Employment: Portsmouth is immune against former city manager’s suit

Where the City of Portsmouth was engaged in a governmental function when it terminated its former city manager, it was entitled to sovereign immunity on her wrongful termination claim.

Background

Angel Jones, former city manager of the City of Portsmouth, challenges the circuit court’s dismissal of her lawsuit against the City for wrongful termination, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of contract.

Sovereign immunity

Sovereign immunity applies to claims against a municipality for gross negligence and intentional torts where the underlying act is a governmental function. Here, the selection and retention of a City’s chief administrative officer is a decision that balances and evaluates the officer’s management success, administration of funds, hirings and retentions as well as her overall performance. And the City’s decision to terminate the city manager was within its authority, and it seems evident that such a decision was political, legislative and discretionary in nature and character.

While Jones plainly challenges the councilmembers’ motivation for her firing, this does not change the fact that a City Council’s vote regarding its satisfaction with the city manager’s performance presents a discretionary and governmental function. Because the City was engaged in a governmental function when it terminated Jones as the city manager, sovereign immunity applies and bars this claim. Accordingly, the circuit court’s judgment dismissing Jones’ wrongful termination claim is affirmed.

IIED

Jones’ allegations of distress do not rise to the level required to state a claim under Virginia law. The acts surrounding the termination are not “so outrageous in character, and 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.”

While Jones contends that the councilmembers put her in difficult and compromising situations, it is her public firing that is the primary source of her substantial public humiliation, embarrassment and her alleged loss of reputation personally and professionally. At bottom, she suggests that during the course of her tenure she suffered public humiliation, ridicule and distress which ultimately required her to seek medical treatment involving anxiety and depression.

Virginia law sets a relatively high bar for stating a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. “[L]iability arises only when the emotional distress is extreme, and only where the distress inflicted is so severe that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it.” The facts here fall short. Accordingly, the circuit court’s ruling sustaining the City’s demurrer as to Jones’ emotional distress claim is affirmed.

Contract

Jones’ assignment of error is deficient because it challenges a ruling (impossibility) never reached by the circuit court, and it also fails to encompass the actual basis (lack of damages) relied upon by the circuit court for sustaining the City’s demurrer on this claim. Jones’ opening brief is replete with argument and authority related to the issue of impossibility, which the circuit court never ruled upon.

But Jones, in her opening brief, provides no argument and no legal authority related to the issue of damages, which was the circuit court’s basis for sustaining the City’s demurrer. As such, Jones’ contract claim is not preserved because she has not appealed the circuit court’s lack of damages ruling.

Affirmed.

Jones v. City of Portsmouth, Record No. 0744-24-1, Aug. 26, 2025. CAV (unpublished opinion) (Friedman). From the Circuit Court of the City of Portsmouth (Smith). Stephen E. Heretick (Louis N. Joynes, II; Stephen E. Heretick, P.C.; Joynes & Gaidies, P.C., on briefs), for appellant. K. Barrett Luxhoj; Deborah Y. Collins (Darius K. Davenport; Crenshaw, Ware & Martin, P.L.C.; Yeng Collins Law, PLLC, on briefs), for appellee. VLW 025-7-229. 22 pp.