Jena McCoy v. Thomas L. Cardella & Associates

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
No. 22–0918
Submitted March 22, 2023—Filed June 16, 2023
JENA McCOY,
Appellee,
vs.
THOMAS L. CARDELLA & ASSOCIATES,
Appellant.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County, Valerie L. Clay,
Judge.
The defendant appeals a jury verdict on the plaintiff’s common law tort
action as preempted by the Iowa Civil Rights Act and the Iowa Workers’
Compensation Act. REVERSED.
Oxley, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all justices joined.
Vernon P. Squires (argued) of Bradley & Riley PC, for appellant.
Marc A. Humphrey (argued) of Humphrey Law Firm, P.C., Des Moines, for
appellee.
2
OXLEY, Justice.
Jena McCoy worked just three months at the new Thomas L. Cardella &
Associates (Cardella) call center in Ottumwa before quitting when she couldn’t
get her team leader to stop making unwanted sexual advances. Two years later,
she sued Cardella. She missed the deadline for bringing a hostile-work-
environment claim under the Iowa Civil Rights Act (ICRA), Iowa Code ch. 216
(2019), so she framed her petition as one for common law negligent supervision
or retention. To avoid Cardella’s pretrial legal challenges that her common law
claim was preempted by either the ICRA or the Iowa Workers’ Compensation Act
(IWCA), Iowa Code ch. 85,1 McCoy shifted, and reshifted, her theory of liability
and related damages, adopting and eschewing aspects from both the ICRA
variant of her claim and the IWCA variant as necessary to form a claim that is
neither quite one nor the other. Successfully avoiding pretrial dismissal, McCoy
presented her claim to the jury seeking emotional distress damages related to
her mental health diagnoses as a negligent supervision claim against Cardella
premised on failing to protect her from assault and battery in the workplace. The
jury awarded her $400,000 in emotional distress damages.
1The parties, and this court’s opinions, have used the term “preemption” synonymously
with the exclusivity principle in the ICRA and IWCA, Iowa Code § 216.16; id. § 85.20. See, e.g.,
Estate of Harris v. Papa John’s Pizza, 679 N.W.2d 673, 681–82 (Iowa 2004). “Preemption” has an
independent legal significance, “traditionally referr[ing] to situations in which federal law
displaces state law, or the law of one level of government displaces the law of another.” Thomas
v. St. Luke’s Health Sys., Inc., 869 F. Supp. 1413, 1438 n.6 (N.D. Iowa 1994). With this
understanding, this opinion will use “preemption” as a shorthand for describing the exclusive
nature of the ICRA and IWCA remedy provisions.
3
We acknowledge the jury’s conclusion that McCoy was harmed by her
experience at Cardella. But she cannot avoid the statutory processes for seeking
redress against her employer by manipulating common law theories to reach the
jury. As presented to the jury, the claim was barred by the IWCA. We therefore
reverse the district court’s denial of Cardella’s motion for judgment
notwithstanding the verdict.
I. Factual Background.
Cardella, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, opened a new call center in
Ottumwa in January 2017. Mark Grego served as the on-site director of the
Ottumwa office, and Samantha Teague was the recruiter. McCoy was hired as
part of the first class of sales representatives at the new center. As a sales
representative, McCoy made phone calls to sell Spectrum phone, internet, and
cable services. John Thompson was hired as a team leader to supervise a group
of sales representatives. McCoy, who was twenty-four years old, was placed on
Thompson’s team. Thompson, who was nearly twenty years older than McCoy
and recently divorced, took an apparent liking to McCoy.
As a supervisor, Thompson spent most of his time walking between the
representatives’ cubicles, stopping to help as needed. He intentionally placed
McCoy’s cubicle within three feet of his desk, which made her feel uncomfortable.
According to McCoy, after her first few weeks of work, Thompson began sitting
next to her in her cubicle, touching her inappropriately and making sexually
charged comments. On at least one occasion, Thompson walked up behind
McCoy and kissed the top of her head, apparently in full view of Grego’s office.
4
On another occasion, Thompson brought McCoy a teddy bear and flowers and
left them in her cubicle. McCoy had her mother come to the office, pick up the
flowers and teddy bear, and throw them away. On several occasions, Thompson
reached around McCoy, apparently to give her a “side hug,” and brushed his arm
across her breasts. When McCoy told Thompson that behavior made her
uncomfortable, he “laugh[ed] it off.” McCoy testified that she never encouraged
this inappropriate conduct from Thompson and told him “No” whenever he
touched her or made sexual comments. Thompson’s inappropriate behavior
continued after he began training McCoy to become a supervisor. Thompson
often asked McCoy—but not his other trainees—to stay late for training, where
he continued the inappropriate conduct. This unwanted contact occurred on at
least twenty occasions over the three months McCoy worked at Cardella.
According to Bonnie Sullivan, another sales representative, it was common
knowledge that Thompson was obsessed with McCoy.
Thompson’s version of the facts differs significantly. According to
Thompson, McCoy asked for his phone number and asked him out. Although he
admits to touching McCoy in the workplace, Thompson claims that he and
McCoy were building toward a relationship until he found out she had a
boyfriend. Thompson asserts that McCoy came on to him with sexual notes and
touching and that she never told him to stop.
McCoy reported Thompson’s inappropriate conduct to Teague in early
March, a couple of weeks after the unwanted touching started. Despite McCoy’s
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report, Thompson remained her supervisor, and the conduct continued. McCoy
continued to reject Thompson’s advances.
Mitch Turner, another team leader, also made inappropriate sexual
comments to McCoy (and other female employees) on several occasions.
According to McCoy, Turner generally made these comments in the locker room
at the end of McCoy’s shift, where he would put his arm up against her locker
so that she felt trapped between his arm and her open locker door. McCoy often
got off work after dark, and she felt unsafe walking to her car because she was
afraid that Turner would act on his sexual innuendos.
McCoy again reported Thompson’s inappropriate touching and sexual
comments to Teague toward the end of April. This time she took Sullivan with
her and also reported Turner’s inappropriate comments. Teague had McCoy tell
her story to Grego, but the only solution they offered was to switch McCoy to
Turner’s team. McCoy made it clear that she could not continue working at
Cardella if no other solution were offered. McCoy quit working at Cardella on
April 25, 2017. Teague and Grego denied that McCoy ever reported inappropriate
behavior by either Thompson or Turner and contended that McCoy quit after she
was a “no call no show” for three consecutive days.
II. Procedural History.
On May 8, 2019, McCoy filed this lawsuit against Cardella, asserting a
single claim of negligent hiring, supervision, and retention of Thompson and
Turner. McCoy alleged she had been constructively discharged, prompted by “the
creation of a hostile and unhealthy sexually charged work environment . . . by
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her trainer and supervisor John Thompson, and also by Mitch Turner.” McCoy
alleged that Cardella was liable for not protecting her from the inappropriate
sexual conduct after she complained to Cardella supervisors, seeking damages
in the form of lost wages and benefits, emotional distress and mental anguish,
and harm to her reputation. Cardella moved to dismiss McCoy’s petition, arguing
that her claim was really a sexual harassment hostile-work-environment claim
and was preempted by the ICRA. Cardella also noted that McCoy could not state
a claim under the ICRA because she had missed the 300-day window for filing
an ICRA charge with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. See Iowa Code
§ 216.15(13). Although not couched as such in her petition, McCoy clarified in
her resistance to the motion to dismiss that her negligence claim was premised
on Cardella’s failure to protect her from conduct amounting to assault and
battery and not necessarily hostile-work-environment discrimination. Relying on
Greenland v. Fairtron Corp., 500 N.W.2d 36, 38–39 (Iowa 1993), where we
reversed the dismissal of assault and battery claims at the motion to dismiss
stage because the ICRA did not necessarily preempt the claims to the extent they
were not bound up in a discrimination complaint, the district court denied the
motion to dismiss, concluding that McCoy’s petition gave Cardella fair notice that
her negligence claim was premised on Thompson’s and Turner’s assaultive
behavior.
On January 6, 2020, Cardella filed a motion for summary judgment,
reprising its ICRA preemption argument and adding a new argument: that
McCoy’s claim for negligent hiring, supervision, and retention premised on a
7
workplace assault and battery is separately barred by the exclusivity provision
of the IWCA. See Iowa Code § 85.20. McCoy did not file a timely workers’
compensation claim with her employer, and Cardella argued she could not
circumvent that process through the common law claim. A different district court
judge denied Cardella’s motion for summary judgment. The court relied on the
prior ruling denying Cardella’s motion to dismiss to reject Cardella’s ICRA
preemption argument. It distinguished our case of Estate of Harris v. Papa John’s
Pizza, 679 N.W.2d 673 (Iowa 2004), where we held that the IWCA precluded a
negligent hiring and supervision claim against the plaintiff’s employer because
it provides the exclusive remedy for injuries to an employee who was assaulted
by his supervisor, to reject Cardella’s IWCA preemption argument.
McCoy’s September 21 trial was continued due to the COVID-19
pandemic, and the case finally went to trial on February 8, 2022. The jury was
asked to answer five special interrogatories: whether Turner committed an
assault; whether Thompson committed an assault; whether Thompson
committed a battery; whether Cardella was negligent in hiring, supervising, or
retaining Turner; and whether Cardella was negligent in hiring, supervising, or
retaining Thompson. The jury found: that Turner did not commit assault; that
Thompson committed both assault and battery; and that Cardella was negligent
in hiring, supervising, or retaining both Thompson and Turner. The jury awarded
McCoy $400,000 for past and future emotional distress damages—the only type
of damages presented to the jury. Cardella reasserted its ICRA and IWCA
preemption arguments by motion for directed verdict before the case was
8
submitted to the jury and by motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict
and for a new trial. The district court declined to revisit those issues and denied
Cardella’s motions.
Cardella appeals, arguing McCoy’s claims are preempted by the ICRA and
the IWCA and raising a number of trial challenges. We retained the appeal.
III. Analysis.
Our review is of the district court’s denial of Cardella’s posttrial motion for
judgment notwithstanding the jury verdict and for a new trial, which we review
to correct legal error. Luigi’s, Inc. v. United Fire & Cas. Co., 959 N.W.2d 401, 406
(Iowa 2021); see also Kiesau v. Bantz, 686 N.W.2d 164, 174 (Iowa 2004) (noting
that the denial of pretrial motions “merges with the trial on the merits where the
trier of fact reviewed the exhibits and listened to the testimony of the witnesses”),
overruled on other grounds by Alcala v. Marriott Int’l, Inc., 880 N.W.2d 699 (Iowa
2016). McCoy’s negligent supervision claim was tried to the jury premised on
Cardella’s failure to protect her from assault and battery in the workplace,
implicating the IWCA.
As explained below, we hold that the district court erred in concluding that
McCoy’s claim was not preempted by the IWCA. Because we reverse the district
court’s ruling on Cardella’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict on
this basis, we do not address ICRA preemption or any of Cardella’s trial-related
challenges. We start our analysis with an overview of the common law tort of
negligent supervision and the relevant provisions of the IWCA.
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A. Common Law Negligent Hiring, Supervision, and Retention. An
employer can be liable for the tortious actions of its employees under a common
law theory of negligent hiring, supervision, or retention when its employee
injures a third party. See Godar v. Edwards, 588 N.W.2d 701, 708–10 (Iowa
1999) (adopting tort of negligent hiring as recognized in other jurisdictions and
extending the reasoning to negligent retention and negligent supervision claims).
The claim is premised on agency principles and imposes on an employer the
“duty to exercise reasonable care in hiring[, supervising, or retaining]
individuals, who, because of their employment, may pose a threat of injury to
members of the public.” Id. at 708–09 (applying Restatement (Second) of Agency
§ 213, at 458 (Am. L. Inst. 1958) [hereinafter Restatement (Second)], and
27 Am. Jur. 2d Employment Relationship § 473, at 913–14 (1996)). Negligent
supervision is only actionable when “the conduct that proper supervision . . .
would have avoided is . . . actionable against the employee.” Schoff v. Combined
Ins. Co. of Am., 604 N.W.2d 43, 53 (Iowa 1999) (“[T]he torts of negligent hiring,
supervision, or training ‘must include as an element an underlying tort or
wrongful act committed by the employee.’ ” (quoting Haverly v. Kaytec, Inc.,
738 A.2d 86, 91 (Vt. 1999))).
We have never affirmatively recognized a viable negligent supervision claim
in favor of a plaintiff suing her own employer based on the wrongful conduct of
a coemployee. In Graves v. Iowa Lakes Community College, we declined to follow
cases from other jurisdictions that had recognized such claims where the
coworker caused a physical injury, unlike the issue in Graves, which involved a
10
claim of negligent supervision premised on fabricated performance reviews by
the plaintiff’s supervisor that allegedly resulted in the wrongful termination of
the plaintiff. 639 N.W.2d 22, 25 (Iowa 2002) (“Because Graves does not assert
any physical injury it is unnecessary for us to decide whether a negligent
supervision claim is available to a fellow employee.”), overruled by Kiesau,
686 N.W.2d 164. While we later clarified in Kiesau v. Bantz that there is no
physical-injury predicate for negligent supervision claims generally, see 686
N.W.2d at 172–73 (concluding that a physical-injury requirement was contrary
to Restatement (Second) section 213, upon which the tort was premised and led
to absurd distinctions); that case involved a claim by a former employee premised
on events that postdated her employment, see id. (addressing negligent
supervision claim premised on defamation and invasion of privacy allegations
against a former coemployee who distributed digitally-altered photos of the
plaintiff after she had quit for unrelated reasons). Focused on the challenge to
the physical-injury requirement, we held only that the plaintiff made out a viable
negligent supervision or retention claim against her former employer regardless
of whether she sought physical-injury damages. Id. at 173–74. But we did not
address the impact, if any, of the plaintiff’s status as a former employee on her
negligent supervision or retention claims. See id.We more expressly avoided the issue of whether negligent supervision
extends to coemployees in Harris, where we held that any such claim was
preempted by the IWCA in any event. See 679 N.W.2d at 679–82 (“We did not
comment favorably [in Graves] upon the fact other courts had extended the tort;
11
we simply recognized three other courts had so extended it. In any event, Graves
is distinguishable because there we did not decide whether, if the tort of negligent
supervision were to cover fellow employees, the exclusivity provision of the IWCA
would bar a common law recovery.”). Although some federal courts have
recognized a negligent supervision claim under Iowa law in the coworker setting,
see, e.g., Stricker v. Cessford Constr. Co., 179 F. Supp. 2d 987, 1017–19 (N.D.
Iowa 2001) (denying defendant’s motion for summary judgment on plaintiff’s
negligent supervision and retention claims, brought together with Federal Title
VII and ICRA claims, against plaintiff’s employer premised on allegations that
plaintiff’s coworker engaged in sexual behavior amounting to assault and
battery), others have avoided the issue by finding the claim preempted, similar
to what we did in Harris, see, e.g., Graham v. Drake Univ., No. 4:16–cv–00648,
2018 WL 11417566, at *5 (S.D. Iowa Feb. 21, 2018) (dismissing negligent
supervision or retention claim as precluded by the ICRA where “[a]ll of the
wrongful acts that Graham alleges are discrimination, harassment, and
retaliation relating to Graham’s sexual orientation and ADHD disability”).
B. Iowa Workers’ Compensation Act Liability. The IWCA provides
statutory compensation for employees injured in the workplace. The workers’
compensation “system provides mutual benefits and tradeoffs for workers and
employers. Workers relinquish their right to sue the employer for damages on
the condition that the employer promptly compensates workers for injuries that
arise out of and in the course of employment regardless of fault.” Tripp v. Scott
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Emergency Commc’n Ctr., 977 N.W.2d 459, 464 (Iowa 2022) (citation omitted).
That trade-off is reflected in Iowa Code section 85.3(1), which provides:
Every employer . . . shall provide, secure, and pay compensation . . .
for any and all personal injuries sustained by an employee arising
out of and in the course of the employment, and in such cases, the
employer shall be relieved from other liability for recovery of
damages or other compensation for such personal injury.
Benefits recoverable under the IWCA provide the employee’s exclusive
remedy against her employer for workplace injuries:
The rights and remedies provided in this chapter . . . for an employee
. . . on account of injury . . . for which benefits under this chapter
. . . are recoverable, shall be the exclusive and only rights and
remedies of the employee[,] . . . at common law or otherwise, on
account of such injury . . . [a]gainst the employee’s employer.
Iowa Code § 85.20. When an employee is injured by the tortious acts of another
employee at work, the workers’ compensation exclusivity rule precludes the
injured employee from bringing a common law tort action against the employer
for the resulting injuries, even when the coemployee’s conduct is intentional. See
Nelson v. Winnebago Indus., Inc., 619 N.W.2d 385, 387 (Iowa 2000) (en banc)
(describing the “general rule” that an employer is not liable at common law for
the intentional torts of its supervisory employees causing injury to another
employee unless the supervisor is “the employer in person [or] a person who is
realistically the alter ego of the corporation” (quoting 2A Arthur Larson & Lex K.
Larson, The Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 68.21(a), at 13–133 (1994)
[hereinafter Larson, Law of Workmen’s Compensation])). To the employer, an
intentional tort by one employee against another “is just one more industrial
mishap in the factory, of the sort he has a right to consider exclusively covered
13
by the compensation system.” Id. at 387–88 (quoting 2A Larson, Law of
Workmen’s Compensation § 68.21(b), at 13–123).
This exclusivity rule applies to claims for negligent supervision or retention
by the employer. In Harris, we saw “no reason to carve out an exception to the
general rule of preemption” for a negligent supervision claim premised on failing
to protect an employee when his supervisor gave him a “chest shot”2 after the
employee informed a coemployee that the supervisor was sleeping with a
subordinate, which was against company policy. 679 N.W.2d at 681–82. “A
corporation’s negligent failure to prevent an assault on the plaintiff employee is
clearly within the boundaries of the workers’ compensation act, and therefore
cannot form the basis for a suit in tort. In the same vein, actions for negligent
hiring, negligent supervision, or negligent retention are barred by the exclusivity
provision.” Id. at 681 (quoting 6 Arthur Larson & Lex K. Larson, Larson’s
Workers’ Compensation Law § 103.07 (2003)).
An employee’s injury “arises out of and in the course of employment,” as
is required by section 85.3(1) for the injury to be covered by workers’
compensation, if “ ‘there is a causal connection between the employment and the
injury’ and ‘the injury and the employment coincide[d] as to time, place, and
circumstances.’ ” Id. at 680 (quoting Thayer v. State, 653 N.W.2d 595, 599–600
(Iowa 2002)). In Harris, it was enough to meet this test where the incident
2The employee apparently agreed to take a “chest shot,” or a punch to the chest, as a way
to regain his supervisor’s trust and redeem their friendship after the supervisor confronted him
about telling an assistant manager about the supervisor’s indiscretions. Harris, 679 N.W.2d at675–76. The employee “braced for impact, [the supervisor] punched him in the chest,” and the
employee “suffered a cardiac arrhythmia, collapsed, and died.” Id. at 676.
14
occurred at Harris’s workplace, his manager summoned him to discuss a work-
related issue, and the manager was working at the time he gave Harris the chest
shot. Id. at 681.
C. Application to This Case. With this background, we turn to Cardella’s
argument that McCoy’s common law claim is preempted by the IWCA. Under the
Harris test, McCoy’s injuries arose out of and in the course of her employment
with Cardella. See id. at 680–81. The assault and battery occurred at her
workplace, perpetrated by her team leader throughout the workday. Still, the
IWCA exclusivity provision does not preclude a common law claim if the claimed
“injuries fall outside the workers’ compensation law.” Nelson, 619 N.W.2d at 388.
That determination turns on the plaintiff’s claimed damages, not the framing of
her tort. In Nelson v. Winnebago Industries, Inc., an employee was injured after
a going away party when his coworkers duct-taped him to a chair, picked him
up, and then dropped him while carrying him to a shower. Id. at 386. He
subsequently sued his employer, asserting common law claims of false
imprisonment and battery. Id. at 387. While both torts could be committed
without a physical injury that would be compensable under workers’
compensation, “that [wa]s not the gist of his suit.” Id. at 389. Regardless of how
he framed his claims, we looked to the plaintiff’s claimed damages to determine
whether the common law claims were subject to the IWCA exclusivity provisions.
Id. (noting the plaintiff sought damages for “serious and permanent personal
injuries, mental pain, and mental distress”). We adopted the following distinction
recognized by Professor Larson:
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[I]f the essence of the tort, in law, is non-physical, and if the injuries
are of the usual non-physical sort, with physical injury being at most
added to the list of injuries as a makeweight, the suit should not be
barred. But if the essence of the action is recovery for physical injury
or death, including in “physical” the kinds of mental or nervous injury
that cause disability, the action should be barred even if it can be
cast in the form of a normally non-physical tort.
Id. (quoting 2A Larson, Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 68.34(a), at 13–180).
On appeal, McCoy essentially asks us to adopt the reasoning of the district
court’s summary judgment ruling, where the court concluded that IWCA
preemption did not apply because McCoy was not claiming that Cardella had a
duty to prevent the assaults but had a duty to respond to her complaints. This
brings us back to the problem with McCoy’s shifting positions throughout the
course of the litigation. “After a trial on the merits, a court’s decision to deny a
motion for summary judgment merges with the trial.” Figley v. W.S. Indus.,
801 N.W.2d 602, 607 & n.4 (Iowa Ct. App. 2011). McCoy avoided summary
judgment by recharacterizing her claim as one premised not on preventing
injuries caused by an assault, but on damages from Cardella’s own negligent
response to her complaints. Yet when McCoy’s case went to trial, her claim
shifted back. The jury instructions equated negligently supervising an employee
who committed assault or battery with “failing to protect McCoy from the” assault
or battery—the position McCoy disclaimed at summary judgment.3
3The jury instructions also tied damages to the assault and battery, both in instructing
on negligent supervision and in instructing on the underlying assault and battery torts. Jury
Instruction No. 10, the marshaling instruction for negligent hiring, supervision, or retention,
included as an element that “John Thompson and/or Mitch Turner’s dangerous characteristics
were a cause of damage to McCoy” and that one or both of them “committed an assault or battery
against McCoy, as explained in instructions Nos. 11 and 13.” Each of those instructions included
as elements of assault or battery, respectively, that “[t]he act caused McCoy’s damage” and “[t]he
amount of damage.”
16
Not only did McCoy’s theory change, so too did her claimed damages. Here
again, McCoy argues only that we should follow the district court’s lead when it
denied summary judgment. But the damages presented to the district court on
summary judgment were very different than the damages presented to the jury.
In resistance to Cardella’s motion for summary judgment, McCoy pointed to her
damages claims for lost wages and benefits, harm to her reputation, and mental
anguish—all purportedly caused by Cardella’s callous response, not the
underlying assault and battery. These nonphysical damages convinced the
district court to reject Cardella’s IWCA preemption argument on summary
judgment because they were unavailable under the IWCA. See Nelson,
619 N.W.2d at 389 (“[I]f the essence of the tort, in law, is non-physical, and if the
injuries are of the usual non-physical sort, with physical injury being at most
added to the list of injuries as a makeweight, the suit should not be barred.”
(quoting 2A Larson, Law of Workmen’s Compensation § 68.34(a), at 13–180)).
But the only evidence of damages submitted to the jury were those related
to her mental health diagnoses. McCoy’s mental health counselor, Kara Crain,
testified that the events at Cardella were a cause of McCoy’s diagnoses of post-
traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety and that the
events also exacerbated those diagnoses along with her diagnosis of major
depression. McCoy does not dispute that these mental health injuries—which
formed the sole basis for the jury’s $400,000 award for past and future emotional
distress—are compensable under the IWCA as physical injuries. The specific
events that caused these injuries were identified in McCoy’s counsel’s
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hypothetical presented to Crain as follows: unwanted touching and
inappropriate comments with a sexual overtone from her supervisor, Thompson,
which occurred more than twenty times and continued despite McCoy
consistently asking him to stop and twice complaining to management, as well
as being subjected to inappropriate comments from another supervisor, all of
which led McCoy to quit her job. Thus, the gist of McCoy’s lawsuit, as tried to
the jury, was recovery of mental health injuries caused by Cardella’s failure to
protect her from injuries caused by assault and battery in the workplace; in other
words, physical injuries under the IWCA. Therefore, her common law claim is
subject to the exclusivity provisions of, and barred by, the IWCA. See id. (“[I]f the
essence of the action is recovery for physical injury . . . , including in ‘physical’
the kinds of mental or nervous injury that cause disability, the action should be
barred even if it can be cast in the form of a normally non-physical tort.”
(emphasis omitted) (quoting 2A Larson, Law of Workmen’s Compensation
§ 68.34(a), at 13–180)); see also id. (“In Iowa purely mental injuries caused by
the workplace, even in the absence of a physical injury, are compensable under
workers’ compensation.”); Dunlavey v. Econ. Fire & Cas. Co., 526 N.W.2d 845,
846 (Iowa 1995) (holding that personal injuries under Iowa Code section 85.3(1)
encompass pure and nontraumatic mental injuries).4
4McCoy’s attempt to rely on Delgado-Zuniga v. Dickey & Campbell Law Firm, P.L.C., No.
17–0099, 2017 WL 4050285 (Iowa Ct. App. Sept. 13, 2017), from the court of appeals proves too
much. Initially, we note that Delgado-Zuniga does not stand for the proposition that if the facts
give rise to an ICRA claim, then they cannot support an IWCA claim. Rather, the court of appeals
recognized only that where the employee chose to pursue an ICRA claim and relied on the very
same facts to also pursue an IWCA claim—to the point that there is only one circle in the Venn
diagram of the two claims—then the employee’s election of remedies under the ICRA precluded
his claim for benefits under the IWCA. See id. at *4. We have recognized that there may be
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D. The Willful Act, or “Imported Quarrel,” Bar to Workers’
Compensation Benefits Under Iowa Code Section 85.16(3). Finally, we reject
McCoy’s reliance on Iowa Code section 85.16(3) to argue that the IWCA does not
preclude her common law claim. Section 85.16(3) bars a claim for workers’
compensation benefits when the plaintiff’s injury is caused by “the willful act of
a third party directed against the employee for reasons personal to such
employee.” Iowa Code § 85.16(3). This bar does not apply, as McCoy argues, to
every injury caused by the willful act of another. Rather, the focus is on the final
phrase, barring compensation only for those injuries caused by willful acts
directed at the injured employee “for reasons personal to such employee.” Id.In Xenia Rural Water District v. Vegors, we rejected an employer’s argument
that an injury stemming from alleged horseplay between coemployees brought
the injury within section 85.16(3)’s exception. 786 N.W.2d 250, 257–59 (Iowa
2010). We explained that “the purpose of [section 85.16(3)] was to prohibit
compensation where the injury stems from a personal dispute or animosity
stemming from the injured employee’s life outside of work that is not caused or
exacerbated by the employment”—hence the “imported-quarrel” nickname for the
instances where an employee can pursue claims under both the ICRA and the IWCA. See, e.g.,
Baird v. Ottumwa Cmty. Sch. Dist., 551 N.W.2d 874, 876 (Iowa 1996) (reversing summary
judgment on employee’s challenge to the denial of workers’ compensation benefits after she
settled her ICRA claim, explaining: “It is manifest that not all circumstances that would create a
compensable [IWCA] claim for emotional distress benefits under our decision in Dunlavey v.
Economy Fire & Casualty Co., 526 N.W.2d 845, 851 (Iowa 1995), would give rise to a sexual
discrimination claim under section 601A.6.”). As relevant to McCoy’s reliance on Delgado-Zuniga
in this case, her recognition that she could have filed an ICRA claim but for missing the 300-day
cutoff for filing a charge reveals that her claim, as pleaded, was likely barred by the ICRA. But
because her claim, as tried, was affirmatively preempted by the IWCA, we need not address that
issue.
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exception. Id. at 258–59 (emphases added) (quoting 1 Arthur Larson & Lex K.
Larson, Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law § 8.02, at 8–43 (2009)). Because
there was “no evidence in the record that [the coemployees] had any relationship
outside of work other than as coworkers or that [the injurious action was
prompted by] any reason imported from outside the working environment,” the
section 85.16(3) exception was inapplicable. Id. at 259.
If McCoy’s claims are premised on an injury stemming from Thompson’s
conduct (as she asserts in arguing the section 85.16(3) exception on appeal),
Xenia’s clear explanation shows that her claim would not be barred by section
85.16(3): McCoy only knew Thompson through her employment at Cardella, so
his conduct could not have been “based on a personal relationship outside the
working environment.” Id. If McCoy’s claims are premised on an injury stemming
from Cardella’s own negligence—either in failing to prevent the assaults (as the
jury was instructed) or in failing to respond to her complaints (as the district
court characterized the claim in its summary judgment ruling)—then the injury
was not caused by “a third party,” Iowa Code § 85.16(3), and the exception is
again inapplicable, see Knutson v. Sioux Tools, Inc., 990 F. Supp. 1114, 1124 n.2
(N.D. Iowa 1998) (“The court does not agree that a claim of failure to provide a
safe workplace arising from an assault in the workplace . . . could fall within
[section 85.16(3)’s exception]. The ‘wrong’ upon which the claim is based is not
the ‘wrong’ of injury by a co-employee or third party perpetrating the assault,
but the ‘wrong’ of the employer in failing to prevent the assault. Thus, only the
employer’s conduct, not that of the third party or co-employee guilty of the actual
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assault, should ever be at issue on such a claim.” (citations omitted)). In either
case, Iowa Code section 85.16(3) does not apply.
IV. Conclusion.
As tried, McCoy’s claim of negligent supervision for failure to protect her
from Thompson’s assault and battery in the workplace, resulting in emotional
distress injuries, was barred by the exclusivity provisions of the Iowa Workers’
Compensation Act. The district court’s order denying judgment notwithstanding
the verdict is reversed, and the case is remanded for entry of judgment for the
defendant.
REVERSED.