## Facts

- Julia Slocum was a customer in a grocery store operated by Food Fair Stores of Florida, Inc.
- Slocum asked a store employee the price of an item he was marking.
- The employee responded with an insulting remark directed at Slocum personally, including “you stink to me.”
- Slocum alleged the remark was made maliciously or with gross recklessness, intending to cause serious mental and emotional disturbance.
- She alleged severe emotional distress, followed by a heart attack and aggravation of preexisting heart disease.
- Slocum and her husband sued for damages; the trial court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a cause of action.

## Issues

1. Whether insulting language by a store employee, without physical contact or a traditional tort, can state an independent tort claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
2. Whether the alleged remark was sufficiently extreme and outrageous, under an objective standard, to be actionable.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal for failure to state a cause of action.
- The court assumed arguendo that an independent tort for intentional infliction of emotional distress could exist, but held the alleged conduct did not meet the required threshold.
- The employee’s remark, though rude and offensive, was not “extreme and outrageous” enough to be actionable.
- Because the underlying conduct was not actionable, the alleged physical consequences (heart attack and aggravated heart condition) could not supply liability.

## Legal Principles

- Liability for intentional infliction of emotional distress requires conduct so extreme and outrageous as to exceed all bounds of decency tolerated in a civilized community.
- “Mere insults” and abusive language are generally not actionable absent conduct reasonably certain to cause, and that does cause, severe emotional distress.
- Outrageousness is evaluated objectively by the effect the conduct would have on a person of ordinary sensibilities, not a particularly sensitive individual.
- Severe emotional distress and derivative physical injury do not create a cause of action when the defendant’s alleged conduct is not independently tortious.

## Conclusion

Florida’s Supreme Court held that a store clerk’s “garden-variety” insult to a customer, even if alleged to have caused severe emotional upset and subsequent physical injury, did not constitute the kind of extreme and outrageous conduct required for an independent intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, so dismissal was proper.


Slocum v. Food Fair Stores of Fla., Inc., 100 So. 2d 396 (Fla. 1958)