In a ruling with potentially broad implications for employers, the Washington state Supreme Court has upheld the dismissal of a civil lawsuit brought by a Spokane worker who claimed she developed a stress disorder and quit her job because of an intimidating and verbally abusive boss.


The justices deliberated for more than a year before rendering their 5-3 decision last month in Michelle Snyders suit against Medical Service Corp. of Eastern Washington, now called MSC/Premera Blue Cross. Writing for the majority, Justice Richard B. Sanders said bluntly, There is no duty for an employer to provide employees with a stress-free workplace.


Spokane attorney Keller Allen, who represented MSC, says he believes the ruling was important in clarifying for employers a previously cloudy area of the law regarding potential liability related to workplace stress.


He emphasizes that employees continue to enjoy many workplace protections under the law.


This just doesnt open the door to those kinds of claims where somebody says, I feel like Im stressed today because of my boss, Keller says.


Mellani Hughes, Olympia-based governmental affairs counsel for the Association of Washington Business, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, says she believes the ruling benefits employers partly by making clear that they dont have to transfer distressed workers to different supervisors.


However, Seattle attorney Jeffrey Needle, who wrote a friend-of-the court brief for the Washington Employment Lawyers Association, an organization that represents employees, says hes disappointed because the ruling will make it more difficult for people with psychiatric disabilities to obtain reasonable accommodations when their supervisor is the cause of those psychiatric disabilities.


He says, The fact that the court relied on the Americans with Disabilities Act undermines to some extent the greater protection that is generally available under state law on discrimination, which was one of the points that state Supreme Court Justice Faith Ireland also made in a dissenting opinion.


Here are the facts of the case, as presented in court documents:


Medical Service Corp., one of Eastern Washingtons largest health insurers, hired Snyder as a case manager in January 1996. The conflict arose a few months later after it hired a supervisor for Snyders department who was more than 6 feet tall, weighed 300 pounds, and allegedly used her size to intimidate those around her.


Several employees resigned from MSC shortly after the supervisor arrived there, and some employees described her as an authoritarian, belligerent, and harassing-type supervisor who routinely embarrassed her subordinates in front of their peers.


The events that formed the basis of the litigation occurred in February 1997, when the supervisor called a staff meeting and proposed a push-day, where all employees would work on a Saturday without compensation. Snyder objected, saying she was expecting to spend the weekend with her children. The supervisor, who no longer is employed by MSC, mocked Snyder in front of the group, and Snyder then left the meeting. After the meeting, the supervisor confronted Snyder, poking her in the chest and accusing her of being insubordinate. Snyder went to see her therapist that afternoon and didnt return to the office. She then took several weeks off from work on her doctors recommendation.


Near the end of that leave period, she contacted Halls superior, informing him that she suffered from a post-traumatic stress disorder and wanted to work under somebody else, but her request was turned down. The following month, she took a full-time job with another company. She then sued MSC for handicap discrimination and negligent infliction of emotional distress, among other things.


Spokane County Superior Court Judge Gregory D. Sypolt dismissed the suit on MSCs motion for summary judgment, and the Spokane-based Division III panel of the state Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal. The state Supreme Court then agreed to review the case.


Justice Sanders says MSC didnt have to offer Snyder another job because she didnt tell the company about her alleged disability until shortly before she quit to take a job with another company. Even if Snyder had notified the company earlier, he said, she didnt meet the additional requirement of showing that MSC failed to consider her for some other vacant position for which she was qualified. Nor, he said, did she point to any case under Washingtons law against discrimination or the American Disabilities Act where an employer is required to provide an employee with a new supervisor as a reasonable accommodation to a disability.


Regarding Snyders claim of negligent infliction of emotional stress, Sanders said, Snyder fails to clearly articulate what duty she would have us impose on her employer. He noted that other jurisdictions have found that the emotional-distress tort doesnt exist in the employment context or, if it does, it is severely limited.


Employers, not the courts, are in the best position to determine whether workplace disputes should be resolved by employee counseling, discipline, transfers, terminations, or no action at all, Sanders said.


While such actions undoubtedly are stressful to impacted employees, the courts cannot guarantee a stress-free workplace, he concluded.


In her dissent, Ireland wrote that she believed there were enough factual questions surrounding the mental-disability and emotional-stress claims to warrant reversing the summary dismissal of the suit and remanding the case back to Superior Court for trial.


MSC contends that the facts alleged by Snyder involve nothing more than personality conflicts and workplace disputes. However, a jury could reasonably find that (the supervisors) verbal threats and offensive touching constitute behavior beyond acceptable discipline or the reasonable response to a personality dispute, she said.


Ireland also noted that Snyder suffers from a diagnosed mental disorder that MSC didnt dispute, and for which Snyder had been receiving treatment and taking antidepressants since the late 1980s. She argued that Snyders condition distinguishes her from employees who have simple personality disputes with their supervisors.