Thomas v. Cohr, Inc., 197 Ohio App.3d 145, 2011-Ohio-5916

Court of Appeals of Ohio, First District, Hamilton County

            In an Ohio Court of Appeals case decided November 18, 2011, Judge Sylvia Hendon held that the employee in question was not constructively discharged, the behavior of the employee's managers did not constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress and that the manager's statements to HR were not so false that they constituted defamation.

            The facts of the case began in 2006, when Kathleen P. Thomas was working for Genesis Technology Partners, which was purchased by Masterplan, Inc. that year. By January 25, 2006, Charles A. Dille was Thomas' direct supervisor, but during that time she "called Barry Bruns, Dille's boss, to tell him that she was overwhelmed with work." Dille then entered Thomas's workspace and "holler[ed]" that "she worked for him and should not 'go around' him." Thomas then spoke to Dian Danino, the manager of the hemodialysis unit, who spoke with Thomas and Dille together. Dille then apologized for his behavior and acknowledged his lack of professionalism. 

             After the meeting, Thomas called Joseph Happ, district manager, and informed him of the events, causing Happ to meet with her the next day. Happ allegedly told Thomas that she should "give Dille a second chance, that it would be good for her, and that he would remove anything she did not like from her file."

Both Happ and Bruns then looked into the incident and Dille admitted to them that he had raised his voice to Thomas and acted inappropriately. Dille was counseled by Happ and Bruns on appropriate work behavior and was told that both finger pointing and yelling were unacceptable. Thomas was unsatisfied with the investigation, so she called the official human-resources department for Masterplan Inc., located in California. In March of 2006, Eloisa Abarques arranged a conference call with Thomas and Happ to discuss Thomas' concerns.

             Thomas remained unsatisfied after the call and so continued to call the human-resources department in California. In April of 2006, Kathy Helbringer, an executive zone director for Masterplan, flew in to meet with Thomas. After a three hour meeting with Thomas, "Helbringer decided to allow Thomas to report to Greg Herr, rather than to Dille." In September of 2007, Herr and Bruns both learned that Thomas had been complaining about workplace service documentation and her hours and workload and that she had been trying to obtain a position in the hemodialysis department. The manager of the hemodialysis department did not want to hire Thomas and noted that "her negative comments had been a disruption to the department." As a result, Thomas' superiors put her on a 60-day work improvement plan in October of 2007, and by January of 2008, Thomas resigned.

"The Court of Common Pleas, Hamilton County, granted summary judgment in favor of defendants." Thomas appealed with five assignments of error, all of which correlated with her argument that "the trial court erred by granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants-appellees." Thomas' five assignments of error were that the trial court erred by judging in favor of Masterplan on her claims that she had been constructively discharged, that she had been wrongfully discharged in violation of Ohio public policy, that she endured her bosses intentional infliction of emotional distress, that Happ made defamatory statements, and that Masterplan had negligently supervised Happ.

           In her first assignment of error, Thomas felt she could prove that she was constructively discharged by "demonstrat[ing] that the former employer's actions made working conditions so intolerable that a reasonable person under the circumstances would have felt compelled to resign." To determine the validity of this claim, the court asked that Thomas prove that she felt she would be terminated in the short term. However, since she continued to work for two years after her initial confrontation with Dille and his alleged outburst, the court did not believe "any claim that her working conditions were utterly unbearable as a result of that incident." For this reason, her first assignment was overruled.

            Thomas' second assignment of error, that she had been wrongfully discharged in violation of Ohio public policy, would have to be backed by "a clear public policy by citation of specific provisions in the federal or state constitution, federal or state statutes, administrative rules and regulations, or common law." Thomas could not, in this case, prove that any of her superiors had violated Ohio public policy and therefore her second assignment of error was overruled.

            In her third assignment of error, Thomas alleged that Masterplan, Happ and Helbringer had indeed intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon her. While Thomas cited the initial conflict with Dille, Helbringer's lack of discipline against Dille and Masterplan's disciplinary action against her, "none of these examples would be actionable for purposes of an intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim because non of the cited conduct was 'so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community." Due to this lack of "extreme and outrageous conduct," Thomas' third assignment of error was overruled.

             Thomas' fourth assignment of error was that Happ defamed her by lying to Masterplan's HR department and by making false accusations of Thomas' trouble making with her co-workers. However, company records did show documented problems Thomas had with co-workers in the past and therefore Thomas could not prove Happ's statements to be false and "defamatory per se or [to have] caused special harm to the plaintiff." Her fourth assignment of error was accordingly overruled.

             Thomas' fifth and final assignment of error was that Masterplan negligently supervised Happ, which requires that "in such an action... the employee is individually liable for a tort against a third person who then seeks recovery from the employer." As the court did not find Happ guilty of defamation or intentional infliction of emotional distress, this claim did not qualify and was overruled along with the previous four.