Does this sound outrageous to you?

The owner of a luxury hotel in Miami Beach lures the on-duty desk clerk to his suite at 2:45am, ostensibly to deliver some silverware. He tells her the door will be left unlocked for her. When she arrives, the boss calls her into the bedroom to see him naked on the bed, getting a blow job from another woman. Whereupon, the boss invites her to touch the other woman. She declines and retreats into the other part of the suite to talk to them through the door. The boss asks again if she wants to watch them have sex. When she insists on leaving the boss insists that she summon the hotel security guard to come watch and/or videotape them. The clerk reports the incident to the manager, who takes no action. A few days later she quits her job, telling her superiors that she no longer feels safe around her boss--which is understandable considering she's sometimes expected to spend the night alone with him and the security guard in the empty hotel.

Florida judge Federico A. Moreno ruled that the boss, Peter T. Loftin owner of the Casa Casuarina, did not intentionally inflict emotional distress upon the clerk, Christelle Hamon--because he only did it one time! (.pdf)

The judge allowed Hamron's charges of sexual harassment and creating hostile work environment to stand. However, he ruled that even if Loftin propositioned this woman for group sex on the job in the middle of the night, his behavior simply wasn't outrageous enough to count as intentional infliction of emotional distress.

According to the ruling, intentional infliction of emotional distress has four necessary criteria, (i) intentional or reckless conduct by the defendant; (ii) outrageous conduct; (iii) emotional distress to the victim; and (iv) severe emotional distress. It wasn't relevant to the judge whether Loftin meant to hurt or humiliate the woman when he engineered this non-consensual encounter.

So, according to the complaint, which the judge must take at face value for the purposes of ruling on whether certain claims should be thrown out, the boss tricked an employee into walking in on him in flagrante delicto and propositioned her for group sex. So, that takes care of "intentional and reckless." Hamon was unexpectedly forced to see her boss having sex and forced to field his crude propositions. That's emotionally distressing. She was upset enough to report the incident right away, and she cited her discomfort as the reason for quitting her job a few days later. Severe emotional distress: check.

That leaves "outrageous" criterion. The judge wrote that, according to a standard endorsed by the Florida Supreme Court, the behavior would have to be "so outrageous in character, 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. Generally the case is one in which the recitation of the facts to an average member of the community would arouse his resentment against the action and lead him to exclaim, "Outrageous!"

Sounds like a slam dunk for the plaintiff.

According to the judge, the Florida courts have previously limited IIOED charges to employers who repeatedly physically and emotionally abused their employees, e.g., bosses who repeatedly grope their underlings against their will. The law doesn't specifically say that the misbehavior has to be repeated or physical--that's just how the courts have ruled in other cases. But as the judge acknowledged in his decision, this case is very unusual.

The judge made a big deal out of the fact that the incident lasted less than three minutes and that the plaintiff spent most of that time behind a wall where she didn't have to look at her boss having sex. Finally, he decreed that since the incident took place in a hotel "after hours" in the boss's suite, it was less egregious than if an employer tried to manipulate an employee into group sex at an office or a factory. What does the setting have to do with the outrage factor? Sure, consensual sex is a common and socially acceptable hotel room activity. That doesn't make it any more acceptable to lure an employee into a sex trap in a hotel room than it would be to lure her into a supply closet.

Besides, it wasn't "after hours" for the plaintiff. She was on the clock, working for the hotel her boss owned.

There's nothing inherently outrageous or immoral about inviting a fellow adult for group sex, per se. However, tricking any unsuspecting stranger into walking in on you having sex is morally reprehensible--especially if this is a manipulative strategy to pressure them into joining. Pressuring an employee to have group sex on the job takes the incident to a whole new moral low. 

Where's Gloria Allred when you need her?

[Photo credit: flickr user rumpleteaser, licensed under Creative Commons.]