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Perodeau v. City of Hartford3/26/2002
n of emotional distress claim against employer when no termination alleged).
In each of the cases cited by the court in Abate for the proposition that a termination is a prerequisite for a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress in an employment setting, the court had provided no independent policy reasons for its conclusions, instead relying exclusively on our decisions in Morris and Parsons. As we already have indicated, however, that is a misreading of those decisions. Accordingly, we must consider, as a matter of first impression, the extent of the legal duty of individuals to avoid the infliction of emotional distress on others in the course of an ongoing employment relationship.
''Duty is a legal conclusion about relationships between individuals, made after the fact, and imperative to a negligence cause of action. The nature of the duty, and the specific persons to whom it is owed, are determined by the circumstances surrounding the conduct of the individual. 2 D. Pope, Connecticut Actions and Remedies, Tort Law (1993) § 25:05, p. 25-7. Although it has been said that no universal test for [duty] ever has been formulated; W. Prosser & W. Keeton, [Torts (5th Ed. 1984)] § 53, p. 358; our threshold inquiry has always been whether the specific harm alleged by the plaintiff was foreseeable to the defendant. The ultimate test of the existence of the duty to use care is found in the foreseeability that harm may result if it is not exercised.'' (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Jaworski v. Kiernan, 241 Conn. 399, 405, 696 A.2d 332 (1997). In negligent infliction of emotional distress claims, unlike general negligence claims, the foreseeability of the precise ''nature of the harm to be anticipated a prerequisite to recovery even where a breach of duty might otherwise be found ....''Maloney v. Conroy, 208 Conn. 392, 398, 545 A.2d 1059 (1988).
We concluded in Morris and Parsons that a termination may give rise to a claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress if the conduct under review ''involved an unreasonable risk of . . . emotional distress . . . that . . . might result in illness or bodily harm.'' Montinieri v. Southern New England Telephone Co., supra, 175 Conn. 345. Implicit in this conclusion is a recognition that emotional distress that might result in illness or bodily harm is a foreseeable consequence of particularly egregious conduct involving a termination, which would, in turn, give rise to a duty to avoid such conduct.
The defendants contend, however, that individuals engaged in an ongoing employment relationship have no such duty because variations in individual sensitivity make emotional distress claims arising in that context unforeseeable. Specifically, the defendants claim that ''a well-meaning reprimand inflicts no emotional injury on one employee, but wounds another employee to the quick. Or, to take another scenario, a supervisor who places a great deal of pressure on his supervisees to meet deadlines may be met with stoic endurance by the thick-skinned, but hurt feelings by the more delicate.'' We have no quarrel with the defendants' factual premise that individual sensitivities vary, but we reject their legal conclusion. An individual making an emotional distress claim must show that a reasonable person would have suffered ''emotional distress . . . that . . . might result in illness or bodily harm''; Montinieri v. Southern New England Telephone Co., supra, 175 Conn. 345; as the result of the defendant's conduct. See 3 F. Harper, F. James, & O. Gray, Torts (2d Ed. 1986) § 18.4, p. 691 (''Generally defendant's standard of conduct is measured by the [emotional] reactions to be expected of normal persons. . . . Activity m
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