Court Opinion

ID: 9627742
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:52:53.019029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:46:55.975694
License: Public Domain

DEITS, C. J.,
dissenting.
As the majority correctly describes, the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) requires proof of the elements that the “defendant intended to inflict severe emotional distress on the plaintiff” and that the defendant’s act giving rise to the distress constituted “extraordinary conduct which a reasonable jury could find beyond the farthest reaches of socially tolerable behavior.” The Supreme Court has emphasized that the intent element and the “extraordinary conduct” elements are separate and distinct and that both must be present in order for the tort to be found. See Madani v. Kendall Ford, Inc., 312 Or 198, 818 P2d 930 (1991). In my view, plaintiffs proof here did not support a finding of either element, and I would hold that the trial court erred by denying defendant’s motion for a directed verdict.
*111Reduced to essentials, the majority reaches its contrary conclusion in both regards on the theoiy that the two necessary findings can be inferred from the fact that defendant’s manager, Taylor, did not return to the care facility pursuant to plaintiffs request when she made the first of her telephone calls to him after Michelle’s aggressive outburst. The majority reasons that intent to inflict emotional distress could be found at the end of a chain of inferences, all based on that telephone conversation, that Taylor knew plaintiff was upset, that he nevertheless “chose to leave her alone with her attacker” and, hence, that he “wished to inflict more emotional distress on plaintiff, knowing that she was suffering severe emotional distress because of the attack.” 160 Or App at 99. Similarly, the majority relies on the inference to which it considers the first phone call can give rise in reaching its conclusion that the nature of Taylor’s act could be found to exceed the farthest reaches of socially tolerable behavior. The majority explains:
“As we have said, the evidence supports the inference that defendant, knowing that plaintiff had been exposed to physical danger, declined to come to her assistance, intending that she be placed in further danger. In the context of an employer-employee relationship where the employer has the ability to extricate the employee from a dangerous situation in which it has placed her, we hold that that kind of conduct is so extraordinary that a jury reasonably could find it to be beyond the furtherest reaches of the bounds of socially tolerable conduct.” 160 Or App at 100.
I disagree with the majority in both connections. I do not think that a reasonable factfinder could infer that Taylor’s failure to send assistance to plaintiff in response to her first phone call can lead to a finding that he intended to inflict severe emotional distress on her. Plaintiff was performing the job that she had been hired for, had been trained for and had agreed to do. She had had 10 hours of classroom training and spent two additional four-hour training sessions at the home, dining which she observed the facility and was given some information about the residents. She had been forewarned — although perhaps not sufficiently — about Michelle’s “tough” disposition. Unfortunately, the predictable happened on her first night of work for defendant, and she *112called for help. Taylor spoke with her, asking where Michelle was and if she posed a threat to anyone at that time. After receiving assurances from plaintiff that Michelle was not harming anyone, Taylor gave plaintiff affirmative reasons why his return to the facility at that time was not a good idea in terms of patient care and offered reassurances to plaintiff about the unlikelihood that Michelle’s attack would continue or be repeated.
His prediction, arguably, was wrong. Further, it is quite inferable that he was aware that plaintiff was upset. He may have been negligent in his assessment of the situation and in not going to the facility himself or arranging in some other way to relieve plaintiff. However, the remaining links in the inferential chain from that point to a permissible finding of an intent to inflict emotional distress are simply not there.
Plaintiff was not in the position of a bystander, like a visitor to the facility who arrived at the wrong time and fell in harm’s way. She had accepted employment as the nighttime attendant at the facility and was performing that job at the time that Michelle attacked and at the time that plaintiff called Taylor. There is no question that plaintiff was upset at the time of the call. However, there is also no question that the cause of her distress was an event that was veiy much within the contemplation of her employment. Taylor was clearly not the cause — let alone the intentional one — of the emotional distress that plaintiff was experiencing at the time she called him.
The majority’s theory is that, because he did not send relief, it could be inferred that Taylor intentionally caused the further distress that plaintiff suffered after the first telephone call. The problem with that theoiy is that it converts what was, at worst, a negligent management decision into an intentional tort aimed at causing the continuation or worsening of an already existing circumstance that an arguably more opportune decision might have brought to a stop. There was absolutely no evidence, independent of the fact that he did not provide or send held to plaintiff in dealing with Michelle and her job, that Taylor intended to cause her *113any harm whatever. In my view, the flow of permissible inferences from the fact on which plaintiff and the majority rely does not go beyond negligence. Moreover, that view is reinforced by the fact that Taylor did provide the relief that plaintiff wanted in response to her later call. For the foregoing reasons, I conclude that plaintiff failed in her proof of the intent element of IIED.
Even clearer, however, is that the conduct on Taylor’s part that plaintiff alleged and proved, as a matter of law, was not of a kind that a trier of fact could reasonably find to be “beyond the farthest reaches of socially tolerable behavior.” As noted above, the “intent” and the “conduct” elements of IIED are distinct from one another, and the Supreme Court has treated the distinction as a rigid one. To illustrate, the plaintiff in Madani alleged that he was fired from his employment because he refused a supervisor’s order to pull down his pants and expose himself in a public place and that the termination, in turn, resulted in severe emotional distress. The plaintiff did not allege that the supervisor’s order, independently of the discharge, was a cause of his distress. The Supreme Court held that the allegations failed to state a claim for IIED. It explained that, although the employer’s motive or reason for the firing may have been relevant to the intent element of the tort, it was not relevant to whether the act that allegedly brought about the distress, i.e., the firing itself, “extraordinarily transgressed the bounds of socially tolerable conduct.” Id. at 204. The court continued:
“[T]he act itself must be intolerable. The mere act of firing an employee, even if wrongfully motivated, does not transgress the bounds of socially tolerable behavior.” Id.
The majority concludes that Taylor’s conduct was susceptible to a finding of transgressing the farthest reaches of socially tolerable behavior, because he knew that plaintiff had been exposed to danger; he declined to come to her assistance, intending that she be placed in further danger; and that it is beyond the outer reaches of the tolerable for an employer with “the ability to extricate [an] employee from a dangerous situation in which it has placed her” to fail to do so. It is unclear whether, notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s distinction between the two, the majority’s analysis *114blurs the line between the “intent” and the “conduct” elements.
Be. that as it may, however, I do not agree with the majority’s reasoning or its conclusion that the latter element could be found here. Defendant did not unilaterally place plaintiff in a dangerous situation; she accepted and was performing a job that, subjectively or objectively, had dangerous aspects. The majority’s reasoning might be more persuasive, for example, in a situation where a defective wall collapses on an employee at the workplace and the employer is heedless of the employee’s cries for assistance in extricating himself from the rubble. In this situation, however, any danger was inherent in the job itself. Plaintiff, a novice on the job, thought from the inception of Michelle’s onslaught that relief or help was urgently needed. Rightly or wrongly, the manager of the center disagreed and left plaintiff to continue to perform her job without assistance, as he thought she could, and as she had agreed to do. Again, Taylor’s decision may have been negligent. However, it surely was not an act that fell beyond the outside reaches of humanly acceptable behavior.
The rule that the majority would establish is operationally untenable. Under it, any employer could be found by a jury to have acted outside the bounds of social toleration if the employer failed or decided not to provide job reassignments or relief from duties in response to an employee’s communication of a perceived danger in or related to the performance of the employee’s job. Indeed, under the majority’s analysis, an employee could have a viable claim for IIED against the employer for not relieving the employee of a putatively onerous job responsibility, under circumstances where the employee would not necessarily even be entitled to unemployment compensation benefits if the employee refused to perform. See, e.g., Pintok v. Employment Division, 32 Or App 273, 573 P2d 773 (1978).1
*115In my view, when all is said and done, the majority gives too little regard to whether this case should have gone to the jury and too much to what the jury could have found once the case was submitted to it under instructions that presupposed that a viable claim for liability was before it. However, the decisive question before us is whether the case should'have been taken from the jury on the ground that the facts here were such that, as a matter of law, plaintiff had no viable claim that defendant’s actions ran afoul of either the “intent” or the “conduct” element of the tort. The majority acknowledges that the tenability of the claim, at least as to the latter element, “is initially a question of law.” 160 Or App at 100. The case should not have gone beyond that initial question, either in the trial court or here.
It follows from what I have said that I would also hold that defendant did not have the requisite intent to come within ORS 656.156, and that the claim is therefore barred by the exclusive remedy provision of the Workers’ Compensation Law, in addition to failing on its merits. Whether the action would be barred under ORS 656.156 and ORS 656.018 if it were tenable as a tort claim is a question I need not reach. But see Davis v. United States Employers Council, Inc., 147 Or App 164, 934 P2d 1142, rev den 325 Or 368 (1997).
It also follows, ipso facto, from the holding that I would reach that the punitive damages award should be vacated in its entirety.
For the foregoing reasons I disagree with the majority’s disposition of both the appeal and the cross-appeal, and I respectfully dissent.
Landau, Linder, and Kistler, JJ., join in this opinion.

 I expressly note that my observation here is not directed at whether plaintiff would be entitled to such benefits if she sought them. Rather, my comments are directed at a general possibility that could arise in light of the rule for intentional tort liability that the majority develops here and in light of ORS chapter 657 as it has been applied to different facts.