describing requirements for employer vicariously liability for employee driving a work vehicle, including employer authorization to use vehicle, acts undertaken within scope of employment, and ability to exercise control of the vehicle’s operation
How later courts described this case
- describing requirements for employer vicariously liability for employee driving a work vehicle, including employer authorization to use vehicle, acts undertaken within scope of employment, and ability to exercise control of the vehicle’s operation
- noting that in order to be vicariously liable an employer must have “the right to control the servant in [the vehicle’s] operation .... ”
- discussing requirements for employer to be held vicariously liable in automobile context
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Germain v. Norris, 536 F. Supp. 2d 585 (2008)
26 A.2d 418, is inapposite because the employer in that case did not authorize the employee to use his vehicle or have any control over it.
The opinion
BOND, C. J.,
delivered the following dissenting opinion in No. 18:
In my view Downs was merely a servant of the corporation; however, he may have been called an agent.
There being no agreement or direction from the employer restricting the means to be used by him in his work, any usual or suitable means was authorized, and its use was within the scope of Downs’ employment. In that situation his use of an automobile was analogous to a use of his own legs.
The American Law Institute Restatement, Agency, Sec. 239, gives the rule in a comment: “If the master directs a servant to accomplish the result and does not specify the means to be used, the servant is authorized to employ any usual or suitable means.” And an illustration given is: “P employs A a messenger boy, giving no instructions as to means of locomotion. A’s use of his own bicycle in delivering messages is within the scope of employment.”
These considerations lead me to vote for a reversal in the first appeal.