Court Opinion

ID: 9621651
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:03:09.363362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:27.009943
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, P. J.,
concurring.
I agree with the lead opinion’s result but not with its reasoning concerning the second assignment of error. Plaintiff argues that the elements of his claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) were not completed until July 1995 when the cadet suffered severe emotional distress as the result of discussing the series of events that had *301begun in September 1994 with a friend. Plaintiff explains in his brief:
“[The cadet’s] testimony that each episode ‘bothered’ or ‘distressed’ her does not raise Sergeant Sandberg’s conduct to the level of actionable intentional infliction of emotional distress. It was Sergeant Sandberg’s continued course of conduct that gave rise to [the cadet’s] injury. The episodes that defendant sought to exclude were not separate torts; they were part of a course of conduct that, ultimately caused the girl severe emotional distress.”
Plaintiff gave the tort claims notice required under ORS 30.275(2) in October 1995. The thrust of my major disagreement with the lead opinion’s analysis is that the incidents that occurred in 1994 as álleged and proven by plaintiff are not susceptible to a continuing tort characterization and are not admissible in evidence to prove the elements of the tort that he says accrued in July 1995. Plaintiffs position on appeal is that, although each of the separate incidents alleged in his complaint caused the cadet some distress,1 her stress did not become severe until she discussed the incidents with a friend in July 1995. According to plaintiff, his action became “complete” on that date. The majority errs when it characterizes plaintiffs single claim as a continuing tort and endorses the use of the evidence of the 1994 incidents to prove a tort that accrued in July 1995.
In discerning whether a tort is a “continuing tort,” we must draw a distinction between two categories of factual circumstances. The first category involves repetitious, discrete acts that result in similar but separate injuries that may accumulate in effect. A claim for each injury accrues when the injury occurs. See Griffin v. Tri-Met, 318 Or 500, 870 P2d 808 (1994) (reasoning that a claim accrues when a person may sue another person). Cases of that type are not susceptible to a continuing tort analysis. The second category of cases involves an injury that is due to no single act or occurrence but that accumulates and is continuous in nature. When this type of conduct and injury is involved, a plaintiff may bring a claim at any time while the injury is continuing *302or within the notice or limitation period after its conclusion. This case falls within the first category.
Holdner v. Columbia County, 51 Or App 605, 627 P2d 4 (1981), is an example of both categories. In that case, the plaintiff brought an action against the defendant county and two of its officers for damages caused by runoff from the county road. After the defendants had undertaken repairs on the roads in the area of the plaintiffs property in 1974, the plaintiff first noticed that water from the roads was draining onto his property. His contacts for the next three years with the county were aimed at persuading it to correct the problem, but he had no success. On December 22,1977, the plaintiff sent a tort claim notice pursuant to ORS 30.275 to the defendants. He filed his complaint for damages in January 1978. The trial court ruled that the plaintiff had failed to give timely notice of his claim under ORS 30.275.
On appeal, we reversed in part. We ruled that “[t]he road repairs themselves were clearly discrete acts which ended more than two years before plaintiff brought his action and 180 days before he presented his notice.” Holdner, 51 Or App at 612. The claims based on the repairs are an example of the first category. As to those claims, the plaintiff was barred by ORS 30.275. However, we held that the tort claim notice was timely as to the ongoing failure of the county to maintain its ditches and culverts “[bjecause there is no single accident or occurrence giving rise to the claim.” Holdner, 51 Or App at 613 (emphasis in original). The ongoing negligence of the county is an example of the second category. Because the failure of the county to 'maintain its ditches and culverts had continued within the period covered by the notice, the notice was timely.
Here, plaintiffs theory of his case is that a single tort of IIED accrued in July 1995 when the cadet suffered severe emotional distress. Plaintiff asserts a continuing tort theory in order to rely on the discrete incidents in 1994 and 1995 as incidents of socially intolerable conduct that resulted in the severe distress that allegedly occurred in July 1995. The snag in plaintiffs theory is that his tort claim notice is timely only as to the incidents of loss or injury that occurred in 1995. The *303purpose of OES 30.275 is to permit a reasonable investigation of the operative facts relied on for the claim. See Urban Renewal Agency v. Lackey, 275 Or 35, 549 P2d 657 (1976). In Davis v. Bostick, 282 Or 667, 674, 580 P2d 544 (1978), regarding the contention that an IIED claim was a continuing tort, the court said, “[designating a series of discrete acts, even if connected in design or intent, a ‘continuing tort’ ought not to be a rationale by which the statute of limitations policy can be avoided[.]” Similarly, designating defendant’s conduct as “continuing” ought not to be a rationale by which the policy of ORS 30.275 can be avoided.
The discrete incidents in Holdner are like the 1994 discrete incidents alleged by plaintiff in this case. They had beginnings and ends, and at least one, the November 1994 incident, caused injury and was separately actionable. Consequently, ORS 30.275 operates to ban their use for a claim that accrues in July 1995 and for which notice was given in October 1995.
The lead opinion compares this case to Griffin v. Tri-Met, 112 Or App 575, 831 P2d 42 (1992), rev’d in part on other grounds 318 Or 500, 870 P2d 808 (1994). In Griffin, the plaintiff sued his employer for discrimination on account of a physical impairment under ORS 659.425(1). His employment constructively ended by December 1988 when he did not return to work. Before trial, the employer moved to strike eight of the allegations in the plaintiffs pleadings on the ground that the operative facts giving rise to the allegations had occurred outside the notice period of ORS 30.275. The trial court granted that motion. On appeal, the employer assigned error to the trial court’s “denial of [the employer’s] motion to exclude evidence of conduct that occurred more than 180 days before plaintiff gave notice under the Oregon Tort Claims Act (OTCA).” Griffin, 112 Or App at 580. The employer argued that, “even if admission of that evidence was proper as tending to prove discriminatory intent, the court nevertheless erred by not giving an instruction limiting the jury’s consideration of it.” Id. We noted that
“[f]ive of the allegations stricken from plaintiffs second amended complaint were based on occurrences in May[ ] 1988. [The employer] stipulated that proper notice was *304given on July 6,1988. Therefore, those allegations and the evidence supporting them were properly before the jury. We therefore need only consider the allegations and evidence of the three events that occurred before January 6,1988.”
Id. (footnotes omitted).
In our analysis, we referred to Shives v. Chamberlain, 168 Or 676, 126 P2d 28 (1942), Holdner and Davis as examples of cases describing the concept of a continuing tort. We focused on the concept expressed in Davis that the heart of the continuing tort concept is that recovery is for the cumulative effect of wrongful behavior and not for discrete acts of tortious conduct. We observed that “the October and November, 1987 acts [of discrimination that the plaintiff suffered], although separate incidents, are not the type of discrete, permanent events that would likely support separate actions for wrongful discrimination.” Griffin, 112 Or App at 582. Consequently, we held that those events “can be reasonably construed as elements of a systematic pattern of conduct, aimed at causing plaintiffs eventual termination” and that the evidence was admissible for that purpose. Id.
When the Supreme Court reviewed our decision in Griffin to determine whether attorney fees and costs were included within the liability limits of the OTCA, it had to decide which version of the OTCA applied. In order to make that determination, the court had to determine when the plaintiffs claim accrued. The court held that the plaintiffs claim accrued at least by the time that the plaintiff had filed his complaint with the Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI). According to the dissenting opinion, the BOLI complaint was filed in June 1988.
The Supreme Court’s opinion casts doubt on our reasoning that Griffin should be characterized as a continuing tort case that culminated in December 1988. We implied in our opinion that the plaintiffs injury accrued when he was constructively discharged by December 1,1988. However, in discussing the accrual of the plaintiffs claim, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs claim accrued at some point between October 1987 and June 1988 when the plaintiff filed *305his complaint with BOLI.2 The import of the court’s reasoning is that the plaintiff had alleged discrete events, one of which caused the accrual of his claim before his constructive discharge in December 1988. When discrete events give rise to the accrual of an earlier claim, those events cannot become the basis of the accrual of a subsequent claim. The accrual of any claim springs from its underlying operative facts and not from the choice of legal theory.
Here, plaintiff concedes that the cadet’s injury was not ongoing in 1994. Rather, he contends that the cadet’s claim did not accrue until July 1995. However, Sandberg’s conduct in November 1994 constituted a discrete tort. His conduct was actionable as an unconsented touching at that time because both inappropriate conduct and injury occurred. Plaintiff admits in his brief that the cadet testified that she was “bothered” by Sandberg’s touching of her breast area in November 1994. It follows that plaintiffs action for the cadet’s “loss or injury” for that incident accrued at that time under ORS 30.275. Under the reasoning in Holdner and Griffin, the evidence of the 1994 incidents is inadmissible to prove a tort in 1995 because those operative facts did not occur within the time period covered by the tort claims notice.
Having said that, the record made before the trial court frames a different issue. In response to defense counsel’s motion for a directed verdict that the trial court understood as a motion to strike the allegations of incidents that occurred before January 1995, plaintiff told the trial court that the evidence put on by plaintiff “shows the continuing course of conduct and a pattern of what went on for a significant period of time.” In response, defense counsel told the trial court, in part:
“Turning to the merits of the argument, in the absence of any case law support for [plaintiffs counsel’s] argument, I’m not aware of any case law that would hold that, under the facts of this case, [the cadet] can wait and allow these allegedly tort[i]ous acts to continue over an extended period *306of time, and wait until the last one to give the City of North Bend Tort Claims Notice.
“The whole purpose, as the Court knows, of the Tort Claims Notice is to put the public body on notice and give them an opportunity to investigate at once. If you allow these things to extend over periods of time, the purpose of the statute is defeated.”
Further discussion ensued between counsel and the trial court. Finally, defense counsel told the trial court:
“I would agree that the jury could hear the evidence, but what I would ask the Court to do if my motion is granted would be to instruct the jury that they may not award damages to those issues — if those allegations have been withdrawn from the complaint, they may not award damages on anything prior to January 27,1995.”
Ultimately, defendant’s motion became a motion to limit plaintiffs damages to incidents that occurred within 270 days of when notice was given under ORS 30.275. Defendant’s original motion was conceptually different from his ultimate motion. Originally, the motion asked the trial court to rule that plaintiff could not rely on the 1994 incidents of socially intolerable conduct to prove the elements of the claim that accrued in 1995. The motion as modified permitted plaintiff to rely on evidence of socially intolerable conduct that occurred outside the ORS 30.275 tort claims notice period and asked only that the jury not be allowed to award damages as to the 1994 incidents. Whether damages are recoverable for injuries that precede an applicable statute of limitations period is the kind of issue that we alluded to in Holdner and the cases cited therein. But that is not the issue that defendant raises on appeal. Defendant argues on appeal that this case is controlled by Davis, a case about whether a plaintiff can rely on evidence of events that occur outside the statute of limitations period to prove an IIED claim. Because defendant ultimately asked only that the trial court limit plaintiffs damages, it has not preserved the argument that it makes on appeal. ORAP 5.45(2). Consequently, I would affirm on the second assignment of error, but only for that reason.

 According to plaintiffs complaint, the incidents occurred in the fall of 1994, the spring of 1995 and in June 1995.

 The Supreme Court’s reasoning was based on the plaintiffs fourth amended complaint, while our reasoning was based on the plaintiffs second amended complaint.