damages should not be recognized under the law of Maine and that, in any event, the facts of this case did not generate the issue of punitive damages. Nevertheless, the trial court submitted this issue to the jury, and refused to disturb the jury's decision to award $22,000 in exemplary damages.

II.

Vigorous criticism of the doctrine of punitive damages is hardly a recent development in the field of jurisprudence. Arguments against the availability of such awards have been circulating for one hundred years and longer. ³ During those hundred years, commentators have exhaustively analyzed the doctrine. ⁴ Nonetheless, a substantial majority of jurisdictions today allow common law punitive damages in appropriate cases as a recovery beyond the amount necessary to compensate the plaintiff, for the purpose of deterrence or punishment or both. See J. Ghiardi & J. Kircher, Punitive Damages: Law and Practice § 4.01, at 4-1, 4-2 (1981); see also id. at § 4.16, table 4-1, at 18-22 (Supp.1984).

The law of Maine on this issue is in accord with the position of this substantial majority. Since adopting the doctrine of punitive damages in Pike v. Dilling, 48 Me. 539 (1861), this Court has frequently and consistently reaffirmed the availability of such awards at common law under the appropriate circumstances. ⁵ "It would be simplistic to characterize [this position] as mere blind adherence to an outmoded principle. Rather, the doctrine of punitive damages survives because it continues to serve the useful purposes of expressing society's disapproval of intolerable conduct and deterring such conduct where no other remedy would suffice." Mallor and Roberts, supra note 4, at 641; see Braley v. Berkshire Mutual Insurance Co., 440 A.2d 359, 361, 362 (Me.1982); Foss v. Maine Turnpike Authority, 309 A.2d 339, 345 (Me.1973); see also Mallor and Roberts, supra note 4, at 647-49; Note, supra note 4, at 451-55.

The defendant in the case at bar contends that we should nevertheless abandon the judicially created rule of punitive damages in this state. In support of this position, the defendant proffers several arguments, which we consider seriatim. After careful consideration, we conclude that the doctrine of punitive damages retains its viability, and we refuse to abrogate the availability of exemplary awards at common law in Maine.

One objection raised by the defendant is that the civil law is ill-suited to accomplish the goals that purportedly justify the doctrine of punitive damages. The defendant contends that the proper function of the civil tort law is to make plaintiffs whole, and that grave problems arise when it is used to extract from defendants something beyond full compensation for the victim. The defendant asserts that the primary purpose allegedly served by the doctrine of punitive damages, deterrence through punishment, is more properly left to the criminal law with its attendant procedural safeguards.

The bright line that the defendant attempts to interpose between the civil and the criminal law is in fact artificial. The courts of this country historically have not restricted the civil law to a compensatory function. In 1851, the United States Supreme Court, relying on over a century of judicial precedent, observed: "By the common as well as by statute law, men are often punished for aggravated misconduct or lawless acts, by means of a civil action, and the damages, inflicted by way of a penalty or punishment, given to the party injured." Day v. Woodworth, 54 U.S. (13 How.) 363, 371, 14 L.Ed. 181 (1851). Use of the civil law to shape social behavior is both logical and desirable. There are many instances where the criminal law alone is inadequate to achieve the desired deterrent effect. See Mallor and Roberts, supra note 4, at 655-58. For instance, even when the defendant's conduct violates a criminal statute, it may be a crime that is rarely prosecuted, or the maximum applicable penalty may not correspond to the actual outrageousness of the conduct and the defendant's ability to pay. See id. at 656-57. Of course, where a criminal sanction does constitute an adequate deterrent in a given case, there is no justification for adding a civil penalty in the form of punitive damages. See id. at 658; Note, supra note 4, at 456-57. This potential problem, however, does not require the wholesale abrogation of the doctrine of punitive damages. A more sensible solution is to allow the fact finder to consider evidence of any criminal punishment imposed for the conduct in question as a mitigating factor on the issue of punitive damages, ⁶ a step already taken by this Court. See Hanover Insurance Co. v. Hayward, 464 A.2d 156, 159 (Me.1983). ⁷

Furthermore, the lack of certain procedural safeguards, which are required in criminal prosecutions, ⁸ does not render the civil law unfit to serve this deterrent function. The statute books provide many examples where penalties, in the form of multiple damages payable to a private party are imposed in civil actions for the purpose of discouraging undesirable conduct. ⁹ The absence of these procedural safeguards presents no constitutional bar to the imposition of punitive damages in a civil action. See Malandris v. Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, 703 F.2d 1152, 1173 (10th Cir.1981) (quoting Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130, 159, 87 S.Ct. 1975, 1993, 18 L.Ed.2d 1094 (1967)). The reason for requiring such safeguards in the criminal arena, the threat to the defendant of incarceration or other substantial stigma, does not justify their application in actions for punitive damages.

In a related argument, the defendant criticizes the doctrine of punitive damages because it permits a person to be punished twice for the same offense. The defendant observes that in the case at bar he was both convicted and fined in a criminal proceeding and assessed with punitive damages in a subsequent civil proceeding based upon the same conduct. ¹⁰ The defendant contends that the assessment of an exemplary award in addition to criminal punishment for the same conduct offends the constitutional prohibition against placing a defendant twice in jeopardy. The defendant acknowledges that we recently rejected this precise argument in Hanover Insurance Co., 464 A.2d at 159, but urges us to abandon the reasoning articulated in that case in favor of a new rule that would prevent such double punishment. ¹¹

"In the constitutional sense," jeopardy is a technical term that encompasses only the risk inherent in proceedings that are "essentially criminal." Breed v. Jones, 421 U.S. 519, 528, 95 S.Ct. 1779, 1785, 44 L.Ed.2d 346 (1975). Accordingly, a civil action for punitive damages cannot infringe on a defendant's constitutional right to be free from double jeopardy. Hanover Insurance Co., 464 A.2d at 159; E.F. Hutton and Co. v. Anderson, 42 Colo.App. 497, 499, 596 P.2d 413, 415 (1979); Svejcara v. Whitman, 82 N.M. 739, 741, 487 P.2d 167, 169 (N.M.C...