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45 Vt. 289

Hoadley v. Watson

Supreme Court of Vermont

Decided January 15, 1873

Supreme Court of Vermont · decided 1873-01-15

<p> Exemplary Damages. </p> <p>The imposition of a fine in a criminal proceeding for assault and battery, will not bar or mitigate the party’s liability to exemplary damages in a civil suit for the same act.</p> <p>Such damages are recoverable with the ordinary damages, under the common allegation that the act declared for was done to the damage of the plaintiff.</p> <p>The expenses of the plaintiff for counsel fees, and other trouble in the suit not taxable costs, are nob a proper element of exemplary damages. Earl et uoo. v. Tupper, ante, 275.</p>

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““Exemplary damages grow entirely out of the nature of the act of the defendant for which the plaintiff recovers. They are given in enhancement, merely, of the ordinary damages, on account of the bad spirit arid wrong intention of the defendant manifested by the act, and are recoverable with the ordinary damages, under the common allegation that the act declared for was done to the damage of the plaintiff.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Peers v. Nevada Power, Light & Water Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1873-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 17 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 1988

15 state decisions

80187318801890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1The opinion of the court was delivered by

Wheeler, J.

¶21. Exemplary damages are not given in lieu of punishment. The fact that in a civil action founded on a criminal act, the guilty party had been compelled to pay exemplary damages to the party injured on account of the act, would be no bar to a prosecution in a criminal proceeding for the same act, nor to any part of the fine imposed by law upon such offenses. Neither should the liability to, nor the actual imposition of, a fine in a criminal proceeding, bar any portion of the liability in a civil action for the same act. This was the doctrine announced by the very able court in Cook v. Ellis, 6 Hill, 466, and approved in Sedgwick on Damages, 462. The liability to both criminal punishment and to such damages as a jury may impose in a civil suit, is the consequence of any act that is criminal, and also creates a civil liability.

¶32. Exemplary damages grow entirely out of the nature of the act of the defendant for which the plaintiff recovers. They are given in enhancement, merely, of the ordinary damages, on account of the bad spirit and wrong intention of the defendant manifested by the act, and are recoverable with the ordinary damages, under the common allegation that the act declared for was. done to the damage of the plaintiff.

¶43. The charge in this case in respect to the object of exemplary damages, is similar to that in Earl & wife v. Tupper, heard at the same term with this case, and is considered to be erroneous for the same reasons, and .for that error the judgment must be'reversed.

¶5Judgment reversed and cause'remanded.

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