Court Opinion

ID: 9795839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:39:49.350494+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:38:06.986180
License: Public Domain

FABE, Justice,
dissenting.
The court resolves this appeal through a harmless error analysis, without addressing the propriety of the superior court’s dismissal of Jones’s intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) claim. Because I believe that Jones presented sufficient evidence to satisfy the threshold requirements for an IIED claim, I would hold that the superior court erroneously dismissed this claim on summary judgment. And because Jones’s remaining claim for wrongful termination under the Alaska Human Rights Act failed to compensate him for all damages sought un*355der the IIED claim, I disagree with the court’s conclusion that no prejudice resulted from dismissal of the IIED claim. I would therefore reverse the superior court’s dismissal of Jones’s IIED claim and remand the case for a new trial on that claim.
I. The Superior Court Erred in Dismissing Jones’s IIED Claim on Summary Judgment.
Although the trial court should make a threshold determination whether the severity of the emotional distress and the conduct of the offending party warrant a claim of IIED,1 Jones raised genuine issues of material fact as to both the outrageous nature of Ainsworth’s conduct and the probability that he suffered severe emotional distress. He accomplished this by presenting to the superior court the following evidence in his opposition to summary judgment:
(1) A copy of Ainsworth’s termination memo, which contains racial and sexual slurs;2
(2) Jones’s deposition testimony that about a month after they started working together in the barbershop, Ainsworth intentionally “messfed] with [Jones] ... to make it hard for [Jones] to try to keep that job”;
(3) Jones’s deposition testimony that Ains-worth threatened him with a broomstick, brandishing the handle when Ainsworth was alone with Jones in the barbershop and threatening to do bodily harm to Jones with the stick;
(4) Jones’s deposition testimony that after receiving the August 4 memorandum, Jones was in “fea[r] all the time because [he] didn’t know what the next step was going to be because [Ainsworth] was still there” and that he felt fearful “every time [he] hear[d] the doors open or the keys ... because [he] never kn[ew] what [was] going to happen”;
(5) Jones’s deposition .testimony that he was labeled a “rat” by correctional staff in retaliation for causing trouble for Ainsworth about the memo;
(6) An affidavit and expert report of Ernest C. Weber, a corrections and prison consultant with over thirty years of experience in the field, explaining the significance of the context of Ainsworth’s conduct, the dependence of prisoners on staff for their safety and well being, and the “importance of minor things that are so simple to us who are free [that] become greatly magnified to those who are incarcerated”;
(7) Weber’s opinion that “[i]f staff indicate that they are ‘out to get them’ [prisoners] can then develop an extreme fear for their safety”;
(8) Weber’s opinion that if a prisoner contemplates reporting inappropriate guard conduct, he must consider the possibility of being labeled a “rat.” Weber added: “I cannot overstate the seriousness of an inmate being labeled a ‘rat’ in an institutional correction environment. This label could and often does place the individual in very real danger during incarceration.”
(9) Weber’s opinion that the racial and sexual harassment that Jones was subjected to “could have caused him severe mental anguish and could have placed him in a position to be subject to serious physical harm.”
Although the court’s opinion does not reach the question, the concurrence concludes that Jones presented insufficient evidence of severe distress to avoid summary judgment on his IIED claim, basing this view on Jones’s purported failure to present evidence regarding the effect of Ainsworth’s actions on him.3 But on a summary judgment motion, “[t]he non-moving party is entitled to have the record reviewed in the light most favorable to it and to have all reasonable inferences drawn in its favor.”4 And as *356the concurring opinion recognizes, Jones testified that he “feared all the time because I didn’t know what the next step was going to be because [Ainsworth] was still there. I didn’t know if ... every time I hear the doors open or keys, it still bugs me, it bugs me today ... because I never, know what is going to happen.”5 Jones also described in detail Ainsworth’s systematic harassment and discrimination. Ainsworth’s described conduct was so extreme and outrageous that standing alone it permits an inference of distress. A number of federal decisions have recognized that inferences of emotional distress may be drawn from conduct in the context of discrimination claims.6 As the Seventh Circuit explained: “The more inherently degrading or humiliating the defendant’s action is, the more reasonable it is to infer that a person would suffer humiliation or distress from that action; consequently, somewhat more conclusory evidence of emotional distress will be acceptable to support an award for emotional distress.”7 The Bal-istrieri court went on to conclude that even though the testimony offered “was somewhat general and conclusory” and even “minimal,” it was sufficient to support an emotional distress award.8
Similarly, the Ninth Circuit concluded that it was proper to award damages for humiliation and distress to a husband and wife who suffered discrimination in their search for rental office space, where there was no testimony from the husband about his emotional distress.9 That court concluded that the husband’s “humiliation could be inferred from the surrounding circumstances” of not being able to rent office space because he was African-American.10 And in Hobson v. Brennan, the court relied on decisions of the D.C. Circuit to conclude that an absence of direct testimony about distress will not defeat a claim for compensatory damages.11 The court in Hobson explained that “[t]he defendants’ construction of the term ‘testimony’... is overly narrow [because it] overlook[s] the [D.C. Circuit] Court of Appeals’ further statement that ‘in appropriate circumstances ... emotional distress may be inferred from the circumstances.’ ” 12 The Hobson court reasoned that in a case involving an intrusive investigation by the FBI “[t]estimony about something so obvious [as the plaintiffs emotional distress] would have been redundant and possibly viewed by the jury as so self-serving as to be counter pro*357ductive.”13
Moreover, the Seventh Circuit has recognized that “racial discrimination, ‘which is one of the relics of slavery’ is the type of action that one could reasonably expect to humiliate or cause emotional distress to a person.”14 No reasonable person could be expected to endure the degrading racial and sexual slurs and routine threats allegedly made by Ainsworth without suffering severe emotional distress. And “[t]he jury is in the best position to evaluate both the humiliation inherent in the circumstances and the witness’s explanation of his injury.... [A] jury may glean as much if not more about a witness’s emotional state from the witness’s demeanor than from his attempts to explain the nature of his injury in words.”15
Athough the concurrence places great reliance on the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Alston v. King,16 Aston’s emotional distress claim arose from a municipal employer’s failure to provide him with the pretermination hearing required by his employment contract.17 In my view, the conduct underlying Jones’s claims of emotional distress — degrading racial and sexual slurs and continuing threats made by a jail guard to a prisoner under his control — is significantly more serious than the conduct underlying Aston’s claims, where Aston was “taken back to his desk and forced to clean out his desk in the presence of his coworkers, without any explanation,” while some eoworkers cried and others laughed and mocked him.18 Yet, in Alston, the court found that despite scant evidence of emotional distress, testimony about the “sequence of events at the office” was “sufficient to raise a jury issue of emotional distress damages related to the denial of procedural due process.”19 The court concluded: “In other words, there was enough evidence [from which] to infer that the humiliation [Aston] experienced was attributable to the summary nature of the proceedings, rather than to the termination itself. Aston therefore presented sufficient evidence of damages to withstand judgment as a matter of law.”20
Thus, in certain cases, severe emotional distress may be inferred from the circumstances underlying the plaintiffs claim. The outrageousness of Answorth’s discriminatory and threatening conduct permits such an inference of severe emotional distress and raises a genuine issue of material fact. It is thus my view that the evidence submitted by Jones on the issues of outrageousness and severe emotional distress was sufficient to survive the State’s motion for summary judgment.
II. The Erroneous Dismissal of the IIED Claim Was Not Harmless Error.
“Under the harmless, error test, ‘[t]he members of this court must necessarily put themselves, as nearly as possible, in the posi*358tion of the jury in order to determine whether, as reasonable [people], the error committed probably affected their verdict.’ ”21 If the jury had been permitted to consider Jones’s IIED claim, it could have weighed the nature and extent of harassment that Jones suffered throughout his period of employment under Ainsworth, rather than just the distress suffered from the time of termination. And if the IIED claim had remained, the jury could have compensated Jones for the emotional distress he suffered due to threatening behavior by a correctional officer who had power over him, in addition to the emotional distress associated with being terminated. Thus, dismissal of this claim cannot be viewed as harmless error.
The superior court limited the recovery of emotional distress damages to those resulting from Jones’s termination based on racial or sexual discrimination, in violation of the Human Rights Act. Before closing arguments, the superior court gave preliminary instructions, including an instruction that told the jury that it could award Jones damages to compensate him only for emotional distress caused by racially motivated termination: “If you find that Mr. Jones’s rights under the Alaska Human Rights Act were violated, you may award him a fair amount to compensate for emotional distress caused by that'injury.” The court defined the Human Rights Act violation as termination motivated by racial or sexual discrimination. Thus, the jury’s award of non-economic damages was to compensate Jones only for the emotional distress he suffered due to his termination for discriminatory reasons.
But Jones also testified that he interpreted Ainsworth’s memo as a threat and that it caused him to be afraid. And Jones’s corrections expert confirmed that mere receipt of such a memo would have had “a profound effect on the individual who was incarcerated,” due to the extraordinary authority that correctional employees have over inmates. Moreover, Jones claimed that Ainsworth’s memo was just the culmination of an abusive relationship. Jones testified that Ainsworth had made earlier comments that frightened him, and he described an incident during which Ainsworth made an unprovoked threat to hit Jones with a broom handle and actually picked up the broom as if to carry out the threat.
Because of the court’s earlier dismissal of the IIED claim, the State was successful in its argument to limit emotional distress damages to those resulting from the termination via the memo. And the State convinced the court to give Instruction 14.5, which stated that “Mr. Jones is not entitled to emotional damages that he is claiming occurred before he received the memorandum from Floyd Ainsworth dated August 4, 1997.” Because the jury was expressly prevented from compensating Jones for his distress resulting from Ainsworth’s course of conduct before the termination, the court’s assertion that Instruction No. 14.5 did not preclude the jury’s consideration of Ainsworth’s earlier course of conduct in making its emotional distress award is inaccurate.22
I also believe that the court is incorrect in concluding that Jones inadequately preserved in the trial court his claim to emotional distress damages for Ainsworth’s pre-termination conduct by failing to object to instructions that limited the scope of his claims or failing to argue the point in his opposition to summary judgment and at trial. Jones’s counsel objected at trial to the State’s argument for an instruction that would limit Jones’s emotional distress damages to those suffered after Jones received the memo:
MR. MOGEL: Your Honor, I believe I’m entitled to an instruction that Mr. Jones is not entitled to any economic damages for the time before he received the memorandum.
MR. VERMONT: No, emotional distress.
MR. MOGEL: No[ ] emotional distress damages for the time before he received the memorandum. The claim in this case is that he was terminated and any distress, *359any emotional distress would have to stem from that termination.
THE COURT: Mr. Wendt?
MR. WENDT: I disagree. It’s true he was terminated and the termination according to the complaint happened once. But, Your Honor, the termination is the culmination of what had occurred for months before that. And as such, the activity before termination is part of the termination.... This is the actions of Floyd Ainsworth who was his supervisor who terminated him and the actions occurred before the termination and after the termination, and emotional distress Mr. Jones suffered as a result of Floyd Ainsworth’s actions was culminated on August the 4th. I don’t feel the need to be limited to the date of culmination of those actions when the actions took place over a period of time. (Emphasis added.)
Before finalizing its jury instructions, the superior court ruled against Jones on this point, concluding that
the damages have to stem from the act itself that forms the underlying basis of the complaint. And the underlying basis of the complaint, the cause of action, is the termination and the damages would come after that, not preceding it.
When the trial court clarified that its ruling was based on its assumption that the Human Rights Act termination claim only allowed damages from the date of termination, Jones’s counsel responded “I do object to that.”
Later, when the superior court decided on the specific language of the instruction that would implement its ruling, Instruction 14.5, Jones objected to it for “the previous reasons stated,” referring to his earlier argument regarding the State’s request for an instruction limiting the damages to those resulting from the termination. The superior court ruled that it would give Instruction 14.5, “subject to the underlying objection,” referring to Jones’s earlier argument that his emotional distress damages should not be limited to those arising after receipt of the memo.
Each time the subject of this limitation of damages arose, Jones’s counsel was clear in his objection, and. the trial court understood his continuing and “underlying objection” to the limitation on damages. At the time that the trial court decided to give Instruction No. 9 and the other preliminary instructions generally describing the claims to the jury, the State had not yet made its request to limit emotional distress damages. Certainly, there was ample opportunity for the trial court to correct the final instructions that were given to the jury after closing arguments. Instead, Instruction 14.5 was inserted over Jones’s objection. Thus, it seems unfair for the court to conclude that Jones failed to preserve properly his argument that he was entitled to emotional distress damages beyond those related to the termination memo.
Moreover, as Jones explains in his reply brief on appeal, had he “been permitted to pursue his IIED claim he would have been able to present more evidence ... at trial as well as argu[e] more forcefully to the jury.” Jones was not required in his opposition to summary judgment on the IIED claim to develop fully the basis for his claim for damages arising from Ainsworth’s alleged intentional infliction of emotional distress; he was only required to raise a genuine issue of material fact. And once the IIED claim was dismissed at the summary judgment stage, Jones likely felt constrained in his ability to present evidence outside the scope of the termination incident. As the court recognizes, the remaining Human Rights Act claim restricted Jones to evidence and argument on damages that directly and naturally resulted from the injury in question — his termination.23 Thus, once the IIED claim was dismissed from the case, Jones was required to alter the structure and presentation of his case in order to conform to that ruling. It thus hardly seems right to fault Jones for focusing his presentation in the trial court on the emotional distress damages he suffered *360as a result of the August 4 termination memo.
Because I believe that the superior Court erred in granting summary judgment on the IIED claim, and because Jones testified that he suffered emotional distress independent of that resulting from the racially motivated termination, I am unable to agree that the error in dismissing the IIED claim was harmless. I would reverse and remand for a new trial on the IIED claim. I therefore respectfully dissent.

.Richardson v. Fairbanks N. Star Borough, 705 P.2d 454, 456 (Alaska 1985); see also Lincoln v. Interior Reg'l Hous. Auth., 30 P.3d 582 (Alaska 2001) (holding failure of the trial court to make threshold decision about outrageousness of conduct required remand of IIED claim for that determination).

. We have previously held that "an isolated incident ... may ... be sufficiently egregious to satisfy the outrageousness threshold.” Lybrand v. Trask, 31 P.3d 801, 805 n. 8 (Alaska 2001).

. Concurring Op. at 352 n. 9.

. Holland v. Union Co. of California, 993 P.2d 1026, 1029 (Alaska 1999).

. Concurring Op. at 352.

. See, e.g., United States v. Balistrieri, 981 F.2d 916, 932 (7th Cir.1992), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 812, 114 S.Ct. 58, 126 L.Ed.2d 28 (1993) (inference of distress permissible in housing discrimination case); Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of Housing & Urban Dev. ex ret Herron v. Blackwell, 908 F.2d 864, 872-73 (11th Cir.1990) (damages from emotional distress may be inferred from circumstances as well as proved by testimony); Phiffer v. Proud Parrot Motor Hotel, Inc., 648 F.2d 548, 552-53 (9th Cir.1980) (same); see also Hobson v. Wilson, 737 F.2d 1, 61-62 & n. 173 (D.C.Cir.1984), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1084, 105 S.Ct. 1843, 85 L.Ed.2d 142 (1985), overruled in part on other grounds by Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination Unit, 507 U.S. 163, 113 S.Ct. 1160, 122 L.Ed.2d 517 (1993) (identifying emotional distress as an interest protected by common law tort rules, and declining "to hold that some quantum of compensable emotional distress may not be inferred from the circumstances” and remanding the issue for consideration by a jury of whether the conduct justified such distress where the conduct included violations of the First Amendment); Doe v. District of Columbia, 697 F.2d 1115, 1124 n. 24 (D.C.Cir.1983) (observing that under certain circumstances infliction of emotional distress may be inferred from the circumstances of the violation, particularly in the context of substantive rights such as the Eighth Amendment, even though such inferences may not be permissible in the procedural due process context as the United States Supreme Court held in Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247, 98 S.Ct. 1042, 55 L.Ed.2d 252 (1978)).

. Balistrieri, 981 F.2d at 932.

. Id. at 933.

. Phiffer, 648 F.2d at 552-53.

. Id. at 550, 553; see also Johnson v. Hale, 940 F.2d 1192, 1193 (9th Cir.1991) (citing Phiffer for proposition that "damages may be awarded for humiliation and emotional distress established by testimony or inferred from the circumstances”).

. 646 F.Supp. 884, 890 (D.D.C.1986) (quoting Hobson v. Wilson, 737 F.2d at 61 n. 173 (citing Doe, 697 F.2d at 1124 n. 24)).

. Hobson v. Brennan, 646 F.Supp. at 890.

. Id.

. See Balistrieri, 981 F.2d at 932 (quoting Seaton v. Sky Realty Co., 491 F.2d 634, 636 (7th Cir.1974) (upholding a damages award based on "racial indignity” where the only direct evidence of emotional distress was testimony that "I was humiliated. I was intimidated, not only as a person but as a man. He stripped me of my right as a father to my kids”)); see also Webner . Titan Distrib., Inc., 267 F.3d 828, 836 (8th Cir. 2001) (explaining that "a plaintiff's own testimony may provide ample evidence when heard in combination with the circumstances surrounding the plaintiff’s termination” where the plaintiff was terminated because of his disability); Krueger v. Cuomo, 115 F.3d 487, 492 (7th Cir.1997) (noting that "[i]t demands little in the way of either empathy or imagination to appreciate the predicament of a woman who is harassed in full view of her children .... ” and concluding that an inference of distress is permitted with minimal direct evidence apart from her testimony).

. Balistrieri, 981 F.2d at 933; see also Wahi v. N. Trust Corp., 2002 WL 31133205, at *7 (N.D.Ill.2002) (testimony alone is sufficient to support an award of damages); Kronstedt v. Equifax, 2001 WL 34124783, at *13 (W.D.Wis.2001) (concluding that evaluation of emotional distress claim stemming from release of inaccurate and derogatory credit information on credit report is best left to the jury); Pumphrey v. Stephen Homes, Inc., 1994 WL 150947, at *7 (D.Md.1994) (testimony alone sufficient to support award).

. 231 F.3d 383 (7th Cir.2000).

. 231 F.3d at 386-87.

. Id. at 389.

. Id. at 389.

. Id.

. Dobos v. Ingersoll, 9 P.3d 1020, 1024 (Alaska 2000) (quoting Alyeska Pipeline Serv. Co. v. O'Kelley, 645 P.2d 767, 773 (Alaska 1982)).

. Slip Op. at 350, n. 20.

. Slip Op. at 349; see Johnson v. Alaska State Dep't of Fish & Game, 836 P.2d 896, 915 (Alaska 1991).