Case Title: Poole v. Copland, Inc

Citation: 348 N.C. 260

Docket Number: 145PA97

State: north-carolina

Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Date: 1998-05-08T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA
No. 145PA97
FILED: 8 MAY 1998
WENDY H. POOLE
v.
COPLAND, INC. and JOHN HAYNES
On discretionary review pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-31 of
a unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals, 125 N.C. App. 235,
481 S.E.2d 88 (1997), awarding defendant Copland, Inc. a new
trial and reversing a judgment entered by Hudson, J., on 16
November 1994, in Superior Court, Alamance County.  Heard in the
Supreme Court 17 November 1997.
In this action, the plaintiff sued John Haynes for
intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.  She
sued Copland, Inc., her former employer, for ratification of
Haynes’ conduct, negligent retention and supervision of Haynes,
and imputed liability.
The plaintiff testified that during a one-year period
while she was working for defendant Copland, she was intimidated
on many occasions by defendant Haynes, a fellow worker.  On one
occasion, they were discussing the relative merits of Camaro and
Mustang automobiles when Haynes told the plaintiff she “looked
like the type of person that needed somebody to go up inside
[her] about two car lengths deep.”  The plaintiff asked Haynes
not to talk to her in that way.  She reported the incident to her
supervisor, Bill White.
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The plaintiff testified to numerous other similar
incidents, including an occasion when Haynes asked the plaintiff
if she was happily married and whether she had “had a man
lately.”  Haynes told her:  “You haven’t had a man until you’ve
had me. . . .  I’ve got twelve inches hanging.”  Another time,
the plaintiff turned around to find Haynes standing behind her
with his pants unzipped.  She asked Haynes what he was doing, and
he replied:  “Well, I was going to show you what a real man felt
like . . . .”  Later, Haynes told her that once she “had” him,
she would never go back to her husband.  She testified he told
her that her husband, Kevin, “had better hold tight to me at
night because [Haynes] would slide in right beside of Kevin and
f--- my eyes out and make Kevin like it.”  Although the plaintiff
reported these incidents to White, he told her that Haynes “was
just a youngun’, to ignore him,” and that Haynes “was only
picking.”
Haynes asked the plaintiff if she was a natural redhead
and said:  “There’s not but one way for me to find out that
you’re a true redhead . . . .  I just need to see your p---y
hair.”  Haynes asked the plaintiff if she gave “blow jobs.”  On
another occasion, the plaintiff and several others were in
White’s office when Haynes grabbed his crotch and asked her: 
“[H]ave you made up your mind whether or not you want some of
this or not?”  The plaintiff told White:  “Bill, you see.  You
see I’m not lying.  Why do you let this go on?”  According to the
plaintiff, White laughed, telling her to let it go and that
Haynes was “just joking.”
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On the day before the last day she worked at Copland,
the plaintiff was in the parking lot with her husband.  Haynes
was there.  He grabbed his crotch and made an obscene gesture
toward the plaintiff.  The plaintiff reported this incident to
her superiors.  The next day, a meeting was held, with the
plaintiff and Haynes in attendance.  Also present were the
plaintiff’s superiors, including the president of the
corporation.  Haynes admitted that he had grabbed his crotch in
the parking lot the previous day, and he was terminated at that
meeting.  The plaintiff’s employment was terminated later that
day.
The plaintiff testified that the harassment caused her
to cry when she came home from work and that she had trouble
sleeping and had nightmares.  She said, “I got to where I
couldn’t eat.  I was throwing up green phlegm all the time.  My
bowels wouldn’t move.”  Her relationship with her husband also
suffered.
The plaintiff also testified to a history of sexual
abuse.  As a child, she had been locked in a closet by a friend
of her father’s for two weeks, with her hands and feet bound with
duct tape.  The man took her out on several occasions to rape
her.  At the age of nine, she was sexually molested.  She gave
birth to an illegitimate child at the age of fifteen.  She then
married the child’s father, a physically abusive drug addict, at
the age of sixteen and divorced him when she was twenty-one years
of age.  An uncle sexually molested her when she was eighteen
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years of age.  The plaintiff’s father was an alcoholic who
physically abused her and her mother and sister.
Two psychiatrists and a clinical psychologist testified
for the plaintiff.  They testified that the plaintiff was
suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociative
disorder, and depression.  A posttraumatic stress disorder occurs
when a person has had a traumatic experience, and he or she
reexperiences the trauma again and again.
A dissociative disorder occurs when a person has had a
bad experience and rather than being stored normally in the brain
as a memory, it is broken into several parts and stored in the
brain so the person does not remember it and does not have to
face it.  A traumatic experience can cause the parts to reunite,
and the person then remembers the bad experience.  This is called
an abreaction or flashback.
The experts testified that the plaintiff had a
dissociative disorder in regard to the experiences she had while
growing up.  The experiences at Copland had caused a flashback,
and all the earlier experiences were remembered.  This caused
serious mental problems for the plaintiff.  At the end of the
evidence, the court dismissed all claims except the claim for
intentional infliction of emotional distress against Haynes and
the claims against Copland for ratification of Haynes’ conduct
and negligent retention of Haynes.
The jury awarded the plaintiff $2,000 in actual damages
and $5,000 in punitive damages against Haynes.  The jury awarded
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the plaintiff $50,000 in actual damages and $250,000 in punitive
damages against Copland.  Haynes did not appeal.
The Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for an error
in the charge.  We allowed petitions for discretionary review by
both parties.
Daniel H. Moore and Hunt and White, by Octavis White,
George Hunt, and Andrew Hanford, for plaintiff-
appellant.
Tuggle Duggins & Meschan, P.A., by J. Reed Johnston,
Jr., and Denis E. Jacobson, for defendant-appellant.
WEBB, Justice.
This case brings to the Court a question as to the
application of the “thin skull” rule.  This rule provides that if
the defendant’s misconduct amounts to a breach of duty to a
person of ordinary susceptibility, he is liable for all damages
suffered by the plaintiff notwithstanding the fact that these
damages were unusually extensive because of the peculiar
susceptibility of the plaintiff.  Lockwood v. McCaskill, 262 N.C.
663, 670, 138 S.E.2d 541, 546 (1964).
The plaintiff recovered damages in this case because of
a flashback resulting from her dissociative disorder.  She was
allowed to recover the full extent of her damages from the
defendant because of her peculiar susceptibility to matters that
cause severe emotional distress.  This is an application of the
thin skull rule.
Defendant Copland asserts that there was error in the
trial because the jury was allowed to consider the thin skull
damages when it determined the liability issue.  This, says the
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defendant, let the jury find liability without finding that
defendant Haynes’ action could have caused severe emotional
distress in a person of ordinary susceptibility.  We disagree.
There was testimony by Kim Ragland, a clinical
psychologist, that a person of ordinary sensibilities with no
prior sexual history could be affected the same way the plaintiff
was affected in this case.  The trial court charged the jury that
it would have to find that Haynes’ wrongful actions under the
same or similar circumstances could reasonably have been expected
to injure a person of ordinary mental condition.  The evidence
permitted a finding of liability before application of the thin
skull rule, and the jury was instructed that it must so find.  We
presume the jury followed the court’s instructions.  There was no
error in the application of the thin skull rule.
The Court of Appeals held that the superior court
failed to adequately charge that the jury could not find the
plaintiff had been injured by a flashback to her suppressed
mental problems until it first found that Haynes’ actions could
have caused severe emotional distress to a person of ordinary
mental condition.  The plaintiff assigns error to this holding by
the Court of Appeals.  We believe this assignment of error has
merit.
The court charged the jury as follows:
Now, members of the jury, in deciding
whether the plaintiff’s injury was a
foreseeable consequence of the defendant
Haynes’ wrongful actions, you must determine
whether such wrongful actions under the same
or similar circumstances could reasonably
have been expected to injure a person of
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ordinary mental condition.  If so, the
harmful consequences from the defendant’s
wrongful acts would be reasonably foreseeable
and therefore would be a proximate cause of
plaintiff’s injury.  Under such circumstances
the defendant would be liable for all the
harmful consequences which occur even though
these harmful consequences may be unusually
extensive because of the peculiar or abnormal
mental condition which happened to be present
in the plaintiff.
The court later charged:
Once again, members of the jury, in
deciding whether the plaintiff’s injury was a
foreseeable consequence of the defendant
Haynes’ wrongful actions, you must determine
whether such wrongful actions under the same
or similar circumstances could reasonably
have been expected to injure a person of
ordinary mental condition.  If so, the
harmful consequences from the defendant’s
wrongful acts would be reasonably foreseeable
and therefore would be a proximate cause of
the plaintiff’s injury.  Under such
circumstances the defendant would be liable
for all the harmful consequences which
occurred even though these harmful
consequences may be unusually extensive
because of the peculiar or abnormal mental
condition which happened to be present in the
plaintiff.
These were adequate instructions on this feature of the case.
Defendant Copland contends it was error to give this
instruction because there is no evidence in the record that
Haynes’ conduct exacerbated the plaintiff’s preexisting
dissociative disorder.  The Court of Appeals correctly dealt with
this question, and we did not allow review on it.
Defendant Copland also contends that the instruction
was erroneous because it allowed the jury to find liability based
solely on a finding that Haynes’ conduct exacerbated the
plaintiff’s preexisting condition.  We disagree.  The instruction
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clearly told the jury that it must find that the “wrongful
actions under the same . . . circumstances could reasonably have
been expected to injure a person of ordinary mental condition”
before it could hold defendant Copland liable for all the harmful
consequences of Haynes’ action.
Defendant Copland also contends under this assignment
of error that the thin skull rule applies to only physical, not
mental, injuries.  The Court of Appeals answered this question
adversely to the defendant, and we did not allow review on this
issue.
Finally, defendant Copland contends that the charge was
in error because the instructions were given during the part of
the charge on damages rather than during the liability phase.  We
note that in Copland’s assignment of error, it says it was error
to let the thin skull rule be considered during the liability
phase of the case.  We cannot hold this was error.  Assuming this
part of the charge should have been given during instructions on
the liability issue, the defendant was not prejudiced.  The jury
was properly charged as to how damages were to be calculated, and
we assume the jury followed the court’s charge.
For the reasons given in this opinion, we reverse the
Court of Appeals and remand for reinstatement of the judgment of
the superior court.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.