Court Opinion

ID: 9621653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:03:09.367915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:27.011852
License: Public Domain

*307KISTLER, J.,
concurring.
The lead opinion and Judge Edmonds’ concurring opinion divide over the question whether Sandberg’s actions constituted a continuing tort and how the decision in Davis v. Bostick, 282 Or 667, 580 P2d 544 (1978), bears on that issue. Although I agree with portions of both opinions, I do not agree with either opinion completely and accordingly write separately.
In Davis, the trial court relied on the continuing tort doctrine to prevent the jury from considering whether some of the acts that gave rise to the plaintiffs intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) claim were outside the statute of limitations. 282 Or at 671. On appeal, the Supreme Court held that the discrete nature of the defendant’s acts did not produce the sort of undifferentiated harm that would permit a court to say, as a matter of law, that the defendant was barred from asserting a limitations defense. See id. at 672-73. The fact, however, that Davis held that the jury should be able to consider the defense did not mean that the defendant was entitled to a directed verdict on it. That question was for the jury.1
This case presents the mirror image of the question in Davis. The question here is not whether defendant is precluded from asserting a limitations defense to plaintiffs IIED claim. Rather, it is whether plaintiff is precluded from basing her IIED claim on all of defendant’s conduct. The former question required the court in Davis to construe the facts in the light most favorable to the defendant. The latter question requires that we construe the facts in the light most favorable to plaintiff — the standard we customarily apply in deciding whether a defendant is entitled to a directed verdict on a plaintiffs claim.
Applying that standard, I would hold that the evidence permitted the jury to find that Sandberg engaged in a pattern of intentional conduct that did not cause the level of *308distress necessary to state an IIED claim until some time within the limitations period. The point is not that plaintiffs claim constitutes a continuing tort as a matter of law or even that the jury should be asked to decide whether it does; the court rejected the first proposition in Davis and cast significant doubt on the second.2 See 282 Or at 674. Rather, the point is that, as a matter of causation, the jury reasonably could find that defendant’s pattern of conduct did not cause plaintiff to suffer severe distress — a necessary element of the. tort of IIED — until some time within the limitations period. Cf. Bustamento v. Tucker, 607 So 2d 532, 538 (La 1992) (even though a pattern of discrete incidents may not be sufficient individually to cause the severe distress necessary to give rise to an IIED claim, they may do so cumulatively). Accordingly, the trial court correctly denied defendant’s directed verdict motion.

 Other courts have reached the opposite conclusion. In Curtis v. Firth, 123 Idaho 598, 850 P2d 749 (1993), the Idaho Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s decision not to instruct the jury on a limitations defense to an IIED claim because, as a matter of law, the pattern of discrete incidents constituted a continuing tort.

 The doctrine of “continuing tort” typically refers to “wrongful conduct that is repeated until desisted, and each day constitutes a separate cause of action.” See Curtis, 123 Idaho at 603, 850 P2d at 754; cf. Shives v. Chamberlain, 168 Or 676, 685-87, 126 P2d 28 (1942). When applicable, the doctrine tolls the statute of limitations on otherwise actionable conduct until that conduct stops. Id. Although Davis held that the doctrine did not apply to the plaintiffs IIED claim in that case, it did not hold that the plaintiff was precluded from proving, as a factual matter, that the defendant’s repeated conduct did not cause her severe emotional distress until some time within the limitations period.