IIED: Emotional Distress Elements

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED)

• The rule for IIED requires demonstrating extreme and outrageous conduct that intentionally or recklessly causes severe emotional distress.

Extreme and Outrageous Conduct

• Conduct must exceed the bounds of decency and be intolerable in a civilized community, not merely insulting or offensive.
• Factors to consider include professional/personal relationships, private information, frequency, and duration of the conduct.
• A competent adult plaintiff who knowingly and voluntarily consents cannot recover damages. Factors include age, power dynamics, and preparation.
• Subrule for Known Vulnerability: Conduct not normally considered extreme may be deemed so if it preys on or recklessly disregards a known vulnerability of the plaintiff.

Intentional or Reckless Causation

• Intentional conduct includes actions the defendant desires to happen or knows are substantially certain to result in distress.
• Reckless conduct involves deliberate disregard of a high probability of causing distress.

Severe Emotional Distress

• Distress must be so severe that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it.
• Examples include physiological symptoms, psychological manifestations, a need for medical treatment, and considerations of duration and intensity.

Analysis Tips for IIED

• Recovery is for emotional distress and bodily harm that proximately results from the outrageous conduct.
• IIED can create liability for future threats, unlike battery and assault claims.
• Conditional threats can be considered.
• The jury decides if conduct is extreme, but the court initially screens whether such can be inferred (question of law).

IIED Examples

• In Dickens v. Puryear, threats of castration and death were deemed outrageous, allowing Dickens to proceed with an IIED claim for emotional damages from the threat.
• In State Rubbish Collectors v. Siliznoff, conditional threats of violence for not joining a union sufficed for an IIED claim.
• In Hunt v. State, an SRO investigating bullying was berated by the principal, leading to extreme and outrageous conduct.

Situations Not Meeting IIED Criteria

• Jones v. Clinton was an example where no severe emotional distress was found due to the plaintiff's ability to continue working and lack of adverse effects.
• Cases involving a sexual proposition without coercion, a priest's affair, racist assumptions by insurance investigators, or use of racial slurs may be merely offensive, but not rise to the level of "outrageous."

Scenarios Constituting Extreme and Outrageous Conduct

• Posing naked photos of an ex-wife for neighbors or a police officer refusing to rescue a raped child.

Transferred Intent in IIED

• If extreme conduct is directed at a third person, the actor is liable if severe distress is caused intentionally or recklessly to a member of the person's immediate family present at the time, or to any other person if distress results in bodily harm.

Bystander IIED: Immediate Family

• Requires extreme and outrageous conduct, intentional or reckless causation, severe emotional distress, the person being an immediate family member, and presence at the time of the incident.

Bystander IIED: Non-Immediate Family

• Requires the same as above, but distress must result in bodily harm.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress (NIED)

• The rule for NIED centers on duty, breach, causation, and damages, with specific considerations for the zone of danger and special relationships.

NIED: Duty of Care

• Zone of Danger: A duty is owed to avoid causing emotional distress to plaintiffs within the immediate area of physical danger from the negligent act.
• Special Relationships: Exist when one party explicitly or implicitly undertakes an obligation implicating another's emotional well-being, and careless performance is likely to cause serious emotional harm.
  • Not all businesses have a special relationship.
• Bystanders: A duty is owed to the plaintiff outside the Zone of Danger if the plaintiff witnesses a sudden serious bodily injury to a close family member contemporaneously through sight or sound.

NIED: Breach of Duty

• Breach involves failing to behave with the level of care expected of an ordinary person in the same circumstances.

NIED: Causation

• Causation is typically stipulated by the parties.

NIED: Damages

• Requires showing severe emotional distress so severe that "no reasonable man could be expected to endure it," along with physical symptoms resulting from the distress.
• The injury must be the injury complained of.

Analysis Tips for NIED

• Employees are typically not in a special relationship for NIED claims against employers.
• A special relationship exists between the plaintiff and defendant, not a third party.

NIED Examples

• In Robb v. Pennsylvania RR Co, a plaintiff recovered due to nervous shock after escaping a destroyed car in a railroad crossing accident, despite no physical impact.
• In Buel v. ASSE, ASSE owed a duty to Buel because they were acting as guardians while she was in a host country and part of ASSE's function was to prevent sexual misconduct

Situations Not Meeting NIED Criteria

• In Wyman v. Leavitt, anxiety from blasting rocks near a house without actual injury resulted in no recovery.
• Watching a friend die of a heart attack, or witnessing an accident without contemporaneous awareness do not allow recovery
• A sister hearing screams from outside a c-section room is not enough for recovery

Trespass to Land

• Involves intentionally entering land possessed by another, causing a person or thing to do so, remaining on the land, or failing to remove something with a duty to remove it.

Key Aspects of Trespass

• Only the intent to act is needed, not intent to trespass.
• Involuntary acts do not count, but purely innocent actions do.
• De minimis intrusions are actionable.
• Third party liability is specific; trespasses at the direction of another makes both liable, but a general request only makes the actual trespasser liable.

Key Aspects of Trespass continued

• Policy protects the right to exclude others.
• Airspace above immediate reaches is a public highway.
• No harm needs to be done for there to be a finding of trespass, as intrusion itself constitutes the harm.

Trespass Example

• Burns Philp Food v. Cavalea: building a fence that encroached on another's land constituted trespass, and removing it was not wrongful because trespass is strict liability

Defenses Against Trespass

• Consent to enter, but if revoked then not leaving become trespass.
  • Elements: Must be freely given, can be express or implied (reasonable given the circumstances).
  • The defendant may not exceed the scope of permission (time, place, or purpose). Privilege
  • Entry to reclaim goods, abate private nuisance, or arrest/prevent a crime.

Trespass to Chattels

• Involves intentionally dispossessing another of a chattel or using/intermeddling with a chattel in another's possession.

Actions Constituting Trespass to Chattels

• Assuming physical control over the chattel with the intention of exercising such on their own belief or on behalf of another.
• Conduct that interferes with the ownership

Actions That Do Not Violate Trespass to Chattels

• A trivial removal from one position to another lacking intent to exercise further control or deprive the possessor of its use.
• These are interventions that do not rise to the level of conversation

Factors for Liability in Trespass to Chattels

• Dispossessing another of the chattel. The chattel is impaired in condition, quality, or value.
• The possessor is deprived of the use of chattel for a substantial time.
  • Requires actual harm via physical damage or deprivation for a substantial amount of time

COnversion

• Conversion is intentional and involves exercising dominion or control over a chattel that seriously interferes with another's right to control it.

Determining Seriousness of Interference

• Extent and duration of the actor's exercise of dominion/control.
• The actor's intent to assert a right inconsistent with the owner's rights.
• The actor's good faith.
• The extent and duration of resulting interference with others rights of control.
• Harm done to the chattel.
• Inconvenience and expense caused to the other.

Conversion Defense

• Even a reasonable mistake is no defense.

Conversion Example

• Thyroff v. Nationwide:* Denying access to personal files on a work computer can be conversion even though the property is intangible.

Defenses to Trespass and Conversion

• Necessity:
  • Private necessity: incomplete privilege to commit trespass; entitles overriding property rights but requires compensatory damages.
    • Vincent v. Lake Erie Transportation Co.: Docks damaged by ship in storm are liable for damages
  • Public necessity: complete privilege to commit trespass; no sanctions in emergencies to avert greater harm.
• Consent and Permission:
  • Freely given by someone competent Mistake must be reasonable
  • Limitations may exist in time, space, or geographic location
  • Example: Copeland v. Hubbard Broadcasting - Consent to be filmed in a house excludes the content that can be filmed

Privileges

• Immobilizing an illegally parked car
• Entering to reclaim goods
• Entering to prevent a crime

Abnormally Dangerous Activities (PLIEIO)

• Plaintiff can recover with strict liability if injured resulting from abnormally dangerous activity

Factors to Consider

• High risk of some harm. Likelihood of great resultant harm.
• Inability to eliminate risk with reasonable care.
• The extent that the activity is not a matter of common usage.
• Inappropriateness of the activity relative to place.
• The extent to which the value of the activity to the community is outweighed by its dangerous attributes.

Abnormally Dangerous Examples

• Pingaro v. Rossi: dog bites subject owner to strict liability, as dog attacks show the risk
• Klein v. Pyrodyne: fireworks are abnormally dangerous because of the high regulatory requirements

Defamation (Libel and Slander)

Key Elements

• A defamatory statement of and concerning the plaintiff published to a third person that is false and with appropriate fault - malice of negligence

Defamatory Statement

• Damages another person and associates themselves from other

Falsity

• Opinion
• Altered quotes unless they materially differ from what the speaker said

Levels of Fault

• Status of P
• Actual malice: knows that statement is false or reckless disregard
• Negligence: failure to act with ordinary care
• Public Official or Public Figure: substantial responsibility for government affairs
• Limited public figure: invites attention and comment

Proof of Damages

• Libel - need not prove special damages
• Slander - must show slander per se or special damages

Invasion of Privacy

• Trespass essay

Intrusion Upon Seclusion

• Subject the defendant to liability when intentionally intrudes into the solitude or seclusion of another person's private affairs.

Critical Factors in Determining Liability

• Instrusion need not be physical
• Does not work if in public

Appropiation

• Not an essay
• Using someone's name or likeness of another

Apporpriation Analysis Key Factors

• Incidental use doctrine applies to those with celebrity or notoriety

Public Revelation

• Subject to liability if communication given is public
• If it involves the act of private life
• Information would be offensive to a decent standard of care

Limitiation

• Information avialble to the public record defeats the information

False Light

• Defendant is subject to liability if places someone in a false light before the public
• The content is highly offensive to the reasonable standard of care
• Actor has knowledge or acted recklessly with regard to the falsity

Key Policy Implication

• Fills the gap when repuatation is may not be damaged

Products Liability

• The person that is using a product is defective
• The defective product can harm another person

Analysis

• Theory of Defect
• Was it the defective to design
• Were there dangers with the safety warning

Causation Analysis

• Stipulated Or
• Failure to Wearn
  • Must prove that the defendant would have changed their mind if a warnming was in place