Court Opinion

ID: 9705318
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:02:13.749969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:09.825333
License: Public Domain

CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
One might well ask, with much scratching of the head, “What’s going on here?” A suit that the majority correctly labels “groundless,” ante at 174, 607 A. 2d at 1259, settles for $750 and in the process produces a claim of over $14,000 in legal fees? Our energies would be better expended in ensuring that such nonsense not recur than in searching for ways to visit liability on a homeowner’s insurance carrier for that kind of a tab.
And search the Court must, because the policy at issue here is limited to coverage for “bodily injury,” which plainly does not cover claims of purely emotional distress arising from allegedly false and erroneous statements made by the insured. If that kind of protection is available at all, it is in the form of “personal injury” coverage, designed specifically to protect against liability, otherwise within the four corners of the policy, for those kinds of damages.
Although the issue is not directly posed by this appeal, as a threshold matter I very much doubt that the allegations against Voorhees meet the stringent requirements for a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress, also known as the tort of “outrage.” We recently held in Buckley v. Trenton Saving Fund Society, 111 N.J. 355, 544 A.2d 857 (1988), that to establish that tort, a plaintiff must show that the defendant acted intentionally or recklessly; that the defendant intended both to do the act and to produce emotional distress; that the defendant’s conduct was “ ‘so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community’ ”; and that “ ‘the emotional distress suffered by the plaintiff [was] so severe that no *187reasonable man could be expected to endure it.’ ” Id. at 366, 544 A. 2d 857 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 46 (1965)). The claim against Voorhees as set forth in the Complaint filed in the suit against her, see ante at 170, 607 A.2d at 1257, does not begin to assert the foregoing elements. Rather, to the extent that one can put a label on it, the claim smacks of defamation, for which there can be neither coverage nor a duty to defend under Voorhees’ homeowner’s policy. Lumbermen’s Mut. Casualty Co. v. United Servs. Auto. Ass’n, 218 N.J.Super. 492, 528 A.2d 64 (App.Div.1987) (holding emotional-distress claims caused by defamation not covered by standard homeowner’s policy).
That aside, I agree entirely with Judge Deighan, dissenting below, 246 MJ.Super. 564, 581, 588 A.2d 417 (1991), that “the term ‘bodily injury’ in the insurance contract contemplates injury to the physical components of the body, not to solely subjective nonphysical mental suffering,” id. at 583, 588 A.2d 417, and that “the term ‘accident’ or ‘occurrence’ in an insurance policy does not include ‘false and erroneous statements’ [that] interfere with rights of privacy” and cause severe humiliation, embarrassment, emotional distress, and mental anguish, to the detriment of one’s reputation. Ibid.
I would reverse and reinstate the judgment for defendant.
For affirmance — Chief Justice WILENTZ, and Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI, and STEIN— 6.
For reversal — Justice CLIFFORD — 1.