Opinion ID: 1663499
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Assault and Battery and Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress

Text: ¶ 15. Assaults by co-employees or supervisors are compensable claims. This Court has allowed compensation under the Act for an injury that occurred as a result of preliminary horseplay between employees which culminated in one employee hitting the other over the head with a shovel. Mutual Implement & Hardware Ins. Co. v. Pittman, 214 Miss. 823, 59 So.2d 547 (1952). Citing the question as one of first impression for the State, this Court went through various holdings from other states. Eventually it aligned itself with the states giving the Act a broad and liberal construction, and found that assaults between co-employees arise out of the employment because the employment and the nature of the work have brought the employees into close contact, and one of the hazards of such contact is that of an assault on one employee by another. Id. John Hancock Trucking Co. v. Walker, 243 Miss. 487, 138 So.2d 478 (1962), dealt with an assault upon one worker by another man working on the same job site that was not employed by the same employer. While this case did not deal with a co-employee assault, it did briefly summarize several cases which had found assaults involving co-employees to be compensable. Id. A much more recent case allowed death benefits where a service station attendant was shot to death by his employer on the employer's premises during working hours, notwithstanding evidence that the cause of the shooting was an affair which the deceased was having with the employer's wife who was also a supervisor of the deceased. Kerr-McGee Corp. v. Hutto, 401 So.2d 1277 (Miss.1981). Also, mental distress claims are compensable under the Act. Fought v. Stuart C. Irby Co., 523 So.2d 314, 317-18 (Miss.1988). ¶ 16. While these above cases seem to make it clear that intentional torts occurring between co-employees may be compensable under the Act, the case which the majority relies on, Miller v. McRae's, Inc., 444 So.2d 368, 370 (Miss.1984), confuses the issue. First, Miller notes that a willful act, in that case the tort of false imprisonment, cannot be an accident. Second, Miller then considers whether the supervisor was a third person under the Act's definition of injury. Id. at 371. The Court found that a third person is either a stranger to the employer-employee relationship or [a] fellow employee acting outside the scope and course of his employment. Id. The Court concluded that an employee that injures a fellow employee via a willful act while acting in the scope and course of his employment is not subject to the exclusivity provisions of the Act. Id. Griffin later utilized the language from Miller to develop its two-element test. While Miller seems to throw a kink into the argument that assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress can be compensable under the Act, it did not expressly overrule those earlier cases. Thus, they still stand as good law and are capable of supporting the argument that these allegations are compensable and subject to the exclusivity provisions. Further, Griffin drew its two-element test from Miller, and required both elements to be met for a claimant to avoid the exclusivity provisions. This requirement clearly demonstrates this Court's acceptance of the idea that an employee may cause an injury to another employee via a willful act, and yet the injury may still be compensable under the Workers' Compensation Act.