Opinion ID: 2625495
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jones's IIED Claim

Text: The elements of the tort of IIED require that the defendant intentionally or recklessly engage in extreme or outrageous behavior causing severe emotional distress or bodily harm to the plaintiff. [4] Before submitting an IIED claim to the jury, the trial judge must determine whether the severity of the emotional distress and the conduct of the offending party warrant a claim of [IIED]. [5] If this threshold test is conducted at the time of summary judgment, the court must afford the plaintiff all favorable factual inferences. [6] The superior court considered Jones's evidence and granted summary judgment for the state. Without making a finding as to whether the memorandum amounted to extreme or outrageous conduct, the court decided that Jones has failed to establish that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether there was severe emotional distress. . . . There doesn't appear to be any assertion that there was distress as a result of Mr. Ainsworth giving the memo to Mr. Jones. Jones contends that because he presented sufficient evidence to establish severe distress, the superior court improperly granted summary judgment against him on his IIED claim. Jones urges us to re-examine the evidence before the trial court at summary judgment, maintaining that he was subject to racial and sexual insults that would normally result in fisticuffs in a prison environment . . . and he testified under oath regarding his fear. Arguing from cases in which we have previously recognized that a wrongful discharge may give rise to an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, Jones insists that the distress inflicted by Ainsworth's memorandum should be deemed sufficient to survive summary judgment. But even if Jones presented enough evidence of serious emotional distress to prevent the superior court from dismissing his IIED claim on summary judgment, Jones's argument would still be unavailing unless Jones further showed that the court's erroneous ruling caused actual prejudice. [7] Here, the state asserts that any error was harmless because the jury's award for emotional damages on Jones's human-rights-act claim covered all the emotional damages that Jones could have received on his IIED claim. [8] Our cases show that improperly dismissing a claim will be harmless error when the claimant manages to recover the same damages by pursuing an alternative theory. In Bohna v. Hughes, Thorsness, Gantz, Powell & Brundin, we held that the plaintiff had not suffered prejudice from dismissal of his fiduciary fraud claim, because he was able to present the same evidence and seek punitive damages under his surviving claims. [9] Under this rule, if the jury verdict on Jones's human-rights-act claim compensated Jones for all the damages he would have been entitled to recover on his claim for IIED, then he suffered no actual prejudice, even assuming that his IIED claim was erroneously dismissed before trial. We have recognized that damages allowed under the Alaska Human Rights Act, which prohibits discriminatory acts by the state, [10] are essentially tort damages, thus authoriz[ing] the courts to compensate a plaintiff for the injury caused by the defendant's wrongful breach. [11] Accordingly, when a plaintiff proves a violation under the act, actual damages are available for mental anguish. [12] Here, Jones's human-rights-act claim specifically alleged that Ainsworth's August 4 memorandum terminated his prison job and that the termination violated the act because the memo was motivated by impermissible considerations of race and sex. The jury expressly found these allegations to be true and awarded monetary damages for his emotional anguish; indeed, the only money the jury awarded was for the emotional damages that Jones experienced because of the August 4 memo. Like his human-rights-act claim, Jones's IIED claim was based on the August 4 memo. In accusing Ainsworth of intentionally inflicting emotional distress, Jones's complaint focused solely on the emotional damages he actually suffered as a result of receiving the memo. [13] Specifically, Jones's complaint alleged that the state was liable for IIED because [t]he memorandum notifying Raymond Jones of his employment termination was racially and sexually offensive. Nothing in Jones's subsequent summary judgment pleadings or his counsel's oral arguments on the state's summary judgment motion remotely suggested that his IIED claim was grounded on conduct preceding the August 4 incident. In his opposition to summary judgment, Jones claimed that a single event of racial and/or sexual insult  Ainsworth's memo  sufficed to bring his IIED claim to the jury. He explained that his human-rights-act claim was likewise based on his discriminatory termination, the los[s] of his barber job. At the oral argument on the summary judgment motion, Jones's counsel stated, Regarding the Alaska Human Rights Act . . . it seems to hinge on whether or not Mr. Jones lost his job as a barber as a result of or at the same time as delivery of this memorandum. And he explained that Jones's IIED claim was premised on [t]he one incident with the derogatory, insulting and somewhat intimidating memo. Although Jones's deposition did include a brief description of a separate incident in which Ainsworth apparently threatened Jones with a broomstick, Jones failed to cite, discuss, or otherwise call the superior court's attention to that incident as having any potential bearing on his IIED claim. Instead, as already mentioned, he limited his summary judgment arguments concerning that claim to Ainsworth's August 4 memo and the emotional distress ensuing from that memo. Nor did Jones ever voice any broader theory of his IIED claim as a potential reason for reconsideration. Considering the manner in which Jones framed and presented his IIED claim to the superior court, we find no sound basis to construe the claim as seeking any emotional damages beyond those that the jury actually considered in deciding his human-rights-act claim: the emotional damages attributable to Ainsworth's August 4 memo. Although the summary judgment record included some evidence of pre-termination conduct by Ainsworth  the broomstick incident  that arguably might have allowed Jones to expand his IIED claim, Jones's failure to assert this broader theory of IIED below precludes us from considering it in our harmless error analysis here. Under these circumstances, we must accept Jones's theory of IIED as he actually asserted it in arguing his case on summary judgment, not as he might have reshaped the theory had his claim eventually proceeded to trial. [14] Moreover, even if the more expansive view of Jones's IIED claim could properly be raised for the first time on appeal, we would still decline to consider it because Jones has not raised it in his briefing. Jones does refer to the broomstick incident briefly in the section of his argument discussing his human-rights-act claim  a separate issue that we address below. But he does not argue this evidence  or even mention it  in his argument challenging the dismissal of his claim for IIED. Jones's opening brief makes no effort to show how his IIED claim might have encompassed a broader range of emotional damages than the damages that the jury could have awarded on his claim for violating the Human Rights Act. Even though the state expressly argues in its appellee's brief that dismissal of Jones's IIED claim amounted to harmless error, Jones's reply brief makes no attempt to explain why he would have been entitled to claim additional emotional damages for his IIED claim. In short, both below and on appeal, Jones has consistently chosen to focus his IIED claim on a single incident of intentionally inflicted emotional harm: the August 4 memorandum that effectively terminated his prison employment. In his arguments addressing that claim, he has never asserted or argued that he based his IIED claim on any other intentional and outrageous act. Nor has he ever claimed or suggested a right to recover IIED damages suffered because of another incident. [15] This same incident, and its resulting injuries, formed the crux of his claim under the Alaska Human Rights Act as well. Since Jones sought the same emotional distress damages on both claims, the claims overlapped. The special verdict rendered under the act establishes that Jones was in fact compensated for the emotional injuries underlying both claims. Even if any error occurred in dismissing his IIED claim, then, the error appears to be harmless.