Case Title: Evans v. ALLEN AUTO RENTAL, ETC.

Citation: 555 S.W.2d 325

Docket Number: 59887

State: missouri

Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Date: 1977-09-12T00:00:00Z

Document:
555 S.W.2d 325 (1977)
Kevin E. EVANS, Respondent,
v.
ALLEN AUTO RENTAL AND TRUCK LEASING, INC., Appellant.
No. 59887.

Supreme Court of Missouri, En Banc.
September 12, 1977.
Max W. Foust, Kansas City, for Kevin E. Evans, respondent.
Roy A. Larson and Laurence R. Tucker, Morris, Larson, King, Stamper & Bold, Kansas City, for Allen Auto Rental & Truck Leasing, Inc., appellant.
DONNELLY, Judge.
This is a "negligent entrustment" case.
In June, 1972, Allen Auto Rental leased a pickup truck to Bruce E. Conrad. On October 2, 1972, Conrad, while operating the truck leased to him by Allen Auto Rental, collided with a motorcycle on which Kevin E. Evans was a passenger. Evans sued Conrad and Allen Auto Rental and obtained a judgment in the amount of $137,500 against Conrad and Allen Auto Rental. Allen Auto Rental appealed to the Kansas City District of the Court of Appeals where the judgment was affirmed. The cause was then transferred to this Court by this Court and will be decided here "the same as on original appeal." Mo.Const. Art. V, § 10.
In Bell v. Green, 423 S.W.2d 724, 732 (Mo.banc 1968), this Court spoke of "negligent entrustment" as follows:
In 2 Restatement, Law of Torts, Second, § 390, it is stated:
In Woods, Negligent Entrustment, Evaluation of Frequently Overlooked Source of Additional Liability, 20 Arkansas Law Review 101, 102 (1966), the following are said to be necessary ingredients in an entrustment case:
We have reviewed the above, and other authorities, and now conclude and hold that the essential elements which must be shown in order to invoke the doctrine of "negligent entrustment" are:
(1) that the entrustee is incompetent by reason of age, inexperience, habitual recklessness or otherwise;
(2) that the entrustor knew or had reason to know of the entrustee's incompetence;
(3) that there was an entrustment of the chattel; and
(4) that the negligence of the entrustor concurred with the conduct of the entrustee as a proximate cause of the harm to plaintiff.
Plaintiff's Instruction No. 2 reads as follows:
We hold that the case must be reversed and remanded because Instruction No. 2, a verdict-directing instruction, failed to require a finding of "all essential fact issues necessary to establish the legal proposition on which the right to the verdict is based." Fitzpatrick v. Ford, 372 S.W.2d 844, 849 (Mo.1963).
The instruction is prejudicially erroneous because it failed to require a finding that at the time Allen Auto Rental leased the truck to Conrad, Conrad was not competent to drive the truck. Proof of the *327 entrustee's incompetence is essential to establish liability under the doctrine of "negligent entrustment." Saunders v. Prue, 235 Mo.App. 1245, 151 S.W.2d 478, 483 (1941); Leone v. Doran, 363 Mass. 1, 292 N.E.2d 19, 28 (1973); McCarty v. Purser, 379 S.W.2d 291, 294 (Tex.1964).
The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.
HENLEY, RENDLEN and SEILER, JJ., and HOUSER and McMILLIAN, Special Justices, concur.
BARDGETT, J., concurs in separate concurring opinion filed.
MORGAN, C. J., and FINCH, J., not sitting.
BARDGETT, Judge, concurring.
I concur in the principal opinion but desire to state that, in my view, the plaintiff does not necessarily make a submissible case of negligent entrustment of an automobile merely upon a showing of prior accidents or prior convictions of motor vehicle offenses or prior suspensions and revocations of his driver's license and knowledge of the same by the entrustor, if, at the time of the lease, the entrustee is legally entitled to operate the automobile upon the public streets of Missouri.