Quinn v. Walsh

• Decision Date: 16 February 2000
• Docket Number: P-1019
• Citation: 732 N.E.2d 330,49 Mass. App. Ct. 696
• Parties: (Mass.App.Ct. 2000) GILBERT C. QUINN & another <A HREF="#fr1-1" name="fn1-1">1 , vs. JOSEPH WALSH. No.: 98- . Argued:
• Court: Appeals Court of Massachusetts

Page 330

732 N.E.2d 330 (Mass.App.Ct. 2000)

GILBERT C. QUINN & another¹, vs. JOSEPH WALSH.

No.: 98-P-1019

Massachusetts Court of Appeals, Plymoth.

Argued: February 16, 2000.

Decided: July 14, 2000.

Paul P. Perocchi (Elissa L. McMillen with him) for the plaintiffs.

William C. McPhee for the defendant.

Present: Armstrong, C.J., Dreben, & Duffly, JJ.

DUFFLY, J.

Does a complaint alleging that a defendant engaged in an extramarital affair in order to injure a plaintiff spouse survive the statutory abolition² of the common law torts of alienation of affection and criminal conversation? Concluding that such a complaint stated no case, a judge of the Superior Court dismissed it. The spouse, Gilbert C. Quinn (Quinn), and son (Michael) appeal the dismissal.

These are the allegations in the complaint. Quinn and Susan Bloomstein were married on July 17, 1977. Their only child, Michael, was born on March 30, 1982. In January, 1994, and continuing thereafter for a period of time not specified in the complaint, Susan Bloomstein-Quinn engaged in an extramarital affair with Joseph Walsh. Walsh knew that Bloomstein-Quinn was married and engaged in the affair openly and in a manner such that it became known to the plaintiffs and to the community at large. The purpose of the affair was, "in part," to injure Quinn.³ By November, 1994, Walsh's conduct had caused Quinn's marriage of nearly twenty years to end, and he filed for divorce. The plaintiffs suffered severe emotional distress and Walsh knew or should have known that his conduct would result in such emotional distress.

The two-count complaint was filed on September 11, 1997. Walsh filed a motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' complaint on the grounds that it failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted and that the claims were barred by the applicable statute of limitations. The motion to dismiss was allowed after hearing.

1. Statute of limitations. The motion judge concluded that the plaintiffs' complaint was barred by the three-year statute of limitations applicable to tort claims. "A three-year limitation period applies to [a] plaintiff's claims in tort for intentional infliction of emotional distress." Mellinger v. West Springfield, 401 Mass. 188, 191 (1987). In order that the complaint not be time-barred, the plaintiffs' injury must have occurred after September 11, 1994. Here, the allegedly injurious conduct consisted of the affair and its publication to "the plaintiffs and to the community at large," which resulted in their suffering "severe emotional distress."

The time when a cause of action accrues has not been defined by statute but has been the subject of judicial interpretation. See Riley v. Presnell, 409 Mass. 239, 243 (1991). The general rule is that a cause of action in tort accrues at the time the plaintiff is injured. Ibid. See Joseph A. Fortin Constr., Inc. v. Massachusetts Hous. Fin. Agency, 392 Mass. 440, 442 (1984); Frank Cooke, Inc., v. Hurwitz, 10 Mass. App. Ct. 99, 109 (1980). We have said that where the claim arises from the intentional infliction of emotional distress, the injury occurs on the date a plaintiff first experiences anxiety or distress which is the intended result of the defendant's conduct. Pagliuca v. Boston, 35 Mass. App. Ct. 820, 824 (1994). We have narrowed this rule to provide that "[w]hen an injury . . . becomes manifest, the statute of limitations does not stay in suspense until the full extent, gravity, or permanence of that same injury or consequential disease is known." Id. at 824-825, quoting from Gore v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, Inc., 17 Mass. App. Ct. 645, 649 (1984).

In cases where the emotional injury is said to have been caused by a defendant's negligence, our courts have imposed the even narrower requirement that "[a] plaintiff's emotional distress must follow 'closely on the heels of' the negligent act." Miles v. Edward O. Tabor, M.D., Inc., 387 Mass. 783, 789 (1982), quoting from Ferriter v. Daniel O'Connell's Sons, Inc., 381 Mass. 507, 518 (1980). We see no reason to apply a different rule to the claim made here. This is because we recognize the need to impose limits on the scope of liability with respect to claims involving emotional injuries, whether negligently or intentionally caused.⁴ See, e.g., Migliori v. Airborne Freight Corp., 426 Mass. 629, 631-633 (1998) ("[w]here the mechanism by which injury comes about includes the psychological, both the class of plaintiffs and kinds of claims are greatly and predictably expanded. . . . We have imposed relational, temporal, and spatial limits on the scope of liability for emotional harm . . . [which are] grounded in [the] practical need to draw a determinate line against excessive liability. . . . [W]e must acknowledge that these requirements of proximity are based more on the pragmatic need to limit the scope of potential liability, than on grounds of fairness or other imperatives of corrective justice").

We therefore conclude that, unless the circumstances are such that the resulting damage is "inherently unknowable," Friedman v. Jablonski, 371 Mass. 482, 485 (1976), and the statute of limitations is therefore tolled until "a plaintiff discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, that she has been harmed," Phinney v. Morgan, 39 Mass. App. Ct. 202, 204 (1995),⁵ the manifestation of intentionally inflicted emotional injury must be substantially contemporaneous with the outrageous conduct. Thus, to survive dismissal based on the claim that the action was time-barred, the inferences to be drawn from the allegations in the complaint must encompass both the requirement that the plaintiffs suffered emotional distress soon after learning of the alleged outrageous conduct and that their distress was manifested after September 11, 1994.

Under Mass.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6), 365 Mass. 754 (1974), "the allegations of [a] complaint, as well as such inferences as may be drawn therefrom in the plaintiffs favor are to be taken as true." Nader v. Citron, 372 Mass. 96, 98 (1977), quoting from Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46 (1957). "There is no requirement that the plaintiff's complaint . . . state the relevant facts with completeness or precision." Ahern v. Warner, 16 Mass. App. Ct. 223, 226 n.2 (1983). Our analysis must be based upon an indulgent reading of the complaint, Haggerty v. Globe Newspaper Co., 383 Mass. 406, 409 (1981), including indulgence for the period of limitations. Friedman v. Jablonski, 371 Mass. at 487-488. Although the plaintiffs did not specifically allege when they became aware of the relationship between Bloomstein-Quinn and Walsh, nor when they began to suffer as a result of Walsh's conduct in advertising the affair, the plaintiffs did allege that the affair commenced in January, 1994, and was conducted "openly and in a manner such that the relationship became known to Quinn and friends of Quinn . . . as well as becoming known in the community where he lived." It is the plaintiffs' contention that, because it is not possible to conclude from the face of the complaint precisely when the plaintiffs were injured, the motion judge erred in concluding that their injury was discovered sometime before September 11, 1994.

We agree that it is possible to infer from their allegations that the plaintiffs did not learn of the affair until after September 11, 1994, either because the "ongoing" affair continued throughout the summer or, if it ended soon after it began, that this did not become immediately known to the plaintiffs. On this basis we conclude that the plaintiffs have adequately, if barely, pleaded the minimally necessary facts to survive the bar of the statute of limitations.⁶

2. Failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Walsh also sought to dismiss the plaintiffs' complaint on the ground that it failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. Mass.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6). The issue before us is one of first impression: Does an adulterous affair which was openly conducted and initiated "in part" to injure a plaintiff⁷ preclude at this stage a ruling as matter of law that there is "no set of facts in support of [the plaintiffs'] claim[s] which would entitle [them] to relief?" Nader v. Citron, 372 Mass. at 98. The motion judge concluded that the plaintiffs' complaint was essentially a claim for alienation of affection or criminal conversation, forms of action which have been abolished by statute in Massachusetts,⁸ and for this reason dismissed the complaint. We agree with the motion judge that, with respect to Quinn, the complaint should therefore be dismissed. On a different basis, we conclude that Michael's claim should also be dismissed. A discussion of the evolution of the "heart balm"⁹ torts necessarily precedes our analysis, to be followed by a discussion of the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, the stated basis of the plaintiffs' action.

(a) Alienation of affection and criminal conversation. The common law torts of alienation of affection and criminal conversation compensated a spouse¹⁰ for intentional interference with the marital relationship by a third party.¹¹ These actions are similar in that both "compensate[] the plaintiff for impairment of consortium," Clark, Law of Domestic Relations 12.3, at 662 (2d ed. 1987), and both are "intentional" torts, Nolan & Sartorio, Tort Law 152, 153, at 261-265 (1989); Nolin v. Pearson, 191 Mass. 283, 289 (1906), but they may be distinguished.

To recover for criminal conversation¹² there had to be proof "that the defendant had adulterous relations with the plaintiff's spouse." Clark, Law of Domestic Relations 12.3, at 662. See Restatement (Second) of Torts, 685 (1977). The tort involved adultery with one spouse "whether with or against her will." Bigaouette v. Paulet 134 Mass. 123, 126 (1883). Loss of consortium was the only necessary component of damage, but the plaintiff could seek compensation for "humiliation, embarrassment, mental...