Court Opinion

ID: 9552640
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:14:26.058958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:28:28.719353
License: Public Domain

LINDE, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that plaintiff has not pleaded a common-law tort claim for wrongful discharge, for the reasons stated by the Court. The established American doctrine of discharge at will for noneconomic, nonperformance-related reasons can be criticized, but as long as Oregon law treats the employment relationship, in absence of a contrary agreement, as terminable at will, a discharge as such is not a tort because a court or a jury disapproves of the employer’s reason. A reason is impermissible if it contravenes some other law, or if the employee is discharged for complying with a public duty or for exercising a specifically job-related right. Holien v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., *125298 Or 76, 689 P2d 1292 (1984); Delaney v. Taco Time Int’l, 297 Or 10, 681 P2d 114 (1984). These limits of the tort of wrongful discharge cannot be circumvented by raising the level of indignation at the employer’s reason to “outrage.”
It does not follow that an employee’s discharge cannot be an element in another tort. The gist of tortious discharge is an economic harm, the loss of the job, although damages may extend to consequential injuries. By definition, the tort is that of an employer. Intentional infliction of severe psychic or emotional distress is a different tort. As that lengthy name given it by Dean Prosser, see Prosser, Intentional Infliction of Mental Suffering: A New Tort?, 37 Mich L Rev 874 (1939), and the Second Restatement of Torts, section 46, means to keep in view, it requires both an aim to inflict severe psychic harm and its actual accomplishment by socially intolerable methods. If a person pursuing some personal vendetta takes extraordinary steps to have another discharged in order to cause the other severe psychic distress, a court or jury might find the particular conduct to exceed socially tolerable bounds, even though the employer has committed no tort.
The employer in the present case is J. C. Penney Co., Inc., a nationwide retailer whose shares are widely held. The complaint names the company as a defendant along with its local store manager, McKay, and its district manager, Chapin. The complaint does not allege that these defendants, in intentionally inflicting psychic or emotional distress on plaintiff, did so in pursuit of any business purpose of the J. C. Penney company.1 The difference between this case and Hall v. The May Dept. Stores, 292 Or 131, 637 P2d 126 (1981), in which a corporation was held liable for its investigator’s use of threats and accusations as a tactic to bully an employee into admitting theft, is that there the investigator pursued an objective of his employer. The present complaint does not allege that the J. C. Penney company objected to plaintiffs social activities and wished to harass him into dropping them; *126on the contrary, it alleges that the company had no such policy.
The factual allegations, however, seem sufficient to plead another tort claim against McKay, a claim for tortious interference with plaintiffs employment contract with J. C. Penney Co., Inc. Again, the gist of that claim, as of plaintiffs attempted claim of tortious discharge, is the economic harm of the lost job, though there may be consequential injuries. Cf. Mooney v. Johnson Cattle, 291 Or 709, 634 P2d 1333 (1981). Plaintiff did not argue this legal theory, perhaps because McKay was the manager who terminated plaintiffs employment. But plaintiffs employer was the J. C. Penney company. If McKay were an outsider who induced the company to break off plaintiffs further employment by wrongful means or for a wrongful purpose, he would be liable, and there seems to be no reason why he could not be liable if he misused his power as store manager for his own rather than the company’s purposes.2 See Lewis v. Oregon Beauty Supply Co., 77 Or App 663, 714 P2d 618 (1986), rev allowed May 21, 1986.
The complaint alleges, in effect, that McKay directed plaintiff to cease a social relationship with a co-worker although it contravened no rule or policy of the employer, that plaintiffs refusal to do so made McKay “angry and resentful,” that ultimately McKay terminated plaintiffs employment by J. C. Penney Co., Inc., on false grounds of “unsatisfactory job performance,” and that he did so “with malice and in retaliation for Plaintiffs assertion of his valued rights and were intended to inflict upon Plaintiff severe emotional distress.” To prove a claim of tortious interference, plaintiff must show the required wrongful motive or wrongful means; thereafter, it is defendant’s burden to show a privilege or other defense. Straube v. Larson, 287 Or 357, 361, 600 P2d 371 (1979), Top Service Body Shop v. Allstate Ins. Co., 283 Or 201, 209-10, 582 P2d 1365 (1978).
Here, the somewhat indefinite charge that McKay *127acted from personal “malice” toward plaintiff is not further spelled out, and plaintiff may not be able to prove it. But the case is before us on a motion to dismiss the complaint, and to survive such a motion the complaint only needs to allege “ultimate facts constituting a claim for relief’ and a “demand of the relief which the party claims.” ORCP 18. The legal label for a theory of liability is not a “fact” that needs to be alleged in the complaint itself. When the facts alleged make out a claim for tort damages, the complaint cannot be dismissed for “failure to state ultimate facts sufficient to constitute a claim,” ORCP 21A, whatever consequence a failure to specify the exact legal basis of the claim might have at later stages of the litigation.3 If plaintiff in fact can show that McKay was motivated by personal malice and deliberately caused plaintiff both economic and psychic harm without any justification or privilege, plaintiff would have a claim against McKay under either theory, though not against J. C. Penney Co., Inc.
Against Chapin, the district manager, the complaint alleges only that he had discretionary authority to reverse plaintiffs dismissal by McKay, and that his “actions” (or failure to act) along with McKay’s “were done with malice and in retaliation” for plaintiffs assertion of his rights. An allegation of mere refusal to overrule the store manager does not allege a form of intolerable conduct, and I concur with the Court in dismissing that claim against Chapin. If plaintiff can prove the malicious personal motive that he alleges against Chapin, however, those allegations make out an interference claim also against Chapin, unless he shows privilege or another defense.
I therefore concur that the complaint should be dismissed as to all defendants on the claim based on tortious discharge and on all theories as to J. C. Penney Co., Inc., but I *128would remand the case to the circuit court for further proceedings on the tort theories available to plaintiff on the ultimate facts alleged against McKay and Chapin.
Lent, J., joins in this separate opinion.

For the limits on respondeat superior for intentional torts committed by an employee in the course of his employment but for personal motives rather than a purpose of his employer, see Prosser & Keeton, The Law of Torts 505-08, § 70 (5th ed 1984); Brill, The Liability of an Employer for the Wilful Torts of his Servants, 45 Chi-Kent L Rev 1 (1968); Mechem, Agency 1498-99 (2d ed 1914). See also, Tauscher v. Doernbecher Mfg. Co., 153 Or 152, 56 P2d 318 (1936).

Restatement, Second, Agency § 248, comment c at 548 (1958), states:
“A master is not liable in tort for the act of a servant who improperly causes the master to break a contract with third persons or with one of his own servants. The master is of course liable for a breach of contract but not, even if he were to approve the agent’s bad motive, for punitive damages.”

See generally, Davis v. Tyee Industries, Inc., 295 Or 467, 473-79, 668 P2d 1186 (1983). “It is immaterial what you name a cause of action, distinctions being abolished by our Code 1930, § 1-101.” Laird v. Frick, 142 Or 639, 644, 18 P2d 1029 (1933).
“In proceeding to discover whether the complaint sufficiently pleads any theory rendering it invulnerable to respondents’ demurrer, we will also be governed by a further rule well stated in 1 Bancroft, Code Pleading, 366, § 220, as follows: * * [the court] will sustain the complaint if it states a cause of action on any theory, even if it is not the one the plaintiff intended * * *.’ ”
Windle, Adm’x et al v. Flinn et al, 196 Or 654, 664, 251 P2d 136 (1952). See also ORCP 2.