## Facts

- A farm wife alleged she was in fair health before suffering inflammatory rheumatism that left her weakened but improving.
- While her husband was away, a neighboring landowner telephoned her about the husband’s cattle allegedly being loose.
- The caller allegedly used angry, profane, and threatening language, ordered her to take charge of the cattle, and indicated he would come to her home to “avenge” the situation.
- The wife alleged the call caused humiliation, fright, nervous shock, relapse, bodily pain, mental anguish, and permanent disability.
- She sued for damages for bodily pain and mental anguish resulting from humiliation and shock caused by the telephone call.

## Issues

1. Whether angry, threatening, and profane language conveyed by telephone, without physical contact or an immediate physical approach, constitutes an actionable assault (or its equivalent).
2. Whether a plaintiff may recover for bodily injury and mental suffering allegedly caused by humiliation, fright, and nervous shock produced solely by abusive and threatening words.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Iowa affirmed judgment for the defendant.
- The court held the petition failed to state a cause of action.
- Telephonic threats and abusive words alone were not an actionable assault.
- The alleged injuries and damages were treated as speculative and remote in the absence of an independently actionable tort.

## Legal Principles

- Assault requires more than insulting or threatening words; it requires conduct creating a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact.
- Threats of future action, communicated without an overt act indicating immediate execution, do not satisfy the immediacy required for assault.
- At common law (as applied here), there is no stand-alone basis to recover for emotional disturbance and resulting physical illness where the defendant’s conduct consists only of abusive language and no recognized tort is otherwise shown.
- On demurrer, even accepting pleaded facts as true, a petition must allege a legally cognizable wrong; otherwise the claimed consequential damages are not recoverable.

## Conclusion

The court refused to treat abusive and threatening language over the telephone as an assault and declined to allow recovery for shock-related physical and emotional injuries where the alleged misconduct consisted only of words without an act creating imminent harm.


Kramer v. Ricksmeier, 139 N.W. 1091 (Iowa 1913)