Vauls v. Lambros

JAMES S. GETTY, Judge, Specially Assigned. The single issue to be decided in this case is whether the trial court erred in granting judgment notwithstanding the verdict on the issue of intentional infliction of emotional distress. We hold that the court did not err and, therefore, the judgment of the Circuit Court for Baltimore County (Smith, J.) is affirmed. Bette Yauls, appellant herein, is a sixty-year-old woman who became a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1967.

According to her testimony, appellant was a joyful person with no history of paranoia who “ate, slept and drank” her religion. It is fair to say that some part of each day was devoted to religious activities. Appellant’s difficulties with the appellee, Nick G. Lambros, an elder in the church, commenced in 1976. It is important to note that the court instructed the jury that due to the statute of limitations applicable to this case, only acts committed by appellee after February 5, 1982, could be considered in deciding the issue of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The court allowed testimony of acts allegedly engaged in by appellee prior to February, 1982, for the limited purpose of showing appellee’s state of mind, i.e., intent. We shall set forth all of the alleged acts initiated by appellee and then reduce that testimony to the matters that the jury was entitled to consider on the issue of intentional infliction of emotional distress. 1 In 1976 appellee attempted ⁴⁵² to persuade appellant’s fourteen-year-old daughter to leave her mother’s home and reside with another church family, because appellee did not consider the child’s home environment to be appropriate. When appellant resisted this intrusive effort, appellee challenged appellant’s maternal fitness. In 1979, appellee forced appellant’s daughter to attend a judicial meeting of the church although he knew that the girl, then eighteen, had no further interest in the church.

Appellant was not permitted to attend the meeting concerning her daughter because appellee denied her request to attend. Other pre-1982 indignities suffered by appellant included a threat of disfellowship 2 from the church for rejecting appellee’s advice concerning her daughter; in 1976, appellee called her a “heretic” and a “bitch”; and in 1979 and 1980 appellee began following her in his car. The combination of these activities, according to appellant, caused her to suffer “anxiety attacks,” “fear and sweat,” and “fright-nausea.” Turning to the critical period, 1982-1984, appellant testified that the unauthorized surveillance continued, including several occasions when appellee parked outside her residence and “watched the house.” On one such occasion appellee engaged in a seldom defined, but universally understood, opprobrious act, he “gave her the finger.” A more provocative event occurred in the latter part of 1982 when appellee visited appellant at her home and accused her, falsely, she maintains, of slandering a relative of another member of the church. Appellee told appellant that ⁴⁵³ he directed the member to tape a telephone conversation between appellant and the member and turn the tape over to appellee.

Thereafter, the surreptitiously recorded telephone conversation was used against appellant in a disfellowship proceeding conducted by the church elders. In November, 1982, appellant was disfellowshipped for reasons that she claims were never explained to her. Shortly after the proceeding, appellee told appellant, “I have got you and I’m going to get your daughter and your husband.” Returning to church services after the disfellowship proceeding, appellant was informed by appellee that she was to sit in the last seat in the back row of the church despite the fact that no such “back row” rule existed. In fact, the appellee’s children continued to sit with him after being disfellowshipped for immorality.

Appellant considered this indignity as analogous to the long rejected custom of requiring some citizens to sit in the back of a bus. The disfellowship caused appellant to become “grief stricken to this very day.” Her initial reaction was to demolish a six hundred dollar typewriter, throw all of her clothes out of the drawers and then break all of the drawers in the dresser. Appellant explained that under the procedure followed in the church, within a week to ten days after a member is disfellowshipped, it is customary for someone in authority at a church meeting, presumably an elder, to address the congregation, generally, on the subject of the errant member’s transgression without identifying the person by name. In the presence of one hundred members, appellee began this ritual by looking directly at appellant and proclaiming, “there is an apostate 3 sitting amongst us.” The disfellowship action combined with the apostacy speech had the following impact on appellant, according to her testimony: ⁴⁵⁴ I felt devastated ... when is it going to end? ...

I felt that I wanted to go home and cry ... I went home and cried ... I stayed a recluse ... I didn’t want to take care of household duties ...

I shut myself in my room for days on end, I didn’t want to do anything or have anything to do with anybody ... I have shed more tears over this incident than anything else in my entire life and I am 60 years old. In February, 1983, appellant sought a rescission of her church status. After denial of her request, she stopped attending services within a year.

Appellant’s testimony was corroborated by her husband who said that after all that had taken place he never knew when his wife picked up an object in the home “whether she was going to dust it or break it.” Expert testimony by Dr. Gerald Bergman, a psychologist, indicated that appellant was suffering from a transient stress disorder which he defined as “a great deal of stress prolonged over a long period of time.” Dr. Bergman was not providing therapy for appellant, because his contacts with her were by telephone, once a year, in 1983, 1984 and 1985. The expert met appellant for the first time approximately one week before trial. Dr. Bergman characterized the appellant as being neither paranoid nor hypersensitive, he could not, however, attribute the severe and extreme emotional distress suffered by appellant to any particular encounter with appellee, or to any specific series of events that occurred after 1982. In short, his opinion was predicated upon an accumulation of traumatic events that preceded the February 1982 date and, moreover, encompassed events that the court ruled could not be considered by the jury which included disfellowship.

In instructing the jury, Judge Smith cautioned: You are instructed that a clergyman may not with impunity intentionally inflict severe emotional distress on anyone, but you are further instructed that any conduct by the defendant, Nick Lambros, that occurred in the course of his service as an Elder in the Jehovah’s Witnesses ⁴⁵⁵ cannot be the basis for recovery for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Consequently, you cannot award any damages for any conduct and/or actions which you find were in his capacity as an Elder in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and you may not award any damages nor consider any such acts as intentional infliction of emotional distress upon the Plaintiff. This instruction is not challenged by appellant on appeal. At the close of the case, appellee’s motion for judgment was reserved by the court.

The case was submitted to the jury and the verdict was for the appellant in the amount of one thousand dollars compensatory damages and two thousand dollars as exemplary damages. Thereafter, the court scheduled the case for argument on the reserved motion and, at the conclusion thereof, granted appellee’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. A timely appeal was entered by appellant. Judge Smith, in ruling on the reserved motion, identified, in the light most favorable to appellant, the conduct that the jury could properly consider in deciding the issue of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

He said: The conduct occurring after 1982 included Mr. Lambros’ instruction to Ms. Rossini to make a tape and his use of the tape after it was made; the 1982 threat after Mrs. Vauls’ disfellowship that he would have her husband and daughter disfellowshipped also; the times, whatever number of times there were, between 1982 and 1982 [sic] during which Mr. Lambros was outside of Mrs. Vauls’ home; the two occasions in which he followed her in his car; one occasion when he gave her an obscene gesture and one occasion when he told her to sit in the back of the Kingdom Hall after her disfellowship; and looking at her during his delivery of his sermon on apostacy in the church. We note that the court thoroughly instructed the jury that it could not as a matter of law consider any damages to the appellant arising from her disfellowship, or for any ⁴⁵⁶ emotional distress she may have suffered as a result thereof. To rule otherwise, the court stated, would violate the doctrine of separation of church and state by permitting the judicial branch of government to regulate established church or religious doctrine. Judge Smith held that the conduct which the jury was instructed to consider did not arise to the outrageous and extreme conduct necessary to establish the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress and that the distress was not severe.

He addressed the various factual episodes of alleged extreme and outrageous conduct, stating: With respect to the ... tape recording, it may be a violation of the law, but being a violation of the law does not make the conduct outrageous within the parameters of intentional infliction of emotional distress ... The plaintiff ... taped conversations of other elders without their knowledge ... It is offensive conduct, but offensive conduct is insufficient to rise to the level of outrageousness required ... With regard to the tape ... and the