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Onstad v. Payless ShoeSource8/24/2000
APPEAL FROM: District Court of the Thirteenth Judicial District, In and for the County of Yellowstone, Honorable Russell C. Fagg, Judge Presiding
Argued: April 7, 2000
Submitted: April 27, 2000
1 A Thirteenth Judicial District Court, Yellowstone County, jury awarded Katie Onstad $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages on her complaint that her employer, Payless ShoeSource, failed to provide her with a safe place to work. Payless appeals. We affirm.
2 The issues are:
3 1. Whether the District Court erred in rejecting Payless's workers' compensation exclusive remedy defense.
4 2. Whether the court erroneously allowed police officers to give expert opinion testimony when they were never qualified as experts.
5 3. Whether the court erroneously gave conflicting instructions as to causation and intervening superseding cause.
6 4. Whether the compensatory damage award is excessive and unsupported by the evidence.
7 5. Whether the court erred in approving punitive damages.
8 On September 23, 1997, Katie Onstad was assaulted by a stranger, later identified as Timothy Luplow, while she was working as a clerk at a Payless shoe store in Billings, Montana. Onstad, then eighteen years old, was working alone at about 7 p.m. when Luplow entered the store. He grabbed her waist and squeezed her "butt" from behind as she was stocking shelves.
Onstad told him not to touch her and went into the back storeroom to call for help on the telephone, but Luplow forced his way into the storeroom with her. She then ran and hid in the employee bathroom, locking the door.
9 After about five minutes, Onstad heard the bell ring at the front of the store and assumed that either Luplow had left or another customer had entered the store. She came out of the bathroom only to be assaulted again by Luplow. Luplow restrained Onstad by grabbing her from behind and holding his hand over her mouth, demanding sex with threats to kill her if she refused. She resisted, and they struggled. He finally knocked her to the floor and stood over her masturbating, then ejaculated on her. Afterward, he left through the front of the store.
10 Onstad ran out the store's back door to a nearby restaurant for help, eluding Luplow in the alley on the way. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital where she was interviewed by police and then released in the care of her father. Based upon Onstad's description, Luplow was apprehended and arrested.
11 In this action, Onstad alleged that Payless was negligent in failing to provide a safe place for her to work. Citing prior incidents in which a female Billings Payless employee had been "flashed" by a male exhibitionist at work, Onstad complained that Payless took no steps to warn her of that danger, to instruct her on how to avoid such danger while at work, or to take adequate safety and security precautions at the store. Onstad alleged that she suffered from posttraumatic stress syndrome as a result of Luplow's attack.
12 In a three-day jury trial, Onstad presented evidence of two prior incidents in which an assailant, later identified as Luplow, had exposed himself to a female employee in Billings Payless stores. Both incidents had occurred within nineteen months prior to the attack on Onstad, and the second incident had occurred in the same store where Onstad was assaulted.
Onstad also presented evidence of the armed robbery of a Billings Payless store in February of 1997. She contended that following those events, Payless should have stepped up precautions for its e
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