Court Opinion

ID: 9579400
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:54:42.872542+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:29.097728
License: Public Domain

STILWELL, J.
(dissenting).
Because I believe the majority opinion would require more facts to be pled than are necessary to survive a motion to dismiss, I respectfully dissent.
The test to be utilized by both the trial and appellate court in considering a motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), SCRCP is straightforward:
[I]n deciding a motion to dismiss pursuant to 12(b)(6), SCRCP, the trial court should consider only the allegations set forth on the face of the plaintiffs complaint and a 12(b)(6) motion should not be granted if “facts alleged and inferences reasonably deducible therefrom would entitle the plaintiff to any relief on any theory of the case.” The question is whether, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, and with every doubt resolved in his behalf, the complaint states any valid claim for relief. Further, the complaint should not be dismissed merely because the court doubts the plaintiff will prevail in the action.
Gentry v. Yonce, 337 S.C. 1, 5, 522 S.E.2d 137, 139 (1999) (citations omitted); see also Watts v. Metro Sec. Agency, 346 S.C. 235, 238, 550 S.E.2d 869, 870 (Ct.App.2001). “All well-pleaded factual allegations are deemed admitted for purposes of considering a motion for judgment on the pleadings.” *79Fields v. The Melrose Ltd. P’ship, 312 S.C. 102, 104, 439 S.E.2d 283, 284 (Ct.App.1993). “[P]leadings in a case should be construed liberally so that substantial justice is done between the parties. Further, a judgment on the pleadings is considered to be a drastic procedure by our courts.” Russell v. City of Columbia, 305 S.C. 86, 89, 406 S.E.2d 338, 339 (1991) (citations omitted); see also Justice v. The Pantry, 330 S.C. 37, 42, 496 S.E.2d 871, 874 (Ct.App.1998), aff'd as modified, 335 S.C. 572, 518 S.E.2d 40 (1999).
Under the rules of this state, only ultimate facts need be pled, not all facts. At the pleadings stage, a litigant is not required to submit the evidence necessary to prove its case. “[U]nder our current pleading rules only ultimate facts are required to be stated in pleadings. Ultimate facts are those which the evidence upon trial will prove, and not the evidence which will be required to prove those facts.” Brown v. Inv. Mgmt. & Research, Inc., 323 S.C. 395, 400 n. 3, 475 S.E.2d 754, 756 n. 3 (1996).
Rule 8, SCRCP, mandates that a pleading contain “ultimate facts” rather than “evidentiary facts” to state a cause of action. “Ultimate facts fall somewhere between the verbosity of ‘evidentiary facts’ and the sparsity of ‘legal conclusions.’ ”
Watts at 240, 550 S.E.2d at 871 (citation omitted).
I believe the trial court erred in construing each act as a separate claim or cause of action. Appellant argues, correctly, I believe, that they are all factual allegations in support of a single claim of abuse of process in the context of a single lawsuit. Unlike the majority, I believe it matters whether the allegations are construed separately as independent claims or all together as the factual allegations which evidence would later be needed to prove. This matters greatly in weighing the sufficiency of the pleadings to determine if it survives a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.
According to Prosser, abuse of process includes a proper form of legal procedure, which would include discovery, that is perverted to accomplish an ulterior purpose. “Abuse of process differs from [the tort of] malicious prosecution in that the gist of the tort is not commencing an action or causing process to issue without justification, but misusing, or misapplying *80process justified in itself for an end other than that which it was designed to accomplish.” Prosser & Keeton on Torts 897 (5th ed.1984).
To cause process to issue without justification is an essential element of malicious prosecution, but not of abuse of process. In the latter, the issuance of the process may be justified in itself[;] it is the malicious misuse or perversion of the process for an end not lawfully warranted by it that constitutes the tort known as abuse of process.
Huggins v. Winn-Dixie Greenville, Inc., 249 S.C. 206, 209, 153 S.E.2d 693, 695 (1967) (citations omitted).
The majority opinion would require not just an allegation of a willful act, but inclusion in the pleadings of the facts which make the willful act improper. Initially, it is opined that “the complaint’s fatal flaw ... is that Food Lion did not state facts sufficient to allege the third component of the ‘willful act’ element — that is, in what manner the willful acts enumerated are improper.... In other words, although properly alleging an act involving the process of the court, Food Lion failed to assert how the process was perverted or abused.”
Additionally, the majority states:
to sustain a claim for the tort, a party must allege facts sufficient to show not only that the lawsuit was brought for an ulterior purpose, i.e. for collateral reasons, but that willful acts were taken through which the process was misapplied or abused. [Citations omitted.] To hold otherwise would vitiate the requirement of having to allege both elements of the tort — an “ulterior purpose” and an improper “willful act” — because a bald allegation that various acts were undertaken for collateral purposes would, in effect, be simply alleging an ulterior purpose.
To state that “bald allegations of various acts were undertaken for collateral purposes,” while acknowledging that willful acts were alleged, unnecessarily belittles the detailed factual allegations of a perversion of process contained in the complaint.
The majority places great emphasis on the fact that Food Lion does not allege the lawsuit was used primarily for an ulterior purpose, while disclaiming in a footnote that any “magic words” are required to state a cause of action. In citing similar language, our supreme court has declined to *81place such emphasis on the single word “primarily.” See Hainer v. Am. Med. Int’l, 328 S.C. 128, 146, 492 S.E.2d 103, 112 (1997) (Toal, J. dissenting). Thus, while undue emphasis could be placed on the Restatement’s use of “primarily,” that is not the law in South Carolina.
In Hainer, our supreme court (4-1, Toal, J. dissenting) affirmed this court’s reversal of the jury verdict and grant of directed verdict on the basis that the evidence was insufficient to demonstrate an improper willM act, though they found it “may be susceptible of an inference of an ulterior purpose.” In dissent, Justice Toal marshaled “persuasive circumstantial evidence” from the record of willful acts. She concluded the majority’s acceptance of an “overt act” as necessary to a claim “appears for the first time in South Carolina jurisprudence in the 1992 Court of Appeals opinion Sierra v. Skelton . . . .[and] was not a requirement in any of this Court’s abuse of process decisions.” I concur in Justice Toal’s observation that Huggins and prior South Carolina jurisprudence on abuse of process, including Broadmoor, require a “flexible approach.” “If we approach the tort of abuse of process only in a hyper-technical manner, then we vitiate the purpose for which the cause of action exists.” Hainer at 144, 492 S.E.2d at 111-12 (Toal, J. dissenting).
In Broadmoor, our supreme court found sufficient evidence from which the jury could infer that the corporation and its president willfully abused the process by filing a lis pendens for the ulterior purpose of preventing a sale to third parties in hopes of obtaining financial backing to purchase the property at an advantageous price. Broadmoor Apts. of Charleston v. Horwitz, 306 S.C. 482, 413 S.E.2d 9 (1991). The factual allegations in the pleadings in Broadmoor were nowhere near as detailed and extensive as they are in this case.
To craft as stringent a test as has the majority here raises the bar at the pleading stage to an insurmountable height. Utilizing this standard, none of the prior South Carolina cases that have found a valid claim for abuse of process would have survived a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. We need not decide whether Food Lion will ultimately succeed, only that it survives a 12(b)(6) assault. Thus, I would reverse the trial court.
*82Because I would reverse the dismissal of Food Lion’s abuse of process claim, it becomes necessary to address whether the state common law cause of action is pre-empted by federal law. Food Lion argues the trial judge erred in its alternate holding that federal law, particularly the sanctioning power inherent in the FRCP preempted this action. I agree.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) do not-preempt the state common law tort, as is clearly evidenced by the language in the Rules Enabling Act (REA) which provides that the FRCP “shall not abridge, enlarge, or modify any substantive rights.” 28 U.S.C. § 2072(b). “A federal statute preempts state action ... only if the clear and manifest intent of Congress in passing the federal statute was ‘to occupy the field to the exclusion of the State.” ’ Medical Park OB/GYN v. Ragin, 321 S.C. 139, 143, 467 S.E.2d 261, 263 (Ct.App.1996). There is-no indication that Congress had a “clear and manifest” intent to preempt this field to the exclusion of a state common law action for abuse of process.
While sanctions under the FRCP are intended to deter abusive conduct, tort law is intended, at least in large part, to compensate the victims of abuse. See Rule 37(a)(4), FRCP, advisory committee notes (1970 amendments) (purpose of sanctions for abuse of discovery is to deter the abuse). The tort is not aimed at procedural control of lawsuits, as the rules are, but at remedying abuses. The goal and focus of each are very different. Thus, I conclude that this abuse of process tort action is not preempted by federal law.
For both of the above reasons, I respectfully dissent and would reverse and remand.