Kentucky Fried Chicken Nat. Management Co. v. Weathersby

• Decision Date: 01 September 1991
• Docket Number: No. 75,75
• Citation: 607 A.2d 8,326 Md. 663
• Parties: , 126 Lab.Cas. P 57,534, 7 IER Cases 865 KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN NATIONAL MANAGEMENT COMPANY, et al., v. Serita J. WEATHERSBY. ,
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 663

326 Md. 663

607 A.2d 8, 126 Lab.Cas. P 57,534, 7

IER Cases 865

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN NATIONAL MANAGEMENT COMPANY, et al., v. Serita J. WEATHERSBY.

No. 75, Sept. Term, 1991.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 9, 1992.

Patricia A. Dunn, argued and on brief (Richard F. Shaw, George T. Manning, and Nancy C. Lee, Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, on brief), Washington, D.C., for petitioners.

Alan Banov, argued and on brief (David Fishman, on brief), Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Lawrence S. Lapidus, Chaikin & Karp, P.C., Gary Simpson, Bruce Fredickson and Woodley B. Osborne, Rockville for Maryland Employment Lawyers Ass'n and Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Ass'n, amici curiae.

Argued before MURPHY, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, McAULIFFE, CHASANOW, KARWACKI and ROBERT M. BELL, JJ.

CHASANOW, Judge.

This case presents us with a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Serita J. Weathersby contends that her former employer, Kentucky Fried Chicken National Management Company (KFC), and Lee Watts, an area manager for KFC, treated her so outrageously that they should be held accountable under the stringent standards we apply for this exceptional tort. A jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County found in her favor and awarded her $145,000 in damages. ¹

Judge Vincent Ferretti, Jr., granted KFC's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict on the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim. He found that there was no evidence that KFC's conduct had been sufficiently atrocious to justify a verdict on this tort theory. Among the factors Judge Ferretti considered was that there was "no evidence that anybody knew that this employee suffered from any emotional condition" that made her especially vulnerable. The Court of Special Appeals reversed, holding that Weathersby had proved intentional infliction of emotional distress. Weathersby v. Kentucky Chicken Co., 86 Md.App. 533, 587 A.2d 569 (1991).

In its decision, the intermediate court decided that there was evidence to show that KFC and Weathersby's immediate supervisor "were in a unique position to know or they reasonably should have known, based on [her] personality, character, integrity, and pride in her managerial position and work, that their conduct could have impacted significantly and detrimentally upon her." 86 Md.App. at 555, 587 A.2d at 579.

KFC petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari on the following question:

"Should an employee who has a nervous breakdown in response to receiving a demotion from her employer be permitted to recover for intentional infliction of emotional distress when the employer had no knowledge the demotion would cause the nervous breakdown?"

We granted the writ and shall reverse the Court of Special Appeals.

The Facts

When reviewing a trial court's decision to grant a defendant's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, an appellate court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and resolve all conflicts in the plaintiff's favor. Lehman v. Balto. Transit Co., 227 Md. 537, 540-541, 177 A.2d 855, 857 (1962). Therefore, we present the facts of the case from Weathersby's point of view.

In October, 1987, Weathersby became a training store manager at a KFC operation in Wheaton, Maryland. She was as an at-will employee, and her immediate supervisor was Lee Watts, whose managerial duties encompassed five KFC stores in the region.

Before Weathersby's arrival at the Wheaton store, KFC began installing interchangeable core locks in its Washington area locations. Such locks, which are opened by keys, are placed in the middle of existing locks and can be removed and replaced whenever necessary. Each time a core lock is changed, a different key is required to open it. KFC policy called for new locks at a store when there was a change in management personnel; core locks made this security measure more cost-effective than if the entire locks had to be replaced. Watts changed the Wheaton store's locks on October 27, 1987, but not after that despite further management changes there.

That month, Watts and an assistant manager at the Wheaton store allegedly began a romance despite company policy discouraging such liaisons. After Weathersby confronted Watts about the relationship and registered a complaint with the company, she said that Watts started harassing her. The harassment included making her work about 15 days straight in December, ordering her to get a promotional banner put on the roof without the help of a maintenance man, phoning her at home on her day off, and assigning her substandard assistant managers.

On January 14, 1988, David Offutt, one of the assistant managers, opened the Wheaton store and found $1,644 missing from the safe. He called Weathersby, who reported the theft to Watts. There was no evidence that either the store or the safe had been forced open, so the investigation focused on those who had access to the establishment and the safe's keys and combination.

Six days later, Watts told Weathersby that she and two assistant managers were scheduled for polygraph tests. Weathersby objected, but Dave Davis, KFC operations manager for the Baltimore-Washington region, insisted that she undergo the procedure. She took the test on January 25, 1988. The next day Weathersby asked Watts if he had told the polygraph examiner that he (Watts) had not changed the store's locks since the previous October; she also asked him why he had not scheduled a lie detector test for himself and others who could open the safe.

On January 27, Weathersby met with Watts and Pete Davis, regional security director for KFC. She informed Davis that Watts knew that the locks had not been changed for nearly three months; she also told him about Watts' romance with the assistant store manager. A day or so later, Weathersby came to a managers' meeting at another restaurant, where Watts took away her store keys and, in front of customers and other employees, suspended her for ten days "pending an investigation" of the missing money. Weathersby learned later that the suspension was without pay.

On February 7, 1988 Watts told Weathersby that she was being demoted to assistant manager for "serious misconduct." When she questioned him about the nature of the misconduct, Watts responded that it had to do with the locks not being changed. As part of the demotion, Weathersby's salary was cut by $11,000, and she was assigned to a store managed by someone she had once supervised. Two days later, Weathersby sought psychiatric help, and the following month she was hospitalized for what turned out to be a six-week stay. She never returned to work.

"Her hospitalization was as a result of severe depression, homicidal as well as suicidal thoughts, relating to her work situation," according to testimony of Dr. Louis E. Kopolow, a psychiatrist who treated Weathersby. "I believe her dismissal from work significantly contributed to the development of the major depressive illness." Dr. Kopolow related that Weathersby "indicated that much of her symptoms were precipitated by her being fired from her employment as well as the conditions around that termination." ²

In the course of treating Weathersby, Dr. Kopolow dealt with what he saw as "borderline personality traits [that] reflected a higher degree of rigidity in terms of her personality...." She saw things as wrong or right, proper or improper. Weathersby, the doctor observed, "had difficulty in seeing the middle ground in terms of her failing as well as the failings of others, and this tended to cause her a great deal of distress in terms of her dealings with the world." Dr. Kopolow testified that "past events in her life would impact on her behavior, her coping skills, her flexibility, and her vulnerability." In Weathersby's past was a traumatic incident: when she was 11, her mother shot her step-father to death and then pressured her to say that the killing was in self-defense instead of the premeditated act it was. Weathersby was told that if she did not support her mother's version of the event, not only would she lose her father, but her mother would have to go away to prison. That incident, Dr. Kopolow observed, "had a very powerful impact in terms of her upbringing and in terms of a greater sense of vulnerability." Weathersby's history and "mindset," he concluded, "contributed to the onset of her depression and suicidal ideation."

Dr. Kopolow said that the murder of her step-father was not an "overwhelming" issue for Weathersby and that the childhood incidents did not cause her to be suicidal or unable to work. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the discharge summary at the end of Weathersby's stay in the psychiatric facility showed that the shooting incident "has impacted on" Weathersby and caused "her great concern with regard to her present situation and her homicidal feelings towards her employer."

Weathersby, Dr. Kopolow testified, exhibited "a tendency to be very demanding of herself and demanding of others, and not show the flexibility of realizing that people cannot always do everything right all the time. She tended to have problems seeing the grays, both in actions of others and in herself." Borderline personality traits such as Weathersby's "might well be exhibited by a zealous performance of activity, an inability to tolerate mistakes in her own performance or that of others. In a more severe response to failure, feeling that she had to succeed, because to not succeed left only one alternative, which was absolute failure. Such individuals can go far, but they face high risk of slipping, because there is no net. I mean they go all the way down."

Borderline personality traits, Dr. Kopolow advised, would not necessarily be noticed by an employer, provided everything went smoothly on the job.

The Law

Quite recently, this Court reviewed the elements necessary to sustain a claim for intentional...