Court Opinion

ID: 9759841
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:29:16.876848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:05.217857
License: Public Domain

SHANNON, Justice,
dissenting.
I am not in agreement with the majority opinion.
Joe Bennight pleaded that Western Auto Supply committed intentional torts in: (1) compelling his wife Cathy Bennight to work in an area with a known dangerous condition; (2) intentionally inflicting emotional distress on Cathy Bennight; (3) intentionally maintaining an unsafe place to work; and (4) intentionally refusing to correct the conditions which created an unsafe place to work. Joe claimed that such intentional acts were a proximate cause of his loss of consortium.
*381The district court, however, submitted the case to the jury upon only two of Joe’s several theories of recovery. The special issues submitted by the district court most nearly correspond to Joe’s theories (1) and (3).
The charge contained six special issues. The jury refused to find that Western Auto’s agent required Cathy to work in the warehouse area against her will with the intention of causing her to be bitten by a bat or to be otherwise exposed to rabies. The jury found that Western Auto intentionally maintained an unsafe place to work in the warehouse area when its manager knew that such area was an unsafe place to work, and that Western Auto’s requiring Cathy work in the warehouse area was a proximate cause of physical- or emotional harm to her. Finally, the jury concluded that $87,500.00 would compensate for loss of consortium. Pursuant to Western Auto’s motion, the district court rendered judgment on the jury’s verdict that Joe take nothing.
The record does not show that the parties objected to the court’s charge or requested the submission of other special issues.
Joe does not attack the jury’s refusal to find that Western Auto required Cathy to work in the warehouse area against her will with the intention of causing her to be bitten by a bat or to be otherwise exposed to rabies.1 Instead, Joe argues, and the majority of this Court has held, that the jury’s answers to the balance of the special issues entitle Joe to judgment for $87,-500.00. I cannot agree.
In a suit for loss of consortium, the deprived spouse’s cause of action is considered to be derivative of the impaired spouse’s action to the extent that the tort-feasor’s liability to the impaired spouse must be established. Whittlesey v. Miller, 572 S.W.2d 665 (Tex.1978). As stated in the majority opinion, if Cathy’s injury were an “accidental injury,” Joe’s loss of consortium is not compensable since his claim, like that of Cathy’s, is barred by the exclusive remedy afforded by the Workers’ Compensation Act. To the contrary, if Cathy’s injury resulted from an intentional tort, Joe’s claim for loss of consortium is not barred by the Act. Massey v. Armco Steel Co., 652 S.W.2d 932 (Tex.1983).2
The central issue in this appeal is whether the jury’s answers established the elements of an intentional tort by Western Auto against Cathy. The jury’s affirmative findings established only that Western Auto intentionally maintained an unsafe work place; that, with the knowledge that such place was an unsafe work place, Western Auto required Cathy to work against her will in the warehouse area; and that such action proximately caused physical or emotional harm to Cathy.
The only intentional tort recognized in this state which could find support in the jury’s answers to special issues, is assault. At common law, one may be subject to liability to another for assault if:
(1) he acts:
(2) intending to cause (a) a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other (or a third person), or (b) an imminent apprehension of such a contact, and;
(3) the other is thereby put in such imminent apprehension.
Restatement (2d) of Torts, § 21 (1965).3
The findings of the jury fall short of establishing a common law assault in the *382following respects: (1) the jury s answers do not establish that Western Auto’s manager intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact with Cathy or that he intended to cause an imminent apprehension in Cathy of such a contact and (2) that Cathy was, by virtue of the manager’s act, put in such imminent apprehension. An act which is committed without the intention of causing a harmful or offensive contact or imminent apprehension of such a contact does not make the actor liable in intentional tort to the other for any apprehension caused thereby even though the act involves an unreasonable risk of causing the apprehension. Restatement (2d) of Torts, § 21(2).4
Had the district court rendered judgment on the jury’s verdict for Joe, this Court would deem as found in favor of the judgment that the manager’s act was committed with the intent to cause a harmful or offensive contact to Cathy or to cause her imminent apprehension of such contact and that Cathy was put in imminent apprehension of harmful or offensive contact since there is some evidence in support of these omitted elements of recovery. Tex.R.Civ. P.Ann. 279 (1977). However, because the district court rendered judgment on the verdict against Joe, this Court presumes that the district court found against Joe on the omitted elements of his theory of recovery. Tex.R.Civ.P.Ann. 279.
The judgment of the district court should be affirmed.

. As previously written, there is nothing in the record to show that Joe was dissatisfied with the district court’s rather narrow submission of this ground of recovery.

. Cathy’s settlement of her claim for workers’ compensation did not bar Joe’s claim for intentional impairment of consortium. Reed Tool Co. v. Copelin, 610 S.W.2d 736 (Tex.1981).

. Some Texas cases hold that the legal definition of an assault is the same in civil actions as it is in criminal prosecutions, making reference to Tex.Pen.Code Ann. § 22.01. Hogenson v. Williams, 542 S.W.2d 456, 458 (Tex.Civ.App.1976, no writ); Texas Bus Lines v. Anderson, 233 S.W.2d 961, 964 (Tex.Civ.App.1950, writ ref’d n.r.e.). There are, apparently, no Supreme Court cases. Cf. Gravis v. Physicians and Surgeons Hospital of Alice, 427 S.W.2d 310 (Tex.1968); Fisher v. Carrousel Motor Hotel, Inc., 424 S.W.2d 627 (Tex.1967); Houston Transit Company v. Felder, 146 Tex. 428, 208 S.W.2d 880 *382(1948). See also 9 Stayton’s Texas Forms 512, Sec. 5055, suggesting the following submission of an "assault and battery" case.
1) Do you find ... that the defendant struck the plaintiff on the occasion in question?
2) Do you find ... that the plaintiff sustained injuries by reason of being so struck ... ?
3) What sum of money, if any, do you find ... will fairly and reasonably compensate plaintiff ...?

. The rule in most states in cases of this kind is that acts on the part of the employer do not rise to the level of an intentional tort absent the establishment of the employer's specific intent to injure. See Williams v. International Paper Company, 129 Cal.App.3d 810, 181 Cal.Rptr. 342 (1982); McAdams v. Black & Decker Manufacturing Co., Inc., 395 So.2d 411 (La.App.1981), cert. denied, 400 So.2d 1380 (La.1981); Great Western Sugar Company v. District Court, 610 P.2d 717 (Mont.1980); Foster v. Allsop Automatic, Inc., 86 Wash.2d 579, 547 P.2d 856 (1976); Kittell v. Vermont Weatherboard, Inc., 138 Vt. 439, 417 A.2d 926, 927 (1980) (The overwhelming weight of authority in other jurisdictions is that "the common-law liability of the employer cannot ... be stretched to include accidental injuries caused by the gross, wanton, wilful, deliberate, intentional, reckless, culpable, or malicious negligence, breach of statute, or other misconduct of the employer short of genuine intentional injury.” 2A A. Larson, Workmen’s Compensation Law § 68.13, at 13-8 and 9 (1983), and cases cited id. at n. 11. Nothing short of a specific intent to injure falls outside the scope of the Act. 2A A. Larsen, supra, § 68.13....) See also 96 A.L.R.3d 1064, 1077-1081.