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Bozman v. Bozman9/4/2002
of this case, we presume the accuracy of appellant's well-pleaded facts and allegations, Young v. Medlantic Lab. P'ship, 125 Md. App. 299, 303, cert. denied, 354 Md. 572 (1999), and confine our review to whether the court was legally correct in granting appellee's motion to dismiss, Adamson v. Correction Med. Servs. Inc., 359 Md. 238, 246 (2000). As we explain below, appellee's conduct does not come within the narrow meaning of "outrageous," as we understand that term to have been used by the Court of Appeals in Lusby. The circuit court was, therefore, correct in dismissing Count I of the second amended complaint.
We assess the conduct at issue in this case by reference to the conduct confronting the Court in Lusby. The Court summarized the acts at issue in that case:
Appellant, Diana R. Lusby (the wife), brought an action in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County against John Doe, Richard, Roe, and Gerald Lee Lusby (the husband). She alleged that while she was operating her motor vehicle on a public highway the husband "pulled along side of in his pick- up truck and pointed a highpowered rifle at her." She attempted to flee by increasing the speed of her car. She claimed that then "another truck occupied by two (2) men, whose identities are unknown to and who, hereinafter are referred to [in the declaration] as John Doe and Richard Roe, cut and forced her off the road, nearly causing a collision." (Counsel for the wife directed that no summons be issued for Messrs. Doe and Roe until such time as specific directions were received from counsel. Summons has never been issued.) After she stopped her car, the husband "approached her automobile with a rifle pointed at her, opened her left door, ordered her to move over, forced his way into the automobile and began to drive the automobile." They were followed by Doe in the husband's truck and Roe in the second truck. Thereafter, the wife "was forced to enter [the husband's] truck with [the husband] and Richard Roe." John Doe drove the wife's vehicle and the second truck was left parked. She alleged that her husband then struck her, "tore clothes off and did forcefully and violently, despite desperate attempts to protect herself, carnally know against her will and without her consent." She further claimed that, with the aid and assistance of her husband, both Doe and Roe attempted to rape her. She said that following those events her husband "and his two companions released and [her husband] told that he would kill her if she informed anyone of the aforesaid events; and that he has continued to harass and threaten ." 283 Md. at 335-36.
Without minimizing in any way the harsh consequences to appellant wrought by appellee's behavior in this case, we cannot say that it is of comparable character to that addressed by the Court in Lusby. Appellee's actions in the instant case no doubt caused appellant to suffer significant humiliation and hardship. But they did not involve extreme violence of the most personal and invasive sort, the threat of death and a display of the means by which to carry out that threat, or the physical and psychic trauma that the victim in Lusby endured. We conclude, therefore, that the conduct that underlies appellant's claim of malicious prosecution is not, in and of itself, indicative of the sort of outrageous conduct contemplated by the Lusby exception to inter-spousal immunity.
Our conclusion is buttressed by the decisions of the Court of Appeals concerning the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress. This tort, recognized for the first time by the Court of Appeals in 1977, includes as one of its elements that the conduct must be "extreme and outrageous." Harris v. Jones
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