“We agree that plaintiff’s status as an employee entitled him to more protection from insultive or abusive treatment than would be expected in interactions between two strangers.”
How later courts described this case
- “We agree that plaintiff’s status as an employee entitled him to more protection from insultive or abusive treatment than would be expected in interactions between two strangers.”
- trial court erred in issuing judgment notwithstanding the verdict on intentional infliction of emotional distress claim of plaintiff accused by employer of theft and threatened with arrest
- plaintiff was harassed "unmercifully" by supervisors until he finally resigned four months later; no dispute as to severe emotional distress; jury question presented on "outrageousness"
- “[PJlaintiffs status as an employee entitled him to more protection from insultive or abusive treatment than would be expected between two strangers.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SNELL, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I do not believe that the conduct of the defendants in this case satisfies the legal requirements necessary to generate a jury issue. To establish a prima facie case of intentional infliction of emotional distress, one of the elements required by law is that defendant’s conduct be “outrageous.” Amsden v. Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co., 203 N.W.2d 252, 255 (Iowa 1972). A guide to the meaning of “outrageous” is provided in Meyer v. Nottger, 241 N.W.2d 911, 918 (Iowa 1976), where it is said to be “conduct exceeding all bounds usually tolerated by decent society.”
The conduct must be looked at not in the abstract but under the working conditions prevailing. All of the conduct occurred in the factory workplace where plaintiff worked as a machine operator. The actions of defendants extended over a relatively short period of time — four months. At that time, plaintiff had already worked there for eighteen years. Plaintiff’s difficulties in 1977 when he was discharged and subsequently reinstated do not appear to be from harassment and so do not bear on this case.
In judging whether defendants’ conduct is “legally outrageous,” it is improper to *318 look at the medical and emotional problems experienced by plaintiff. The conduct is either outrageous or not, regardless of the effect it might have on an individual plaintiff. In this case, the language was spoken in a factory setting. While the words used are not decorous, neither are they extraordinary or even uncommon among factory workers. This is not to say that plaintiff is expected to endure the epithets hurled about under battlefield conditions. But we are also considering an atmosphere different from that surrounding a church meeting or a string quartet recital.
Not every case satisfies the legal elements necessary before a case is submissi-ble to a jury. That is what judges are trained to decide. I believe the trial judge here correctly determined that the conduct does not meet the legal test for “outrageous.” It is not as The Restatement has said and the Iowa Supreme Court has adopted, conduct “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.” Restatement (Second) of Torts § 46 Comment (d) (1955) cited in Meyer v. Nottger, 241 N.W.2d 911 (Iowa 1976), and Amsden v. Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co., 203 N.W.2d 252, 255 (Iowa 1972).
I also believe that defendants were acting in the belief that they were furthering the interests of their employer in a legal way. As such, their actions would not create liability. Comment g, Section 46, Restatement of Torts is applicable:
The conduct, although it would otherwise be extreme and outrageous, may be privileged under the circumstances. The actor is never liable, for example, where he has done no more than to insist upon his legal rights in a permissible way, even though he is well aware that such insistence is certain to cause emotional distress.
I would affirm the trial court’s sustaining of defendants’ motion for judgment N.O.V.
SACKETT, J., joins this dissent.