Court Opinion

ID: 9797238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:16:05.820015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:53:32.704538
License: Public Domain

EDMONDS, P. J.,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that no reasonable juror could return a verdict for plaintiff on his claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED). I write separately to express my understanding of why this case is appropriately decided on summary judgment.
Plaintiff alleges in his complaint that “defendants have intentionally caused plaintiff to suffer extreme emotional distress by means of conduct that exceeds the bounds of social toleration,” including “knowingly initiating a false report concerning plaintiff to a law enforcement agency[,]” and accusing plaintiff of “harassing/stalking” Hastie and “engaging in unwanted contacts.” In my view, plaintiffs complaint alleges sufficient facts to state a claim for IIED and would withstand a motion to dismiss under ORCP 21 A.
Plaintiff, however, appeals from the grant of summary judgment, which, of course, implicates the provisions of ORCP 47. In part, ORCP 47 C provides:
“The court shall grant the motion if the pleadings, depositions, affidavits, declarations and admissions on file show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to prevail as a matter of law. No genuine issue as to a material fact exists if, based upon the record before the court viewed in a manner most *368favorable to the adverse party, no objectively reasonable juror could return a verdict for the adverse party on the matter that is the subject of the motion for summary judgment.”
Plaintiff, in response to defendants’ summary judgment motion, points to inaccuracies in the report that Hastie made to university officials about the circumstances of their contacts with each other and asserts, based on those alleged falsehoods, that it can be reasonably inferred that Hastie made a false report that plaintiff had been stalking her with the intent of causing him severe emotional distress. It follows, in plaintiffs view, that summary judgment is precluded because there exist genuine issues of material fact regarding the elements of his IIED claim.
In order to prevail on an IIED claim, a plaintiff must prove that “(1) the defendant intended to inflict severe emotional distress on the plaintiff, (2) the defendant’s acts were the cause of plaintiffs severe emotional distress, and (3) the defendant’s acts constitute an extraordinary transgression of the bounds of socially tolerable conduct.” Sheets v. Knight, 308 Or 220, 236, 779 P2d 1000 (1989). In McGanty v. Staudenraus, 321 Or 532, 550-51, 901 P2d 841 (1995), the court reconsidered the common-law rule regarding the level of intent necessary to establish IIED and adopted comment i of the Restatement (Second) of Torts section 46 (1965) as Oregon’s definition of the “intent” element of an IIED claim: “The rule stated in this Section applies where the actor desires to inflict severe emotional distress, and also where he knows that such distress is certain, or substantially certain, to result from his conduct.”
Thus, the issue in this case is whether defendants are entitled to judgment as a matter of law in light of the evidentiary record before the trial court. In my view, there exist reasonable inferences from the record that create genuine issues of material fact regarding the second and third elements of the tort. In particular, as to the third element, a reasonable juror could find that the filing of a false report by Hastie that plaintiff had been stalking her constituted an extraordinary transgression of socially tolerable conduct because, in the abstract, the filing of a false report of stalking *369is that kind of conduct. See, e.g., Hall v. The May Dept. Stores, 292 Or 131, 139, 637 P2d 126 (1981) (holding that a security supervisor’s accusations made regardless of an actual belief as to guilt or innocence that accused the plaintiff of stealing money and threatened her with prosecution and imprisonment in a manner designed to frighten her were actionable in the context of an IIED claim). In other words, filing a report that wrongfully accuses a person of stalking will generally be the kind of conduct that is significantly stigmatizing to a person’s reputation or character.
Where plaintiffs evidence fails, however, is with regard to the first element — the absence of evidence or a reasonable inference that defendants intended to cause plaintiff severe emotional distress. As to that element, plaintiff seeks to draw an inference from the inaccuracies in Hastie’s report of the contacts with him by arguing that based on those inaccuracies, there is a reasonable inference that Hastie lied to the police with the intent of inflicting emotional distress on him. Section 8A of the Restatement provides guidance with respect to plaintiffs argument. Specifically, the Restatement defines the word “intent” with respect to intentional torts:
“The word ‘intent’ is used throughout the Restatement of this Subject to denote that the actor desires to cause consequences of his act, or that he believes that the consequences are substantially certain to result from it.”
Comments a and b to section 8A provide:
“a. ‘Intent’ as it is used throughout the Restatement of Torts, has reference to the consequences of an act rather than the act itself. When an actor fires a gun in the midst of the Mojave Desert, he intends to pull the trigger; but when the bullet hits a person who is present in the desert without the actor’s knowledge, he does not intend that result. ‘Intent’ is limited, wherever it is used, to the consequences of the act.
“6. All consequences which the actor desires to bring about are intended, as the word is used in this Restatement. Intent is not, however, limited to consequences which are desired. If the actor knows that the consequences are certain, or substantially certain, to result from his act, and still *370goes ahead, he is treated by the law as if he had in fact desired to produce the result.”
First, as the majority correctly points out, there is no direct or circumstantial evidence in the record that Hastie or the other defendants desired to cause plaintiff severe emotional distress as a consequence of their actions. The evidence is susceptible only to an inference that Hastie believed that she was being stalked and that the other defendants acted to protect her from plaintiff. That absence of evidence or inference places plaintiff in the position of having to demonstrate that defendants’ mental state falls within the parameters of comment b to section 8A of the Restatement. In other words, plaintiff must demonstrate that Hastie and the other defendants knew that the acts that they undertook were certain or substantially certain to cause him severe emotional distress. An example of where the intent element for an IIED claim could be proved based on the nature of the conduct itself is found in Rockhill v. Pollard, 259 Or 54, 485 P2d 28 (1971), where a physician forced an injured child to wait outside his office in a freezing temperature with clothing and a blanket wet with vomit until someone came to pick the child up. Those are the kind of circumstances in which a defendant would know with substantial certainty that his conduct would cause severe emotional distress.
When the entire evidentiary record before us is considered, the circumstances of this case are not the kind of circumstances from which an actor would know that the consequence of severe emotional distress was certain or substantially certain to result from his or her actions. Indeed, given the belief of Hastie and the other defendants that she was being stalked by plaintiff, a person in their shoes would believe the antithesis. Moreover, what makes this case unusual on its facts is that, after December 1, 2003, plaintiff was on notice that his continued contacts with Hastie were unwanted by her, long before Hastie took any formal action. At a later time and after plaintiff began attending the exercise class for which she was an instructor, she reiterated that position to him. In turn, plaintiffs response to Hastie’s rejection of him throughout the entire time period was to persist in continuing the unwanted contacts, a response that ultimately led to Hastie contacting the university’s Department *371of Public Safety. Plaintiff points to no other evidence on which to base a reasonable inference that Hastie knew that the consequence of reporting plaintiffs actions to the authorities was certain or substantially certain to cause plaintiff severe emotional distress.
Also at play in this case are competing public policies. On the one hand, the law classifies conduct as “tortious” when it is predicated on an improper or wrongful motive. On the other hand, the law encourages those who believe that they are in physical danger from unwanted contact to seek redress from the proper authorities for their own protection. The policies favoring the reporting of conduct like plaintiffs necessarily must afford some latitude. It would be counter intuitive to the policies that those laws promote to authorize a common-law tort action in which people could be held liable for seeking to protect themselves from a perceived threat of harm because the contents of their report had been embellished in part or a full disclosure had not been made.
Ultimately, then, the question becomes what role the inferences that arise from the allegedly inaccurate portions of Hastie’s reports play under ORCP 47 C. Under the rule, the “materiality” of a disputed fact or inference is judged by whether an objective reasonable juror could return a verdict for the adverse party based on that fact or inference. This case is, on its peculiar facts, the kind of case on which no reasonable juror could return a verdict for plaintiff when the entire summary judgment evidentiary record is considered in context with plaintiffs allegations.
For these reasons, I concur in the majority’s result.1

 The point of expressing these observations in connection with the majority opinion is this: I would hold that false reports of stalking behavior will always have the effect of substantially stigmatizing a plaintiffs character or reputation and therefore could be socially intolerable. However, whether the making of false reports of stalking will render their authors hable for the tort of IIED depends on whether a plaintiff can prove all of the elements of the claim. While Hastie’s report of plaintiffs conduct consisted of statements by her that had the effect of substantially stigmatizing plaintiffs character or reputation, those statements did not expose her to liability for IIED merely because they may have been false in some respects.