Court Opinion

ID: 9759883
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:31:43.688244+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:05.778704
License: Public Domain

FLANDERS, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join in all aspects of the court’s opinion except for part TV, which affirms the trial court’s dismissal of the intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim. I respectfully dissent from part IV because, in the circumstances of this case, I do not believe proof of physical symptoms of emotional distress should be a necessary element of this cause of action. I also disagree with the court’s conclusion that “the instant case is not a substantial factor case.” The question of whether the defendant’s alleged intentional misconduct was a substantial factor in bringing about the decedent’s suicide is a factual issue that should not be determined, as it was here, on a summary-judgment motion.6
A majority of the courts that have addressed the physical symptoms issue allow recovery for intentional infliction of emotional distress notwithstanding the absence of any physical injuries. See Annotation, Modem Status of Intentional Infliction of Mental Distress as Independent Tort; “Outrage,” 38 A.L.R.4th 998 (1985) (collecting cases). In doing so, these jurisdictions have adopted the position of the Restatement (Second) Torts § 46 (1965) that “[o]ne who by extreme and outrageous conduct intentionally or recklessly causes severe emotional distress to another is subject to liability for such emotional distress, and if bodily harm to the other results from it, for such bodily harm.”7 *816Indeed, in Champlin v. Washington Trust Co., of Westerly, 478 A.2d 985, 988 (R.I.1984), this court adopted § 46 of the Restatement (Second) Torts as the standard to be used in determining the liability of a creditor accused of intentionally inflicting severe emotional distress on a debtor.
To be sure, there are dicta in some of our decisions that support a physical injury requirement. E.g., Reilly v. United States, 547 A.2d 894 (R.I.1988); Curtis v. State Department for Children and Their Families, 522 A.2d 203 (R.I.1987). But in Reilly the court was answering a question certified to it from the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island in a case having to do only with a %ey%ewi-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim. And in Curtis the language pertaining to the necessity for proof of physical symptoms was unnecessary to the court’s holding that maintenance of an intentional-infhction-of-emotional-distress claim requires evidence of extreme outrageous conduct. Chief Justice Fay, the author of the court’s opinion in Curtis, made this very point in his dissent in the Reilly case:
“Although the Curtis opinion refers to older cases that required physical symptoma-tology of emotional injury, its holding pertains to the necessity of proving extreme and outrageous conduct. Such conduct eliminates the need for a physical manifestation.” (Emphases added.) Reilly, 547 A.2d at 902 (Fay, C.J., dissenting).
For the reasons stated by Chief Justice Fay dissenting with Justice Kelleher in Reilly, I would not set the bar so high as to require those victimized by another’s outrageous misdeeds to vault a physical-injury hurdle before their foreseeable mental anguish can be compensable — at least not in intentional-tort cases like this one in which, in order for a plaintiff to recover at all, the defendant’s conduct must be so outrageous “as to go beyond all bounds of decency.” Restatement (Second) Torts § 46 cmt. d.
In such cases the presumption that some type of severe emotional distress will occur is great, and consequently there is less chance that any such claim will be disingenuous. In any event, I would tend to resolve doubts about the bona fides of alleged emotional injuries in intentional-tort cases by letting the factfinder decide whether to accept or to reject such evidence as the injured party may present at trial, rather than allow the accused intentional wrongdoer to prevent such claims at the outset from ever being considered unless there is evidence of bodily injuries. Indeed, in those cases in which the physical symptoms of emotional injuries only appear after the treatment of a “rare and serious condition which required major surgery,” intentional tort victims would face a double evidentiary hurdle in proving whatever emotional trauma they may have suffered: not only would they have to establish that physical symptoms exist to recover for their emotional injuries but such symptoms could not even be presented to the factfinder without the support of expert medical-causation testimony. Compare Marshall v. Tomaselli, 118 R.I. 190, 196-98, 372 A.2d 1280, 1284-85 (1977) (requiring an expert medical witness in a medical-malpractice case to support the plaintiffs allegation that she was injured as a result of the defendant physician’s negligence in performing major surgery on her or in treating her “rare and serious condition” after the operation because (1) the treatment was “neither sufficiently common nor sufficiently nontechnical that a layman could be expected to appraise it” and (2) the attribution of a causal relationship between the plaintiffs injuries and the defendant doctor’s alleged negligence “was beyond the ken of an average layman”) with Stuckey v. The Rhode Island Co., 42 R.I. 450, 453, 108 A. 581, 583 (1920) (citing with approval cases and authorities distinguishing incompetent medical opinions by lay witnesses from such witnesses testifying to the external appearance of their own injuries as well as to their “ ‘feelings, pains and symptoms, as well as to all the characteristics of the injury, external and internal’ ”); see also 31A Am.Jur.2d Expert and Opinion Evidence §§ 199-210 (1989); Annotation, Admissibility of opinion evidence as to cause of death, disease, or injury, 66 A.L.R.2d 1082, 1126-27 (1959).
*817Finally, the First Amendment privilege does not preclude plaintiffs’ intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim. For all the reasons set forth in the court’s opinion concerning why the First Amendment privilege does not preclude plaintiffs’ negligence claim (Maj. op. at 11-14), a fortiori such a privilege does not bar plaintiffs’ intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim. See Howell v. New York Post, Co., 81 N.Y.2d 115, 596 N.Y.S.2d 350, 612 N.E.2d 699 (1993). The Howell decision says as much:
“We do not mean to suggest * * * that a plaintiff could never defeat the privilege and state a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
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“Courts have recognized that news-gathering methods may be tortious * * * and, to the extent that a journalist engages in such atrocious, indecent and utterly despicable conduct as to meet the rigorous requirements of an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, recovery may be available.” Id., 596 N.Y.S.2d at 356, 612 N.E.2d at 705 (citing Galella v. Onassis, 487 F.2d 986, 995 (2d Cir.1973)).
The Galella court made this point even more emphatically. In rejecting the contention that the First Amendment is a wall of immunity protecting the media from any liability, the court said: “Crimes and torts committed in news gathering are not protected. * * * There is no threat to a free press in requiring its agents to act within the law.” Galel-la, 487 F.2d at 995-96.
Moreover, this is hardly a “publication— without more” case. Thus the “privileged conduct” exception cited by the majority should not have been applied so as to prevent these plaintiffs from prosecuting their claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Accordingly, not only would I sustain the plaintiffs’ appeal challenging the dismissal of their mtentional-infhction-of-emotional-dis-tress claim but I would also remand this aspect of the case, together with the negligence claim, for further proceedings, including, if necessary, a trial.

. Ironically, two of the cases relied on by the majority support this proposition. See Rowe v. Morder, 750 F.Supp. 718, 724 (W.D.Pa.1990) (suggesting that it is for the "juiy” to decide whether an intentional wrong was a “ 'substantial factor' in causing the suicide”), aff'd, 935 F.2d 1282 (3d Cir.1991); Tate v. Canonica, 180 Cal.App.2d 898, 5 Cal.Rptr. 28, 38 (1960) (holding that "defendants would only be liable if (a) they intentionally caused severe physical or mental distress to decedent, and (b) that physical or mental distress was severe enough to be, in the judgment of the trier of fact, a substantial factor in bringing about the suicide”) (emphasis added). And according to Prosser and Keeton,
“if reasonable persons might differ, either because relevant facts are in dispute or because application of a legal concept (such as a 'substantial factor' formulation) is an evaluative determination as to which reasonable persons might differ, the issue is submitted to the jury with appropriate instructions * * *.” W. Page Keeton et al.. The Law of Torts § 45 at 321 (5 th ed. 1984).
See also Mississippi v. Edgeworth, 214 So.2d 579, 586 (Miss.1968) (when "a defendant has committed an intentional tort, questions of whether the deceased was induced to take his life by an irresistible impulse and whether the intentional tort was a substantial factor in causing the suicide are ordinarily issues for the jury”).

. One recent law review article notes that of the forty-eight states that now recognize the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, all but three have adopted the Restatement’s articulation of the elements of this cause of action. See Merle H. Weiner, Domestic Violence and the Per Se Standard of Outrage, 54 Maryland L.Rev. 183, 197 (1995) (discussing Restatement (Second) Torts § 46 (1965)); see also Mandana Shahvari, Comment, Afraids: Fear of Aids as a Cause of *816Action, 67 Temp. L.Rev. 769, 781 (1994) (observing that the "trend” in these cases “has been to abandon the requirement that emotional distress develop into physical injury”).