Court Opinion

ID: 9701934
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:45:53.972738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:31.061986
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge,
dissenting:
The majority seems to agree, though I am not sure, that if the foot-length “noise makers” in this case were the conventional sort of “husher” or “white noise” maker employed in most courtrooms of the Superior Court, this suit would be meritless. But apparently because the devices might have been of a different, diabolical sort capable of inflicting “acoustical torture” over time — maybe a relic from Kafka’s penal colony — the suit is allowed to go forward. Although Rule 12(b)(6) permits liberal pleading, I do not believe it is so loose a sieve as to let pass this example— one might say this parody — of a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
That tort, as the majority purports to recognize, demands allegations of “conduct so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.” Homan v. Goyal, 711 A.2d 812, 818 (D.C.1998) (quoting Drejza v. Vaccaro, 650 A.2d 1308, 1312 n. 10 (D.C.1994)). “If that standard means what it says, then the conduct alleged must truly be extraordinary to hold a defendant accountable for this tort.” Carey v. Edgewood Mgmt. Corp., 754 A.2d 951, 956 (D.C.2000). And to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, “the allegations of the complaint must afford a basis for concluding that [the plaintiff] may be able to prove conduct of the required enormity.” Id. (emphasis deleted). In Jonathan Woodner Co. v. Breeden, 665 A.2d 929 (D.C.1995), a claim was upheld where it was alleged and shown that the landlord’s agent “repeatedly ‘accidentally’ dropped” or “brandished” a pistol in tenants’ presence as part of systematic *46efforts to make them quit their apartments. Id. at 935. Now, evidently by extension, allegations that noise makers were beamed at an employee with similar intent to make her quit her job are considered enough to state a claim of conduct beyond all civilized norms. Sometimes common sense — or a sense for the ridiculous — should be enough for the court to say “no.”
Never mind that no reason is alleged why supervisor Blumenthal wanted plaintiff to leave,1 or that no other conduct besides installation of the noise makers made up the alleged “course of conduct” aimed at that result. And never mind that plaintiff does not allege she was denied permission or unable to move her work station farther away from the noise, and thus somehow held captive to it. See Duncan v. Children’s Nat’l Med. Ctr., 702 A.2d 207, 211 (D.C.1997) (dismissal upheld where complaint did not allege employer “force[d employee] to remain in a situation where she would be exposed to radiation”). On the off-chance that the noise makers might have had the torturous capacity attributed to them — emitting a “loud, static-sounding, piercing” but at the same time “humming and droning” noise — and that Blumenthal might have used them as the instrument of a malicious purpose, the suit is allowed to go forward.
When applied to this intentional tort, with its proof requirements as severe as any in our law, Rule 12(b)(6) serves an important gatekeeping function which the majority disregards. Whether or not plaintiff could have alleged a case of negligent infliction of emotional distress, see Williams v. Baker, 572 A.2d 1062 (D.C.1990) (en banc), it cheapens the currency of the tort she alleged to let this action proceed.

. What this suit really reflects, though it does not want to allege it, is some sort of employer-employee conflict, and this court has been particularly unwilling "[i]n the employment context” to recognize suits for intentional infliction of emotional distress. See Kerrigan v. Britches of Georgetowne, Inc., 705 A.2d 624 (D.C.1997). Compare the alleged conduct by plaintiff's supervisor with the conduct found insufficient as a matter of law in Kerrigan:
In his complaint, Kerrigan alleges that Britches targeted him for a sexual harassment investigation, manufactured evidence against him in order to establish a false claim of sexual harassment, leaked information from the investigation to other employees, and unjustifiably demoted him to the position of store manager in order to promote a woman to his position. This conduct, even construed as true, was of the type attributable to "employer-employee conflicts [that] do not, as a matter of law, rise to the level of outrageous conduct.”
Id. at 628 (citation omitted).