Emerson v. Capital One, NA
| Decision Date | 22 March 2021 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 4:20-cv-00004-MTS |
| Parties | KACIE EMERSON, Plaintiff, v. CAPITAL ONE, NA, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri |
This matter is before the Court on Defendants Sarah Aasted and Robert Riley, II's Motion to Dismiss Pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6), Doc. [27]. The Motion is fully briefed. For the following reasons, the Motion is granted in part and denied in part.
The Court, as it must in ruling on a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, will accept as true the facts Plaintiff pleaded in her Amended Complaint, Doc. [22]. See Shaar v. Residential Funding Corp., 517 F.3d 544, 549 (8th Cir. 2008). Defendant Capital One, NA, hired Plaintiff Kacie Emerson in February 2018 as a Commercial Card Sales Officer. Doc. [22] ¶ 47. Before and during her employment with Capital One, Emerson struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and alcohol dependency. Id. ¶ 48. Around February 12, 2019, Emerson requested an accommodation from Capital One for treatment of her various health issues, which were worsening at that time. Id. ¶ 49. Emerson claims that, ostensibly in response to her accommodation request, Capital One initially gave her a leave of absence on March 4, 2019; however, her managers removed her from leave status and "demand[ed] that [she] participate in meetings and sales calls." Id. ¶¶ 53-54. On March 7, 2019, Emerson had a relapse of her alcohol dependency. Id. ¶ 54. While she concedes that she had participated in meetings and sales calls that day, she claims she was not working at the time of the relapse. Id. ¶ 55.
Emerson's fiancé, seeking help, contacted Defendant Sarah Aasted, Emerson's coworker and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) sponsor, who came to assist Emerson. Id. ¶¶ 4, 56-57. After that event, Emerson alleges that Aasted "betrayed Emerson's confidence" and reported the incident to both Emerson's manager at Capital One and Aasted's husband, Defendant Robert Riley. Id. ¶¶ 15, 23, 58. Riley, Emerson claims, is a credentialed Missouri Associate Alcohol Drug Counselor who owns numerous rehabilitation centers in the St. Louis area. Id. ¶¶ 16, 22. After Aasted disclosed Emerson's relapse to Riley, Emerson claims that Riley called her and "threatened to 'report' her into Missouri Child Protective Services unless she went to a specific rehabilitation center in Chicago." Id. ¶ 59. Emerson alleges the Chicago rehab center was "operated by Riley's friend." Id. ¶ 60.
After this episode, on March 20, 2019, Emerson contacted Capital One's human resources and employee support hotline to, in part, complain about Aasted's behavior and that she was being harassed by Riley. Id. ¶¶ 25, 65. The human resources department called Emerson the next day, not to follow up on Emerson's complaints, but instead to inform her that Capital One was opening an investigation into her March 7, 2019 relapse. Id. ¶¶ 26, 66-67. During the investigation, according to Emerson, Aasted "falsely accused Emerson of working while drinking," though Emerson denies that she was drinking while working on March 7, 2019. Id. ¶¶ 68-69. Capital One, on April 2, 2019, fired Emerson "for allegedly violating [its] alcohol policy." Id. ¶ 70; see also id. ¶ 28. Emerson finally alleges that Aasted was assigned Emerson's accounts after Emerson was fired and that Aasted also "benefitted financially from betraying Emerson's confidence."1 Id. ¶¶ 31, 73.
Emerson brought several claims based on those alleged facts against Capital One, Aasted, and Riley. See Doc. [22]. At issue here are only Emerson's claims against Aasted and Riley: first, tortious interference with a business relationship or expectancy against Aasted (Count XII), and second, claims against both Aasted and Riley for negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED) (Counts XIII and XIV, respectively). Id. at 21-25. Aasted and Riley challenged each of those three claims pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), arguing that Emerson has not stated a claim upon which relief can be granted.
In reviewing a motion to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim, the Court must accept as true all the allegations pleaded in the complaint. Schaar, 517 F.3d at 549 (8th Cir. 2008) (citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007)). The Court "must liberally construe a complaint in favor of the plaintiff," Huggins v. FedEx Ground Package Sys., Inc., 592 F.3d 853, 862 (8th Cir. 2010), and must grant all reasonable inferences in her favor, Lustgraaf v. Behrens, 619 F.3d 867, 872-73 (8th Cir. 2010). But the Court is not "bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). "While a complaint attacked by a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss does not need detailed factual allegations," a plaintiff cannot rest on mere "labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Benton v. Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., 524 F.3d 866, 870 (8th Cir. 2008) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555). It is not enough under Fed. R. Civ. P. 8 to plead "unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation[s]." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. "Where the allegations show on the face of the complaint there is some insuperable bar to relief, dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) is appropriate." Id. (citing Parnes v. Gateway 2000, Inc., 122 F.3d 539, 546 (8th Cir. 1997)). If a plaintiff fails to allege one of the elements necessary to recovery on a legal theory, that claim must be dismissed. Crest Constr. II, Inc. v. Doe, 660 F.3d 346, 355 (8th Cir. 2011).
A claim for tortious interference with a contract or business expectancy, one of the claims at issue here, requires the plaintiff to demonstrate "(1) a contract or a valid business expectancy; (2) defendant's knowledge of the contract or relationship; (3) intentional interference by the defendant inducing or causing a breach of the contract or relationship; (4) absence of justification; and (5) damages resulting from defendant's conduct." W. Blue Print Co. v. Roberts, 367 S.W.3d 7, 19 (Mo. banc 2012); accord Bishop & Assocs., LLC v. Ameren Corp., 520 S.W.3d 463, 472 (Mo. banc 2017). To plead negligent infliction of emotional distress—the other two claims challenged by Aasted and Riley—a plaintiff must, in addition to satisfying the general negligence elements of duty, breach, actual and proximate cause, and injury, show (1) that the defendant realized or should have realized his or her conduct involved an unreasonable risk of causing distress, and (2) plaintiff suffered emotional distress or mental injury that is medically diagnosable and sufficiently severe to be medically significant. Gillis v. Principia Corp., 832 F.3d 865, 875 (8th Cir. 2016) (quoting Gordon v. City of Kansas City, Mo., 241 F.3d 997, 1004 (8th Cir. 2001)); Thornburg v. Fed. Express Corp., 62 S.W.3d 421, 327 (Mo. Ct. App. 2001).
As a threshold matter, Emerson claims that Defendants' Motion to Dismiss improperly offers evidence or facts "that go beyond the scope of the pleadings." Doc. [31] at 5-7. Emerson argues that the Court should ignore these additional "facts" in considering the Motion to Dismiss or, alternatively, convert the Motion to a motion for summary judgement. Id. Rule 12(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that "[i]f, on a motion under Rule 12(b)(6) . . ., matters outside the pleadings are presented to and not excluded by the court, the motion must be treated as one for summary judgment under Rule 56." See Gorog v. Best Buy Co., 760 F.3d 787, 791 (8th Cir. 2014). But "[a] district court does not convert a motion to dismiss into a motion for summary judgment when, for example, it does not rely on matters outside the pleadings." Id. Courts typically consider "matters outside the pleadings" to include "any written or oral evidence in support of or in opposition to the pleading that provides some substantiation for and does not merely reiterate what is said in the pleadings." Id. (quoting BJC Health Sys. v. Columbia Cas. Co., 348 F.3d 685, 687 (8th Cir. 2003)).
Emerson singles out four statements Defendants made in their Memorandum supporting the Motion to Dismiss, Doc. [28], as "additional factual statements and [e]ditorialized allegations" that warrant conversion to summary judgment under Rule 12(d):
Doc. [31] at 5. The Court finds that these statements do not constitute "matters outside the pleadings" and instead are generally consistent with, if worded slightly differently than, the allegations in Emerson's Amended Complaint. Defendants did not seek to provide "evidence" outside the pleadings; instead, they "merely reiterated" what Emerson alleged, though admittedly from Defendants' point of view. To the extent these statements constitute a factual dispute with Emerson's allegations, that issue is dealt with by the requirement that the Court "liberally construe [the] complaint in favor of the plaintiff." Huggins, 592 F.3d at 862. The Court therefore need not strike the statements from Defendants' Memorandum, nor must it convert the Motion to Dismiss to one for summary judgment.
Turning now to the substance of the Motion to...
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