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The Highly Sensitive Person's Redress for Intentional Infliction Of The Highly Sensitive Person’s Redress for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress: Utilizing Experts in the Courtroom * SEAN O’BRIEN I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 533 II. HSPS AS INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR BASIS IN PSYCHOLOGY .......... 537 III. CHALLENGING COMMENT J AS OUTMODED ................................ 548 A. Comment j’s Promulgation at a Time of Psychological Uncertainty ..................................................................... 550 B. Comment j’s Relationship with NIED and the Reasonably Sensitive Person .......................................... 555 C. Comment j’s (Limited) Role in Judicial Analyses .......... 563 IV. A SOLUTION FOR COMMENT J’S PROBLEM ................................. 568 V. CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 574 I. INTRODUCTION Daniel is a senior partner at a large, internationally recognized law firm. Patricia recently passed the state bar exam and accepted a job with this law firm. Daniel asks Patricia to draft a memorandum on a complex area of law for a group of senior partners. Patricia works long hours completing her first assignment, attempting to im- press the senior partners. Daniel presented the memorandum to the * Symposium Editor, Volume 49 The University of Memphis Law Review; Juris Doctor Candidate, May 2019, The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. Thank you to Professor Andrew J. McClurg for the indefatigable assistance and invaluable contributions to the development of this Note. To Whit- ney Robinson, for acting as a sounding board over the past year, and to Page Smith, Meghan Barlow, and Zachary Mead for listening to me talk about this topic for the better part of two years. 533 534 The University of Memphis Law Review Vol. 49 other senior partners, who rejected the memorandum’s conclusions. The senior partners found a slight omission in the memorandum and requested a new draft. Infuriated, Daniel goes to Patricia’s office. Daniel publicly berates Patricia in front of all the junior associates. Daniel screamed at Patricia, “A lobotomized first-year law student would have done a better job! I cannot believe the state bar would have licensed someone with such diminished brain capacity like you! How did you get hired here? Don’t you know it’s a privilege to be part of this firm? It’s a good thing you didn’t send this to a client and bring any more shame onto our office than you already have! Don’t come back into my office again until you can put logical sentences together!” Daniel leaves Patricia standing in the office with twenty other people in shock of what they witnessed. Staff members whis- per when Patricia walks by. Other attorneys ostracize Patricia the rest of the day because the entire office heard she does not have any “brain capacity.” When Patricia leaves for the day, she is in tears, visibly upset. She does not return for work the rest of the month. Patricia sees a psychologist regularly for treatment because she has previously been diagnosed as highly sensitive.1 She makes an appointment to see her psychologist. Patricia fears she is not a qualified attorney. She experiences panic attacks and severe anxiety, she does not eat, cannot leave her bed, fears any of the emails she re- ceives from senior partners, and sinks into a deep depression because she feels she cannot practice law competently anymore. Patricia brings an action against Daniel in state court for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Daniel’s attorney files a motion to dismiss be- cause Patricia failed to state a claim. Daniel’s attorney argues that even though the conduct was extreme and outrageous, because Patri- cia’s harm was unforeseeable as a result of a non-apparent mental condition (her previous diagnosis as highly sensitive), a reasonable person would not experience severe emotional distress from Daniel’s conduct. The judge grants this motion because a person of reasona- ble sensitivities would not undergo such emotional distress from be- ing publicly berated. A highly sensitive person (“HSP”) is someone predisposed to higher emotional responses to external stimuli from their environ- 1. See infra Part II. 2019 The Highly Sensitive Person’s Redress for IIED 535 ment.2 These responses include observable tendencies such as over- whelming arousals, negative emotionality, and lower levels of socia- bility, while also being acutely aware of subtle environmental de- tails.3 Under current tort law, a plaintiff seeking compensation for emotional distress resulting from intentionally cruel conduct would claim intentional infliction of emotional distress (“IIED”).4 Yet, to determine if a plaintiff suffered severe emotional distress, the law as- sumes that there exists a person of reasonable sensitivities. “The law intervenes only where the distress inflicted is so severe that no rea- sonable [person] could be expected to endure it.”5 Courts construe this widely accepted rule to mean a person of “ordinary sensitivi- ties.”6 HSPs, let alone anyone else in society, can hardly have their emotional status judged against a person of ordinary sensitivities. At first glance, IIED seems intimately connected to HSPs be- cause the tort serves as a vehicle of recovery for the HSP’s severe emotional distress. HSPs are predisposed to a higher level of emo- 7 tional harm than non-HSPs. HSPs can be equated to some degree of 2. David E. Evans & Mary K. Rothbart, Temperamental Sensitivity: Two Constructs or One?, 44 PERSONALITY & INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 108, 108–09 (2008). 3. Id. 4. The Restatement (Second) of Torts provides that the elements for Inten- tional Infliction of Emotional Distress are an intentional or reckless act that consti- tutes extreme and outrageous conduct, which causes severe emotional distress. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 46 (AM. LAW INST. 1965). 5. Id. § 46 cmt. j (emphasis added). 6. See, e.g., White v. Monsanto Co., 585 So. 2d 1205, 1210 (La. 1991) (“[T]he actor’s conduct should be judged in the light of the effect such conduct would ordinarily have on a person of ordinary sensibilities.”); Knierim v. Izzo, 174 N.E.2d 157, 165 (Ill. 1961) (“The ‘reasonable man’ seems to be well known to ju- rors and we expect that they will also be acquainted with the ‘man of ordinary sen- sibilities.’”); Slocum v. Food Fair Stores of Fla., Inc., 100 So. 2d 396, 398 (Fla. 1958) (“The unwarranted intrusion must be calculated to cause ‘severe emotional distress’ to a person of ordinary sensibilities, in the absence of special knowledge or notice.”). 7. See Jadzia Jagiellowicz et al., The Trait of Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Neural Responses to Changes in Visual Scenes, 6 SOC. COGNITIVE & AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE 38, 38 (2011) (noting that sensory processing sensitivity, the under- lying condition causing high sensitivity, results in a highly active behavioral inhibi- tion system “associated with a strategy of taking time to process stimuli more thor- oughly, especially in novel situations”). 536 The University of Memphis Law Review Vol. 49 neuroticism, elevated anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress dis- order, and some forms of Autism-Spectrum Disorders.8 Conversely, HSPs cannot be equated, nor compared, to a person of “ordinary sen- sitivities.” If this were so, the individual would not be highly sensi- tive. Foreclosing IIED to only those of reasonable sensitivities has introduced an unintentional discriminatory nature into tort law.9 This Note argues that courts should recognize that there is no such thing, in isolation, as a “reasonable” or “unreasonable” reaction to intentional cruelty that rises to the level of extreme and outrageous conduct. More specifically, in light of almost a quarter century of re- search on HSPs and recognition that as many as one in five persons are highly sensitive, courts should permit plaintiffs to present expert testimony about HSP temperament traits and instruct jurors to con- sider and decide how a “reasonable HSP” would have reacted to the particular defendant’s conduct. Part II explores the almost quarter century of HSP research, focusing on HSP temperament traits indica- tive to diagnosis and showing a HSP’s predisposition to a greater risk of suffering severe emotional distress from an external stimulus. Part III analyzes the virtually universal rule and central cause of the fore- closure to recovery for the HSP, arising from comment j to section 46 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts (“Restatement (Second)”), re- quiring an IIED claimant to effectively show that their emotional dis- tress was “reasonable” and was not simply an “unreasonable” form of emotional distress. Part III will challenge this rule as outmoded as applied in three ways: (1) in the context of the historical psychologi- cal research alongside ongoing HSP and psychological research; (2) that a “reasonable” emotional person is a legal fallacy; and (3) by courts regularly affording little or no analysis after finding the con- duct to be extreme and outrageous. Part IV proposes that allowing a HSP-plaintiff in an IIED action to call expert witnesses to aid the court in determining whether the HSP-plaintiff’s emotional distress is 8. For a detailed analysis of the psychological research on HSPs, see infra Part II. 9. Currently, the judicial system is available to one class of people to liti- gate their case for recovery, non-HSPs, while closed to others, HSPs, before having a chance to present their case on the merits. This stems from
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