The United States District Court for the District of Hawaii granted individual defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings as to a County of Kauai coworker's whistleblower claim against them. The employee, who worked as a Water Safety officer, alleged that he was subjected to retaliatory harassment after making several internal reports of employee gas theft, drug use and time card falsification. The employee alleged that false misconduct complaints and disciplinary proceedings were brought against him after his reports were made. These proceedings resulted in multiple suspensions or leaves without pay.
The employee filed suit alleging that his employer and three individual defendants (the plaintiff's supervisors) engaged in retaliation in violation of the U.S. and Hawaii Constitutions, violated the Hawaii Whistleblowers Protection Act (HWPA), and intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon him. The individual defendants filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings on the claims against them, which the court granted in part and denied in part.
As to the employee's claim that the individual defendants retaliated against him in violation of HWPA, the court held that such claim could not be brought against employees in their individual capacities. In so doing, the court cited the Hawaii District Court's holding in Onodera v. Kuhio Motors Inc., 2014 WL 1031039 (D. Haw. Mar. 13, 2014) that the preclusion of individual liability under Haw. Rev. Stat. 378-2 established by the Hawaii Supreme Court in Lales v. Wholesale Motors Co., 133 Hawai?i 332, 328 P.3d 341 (2014) likewise extends to claims brought under HWPA.
As to the employee's claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, while the court concluded that the Workers' Compensation Act does not bar the employee for bringing this claim, the court reasoned that claim failed to plead any conduct that was sufficiently "outrageousness" to state an IIED claim.
To state a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, an employee must show 1) that the act allegedly causing the harm was intentional or reckless, 2) that the act was outrageous, and 3) that the act caused 4) extreme emotional distress to another. In concluding that the employee failed to show that the named defendants engaged in outrageous conduct, the court noted that the employee's allegations that the individual defendants "targeted, conspired, harassed, and disciplined him in retaliation for his reports of improper conduct by coworkers are not ?so outrageous in character as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.'" (Citation omitted).
Instead of granting judgment on the pleadings as to the IIED claim, however, the court gave the employee leave to amend the complaint to provide additional allegations to support his contention that the individual defendants subjected him to intentional infliction of emotional distress. Ragasa v. County of Kauai