The Arizona Supreme Court has reversed a ruling that allowed the family of a victim of a fatal car crash to pursue punitive damages against a trucking company, reasserting its holding in a 1986 decision that negligent acts alone are not sufficient to tack on extra damages. The case is Swift Transp. Co. v. Carman, No. CV-20-0119-PR, 2022 Ariz. LEXIS 243 (Aug. 23, 2022).

The case stems from a car accident that occurred one night in January 2018 when Brian Vanderhoff, a driver for Swift Transportation, was driving an empty tractor-trailer to Phoenix on a rainy night when his truck hydroplaned and jackknifed. Another truck, attempting to avoid Vanderhoff's truck, collided with two other vehicles, killing two people and injuring three.

Vanderhoff admitted that he had been aware of several hazards that increased the likelihood of an accident.

  • He had been driving with the "Jake Brake" engaged. The device uses the friction of the motor to slow the truck, but is supposed to be disengaged when it is raining.
  • He engaged the cruise control despite knowing it was dangerous to use cruise control in the rain.
  • He knew driving without a trailer made the truck less stable and more likely to hydroplane.
  • He was traveling at 62 mph during heavy rain and lied to investigators about the speed he was traveling at the time of the crash.
  • He chose to pass a vehicle on the right while going downhill around a curve at that excessive speed.
  • He was talking to his daughter on a Bluetooth device at the time.
  • After the accident, he waited five minutes before getting out of the truck to set up safety triangles to warn oncoming traffic.

Accident victims, and the husband of Julie Mountz, who was killed in the crash, sued Swift. The plaintiffs filed a motion seeking the court's permission to seek punitive damages. Yavapai County Superior Court Judge Krista M. Carman ruled that the numerous safety violations were adequate grounds for pursuing punitive damages. The Court of Appeals denied Swift's petition seeking to overturn the ruling. Swift appealed to the Supreme Court and persuaded the justices to reverse the trial court.

According to the opinion, even though Vanderhoff's actions were admittedly negligent, they did not amount to the type of outrageous conduct that would indicate that he acted with an evil mind. While he was traveling fast for the road conditions, he was traveling slowly compared to the posted speed limit of 75 mph. The court mentioned he should have disengaged the Jake Brake, but the decision not to do so was at most a breach of truck driving safety protocol.

According to the opinion, "[a]absent proof of the intent to cause harm or that the defendant acted out of spite or ill will, outrageous conduct will always be required to sustain a claim for punitive damages in negligence cases." "The distinction between ordinary or even gross negligence and the conduct that permits punitive damages is critical. Indeed, it will be only the rare negligence case that meets this standard."

Editor's Note: Despite the truck driver admitting ten different negligent actions leading up to the crash, the court stood by a 1986 insurance bad faith ruling in Rawlings v. Apodaca, 151 Ariz. 149, 162, 726 P.2d 565 (1986), that punitive damages may be awarded only when a plaintiff can prove that the "defendant's evil hand was guided by an evil mind." This is because "[s]something more than the mere commission of a tort is always required for punitive damages" in order to "restrict its availability to those cases in which the defendant's wrongful conduct was guided by evil motives."