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Komornik v. Sparks8/26/1993
l will" or "fraud" unless it is intentional fraud accompanied by a recognition of foreseeable injury.
Telling a jury that it may award punitive damages if the defendant's conduct was "characterized by evil motive, intent to injure, ill will, or fraud" gives the jury an overinclusive, vague menu and is confusing. The majority, in my opinion quite properly, focuses only on the "intent to injure" alternative, which, as previously noted, was not part of the original Davis test. The majority opinion states that "at the time of the accident, Sparks's state of mind was to the contrary of that required by Zenobia. His intent was to avoid injury to those stopped ahead of him. He had not been traveling at an excessive speed, and he was attempting to stop the truck." Md. at , A.2d at (Majority Op. at 6). The problem with the majority's standard is not with the "intent to injure" requirement; it is with the alternative forms of actual malice under the majority's test. Could the jury find Sparks' conduct was "characterized by evil motive" if he was driving to a tavern to get even more drunk? Could the jury find his conduct was "characterized by ill will" if he told people in the bar that he hated everyone in this town? Could his conduct be "characterized by fraud" if he was permitted to drive his sister's car only because he lied to her and told her he was sober? If we are going to permit punitive damages, we should have a clearly articulated test that enables the trier of fact to more rationally decide when punitive damages can be assessed.
An effective test for punitive damages can be distilled from our Zenobia holding and, as we did in that case, the Court should establish the "equivalent" of actual malice for all tort cases. As to the required state of mind, we should simply extend Zenobia and hold that, as a basis for punitive damages, the defendant must have committed an intentional act, not a negligent act, and not even a grossly negligent act. Second, we should require the defendant to have known that the act would cause foreseeable injury or to have willfully refused to recognize that the act would cause foreseeable injury. This is the same basic test that we used in Zenobia, and it should be universally applied. The Court should take a progressive step forward based on the holding in Zenobia, not a regressive leap backwards based on the dicta in Zenobia.
ING OPINION BY Bell, J.
I respectfully dissent. I continue to adhere to the views expressed in my dissenting opinion in Owens-Illinois v. Zenobia, 325 Md. 420, 478-86, 601 A.2d 633, 661-65 (1992).
The appellant argues, on the basis of the definition of actual malice this Court enunciated in Zenobia as applicable in products liability cases, that the Court recognized that "'actual malice' in its pure sense will be absent in any 'non-intentional' torts as the terms are close to being mutually exclusive." Appellant's Brief at 7. That, and the test it spawned, leads the appellant to formulate a similar test for intoxicated drivers:
a bad faith decision by the Defendant to voluntarily consume excessive amounts of alcohol, have knowledge of the danger associated with driving in this condition and in conscious and deliberate disregard of the threat to the safety of the other persons on the highway, drive.
Appellant's Brief at 8. In other words, the appellant believes that, in an appropriate case, of which the case sub judice is one, the circumstances may be such that the legal equivalent of ill-will evil motive, and intention to injure may be inferred from an intoxicated driver's conduct. I agree.
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