actually it's our position your honor that the arson was a means to personally ensure that so the destruction of the property was not the end of the tour it was the way the so they wanted to harm you if yes they burned their houses down in order to prevent our clients from moving into the neighborhood the words black jokesters were spray painted on the the district court made a finding that there was more than sufficient evidence of racial animus claims against the individual defendants for infliction intentional infliction of emotional distress were going to the jury the individual defendants all eventually pled out but there is enough there to go to the jury on the intentional targeting of my clients to cost them emotional injury  executed sales agreements with all of my clients at the time the arson occurred but our position again is that the property interest is a bit of a red herring here the maryland has i want to know about ok well it's at the beginning of the second  well i think you could argue they had an incoherent property interest in the sense that they had an agreement to buy they have at least five percent sometimes more in escrow and it would have been executed  you know timely if the houses had not been destroyed it was postponed but the issue here is not only the destruction of the homes the homes have been rebuilt but the emotional scars and trauma  remain and then using the very phrase conducting the business of the agency that the common law rejects as too broad for scope of employment liability maryland security guard act conditions agency receipt of a license to operate a security guard agency upon receipt of a heightened responsibility for employee conduct and it makes sense because the facts here well demonstrate security guards that are put in a position to protect the heart no it did not your honor and i think there's a few critical missteps in the district court's decision on that point as well as in my friends and alice of the question first of  all there is one certainty here that if you look at the common law cases the phrase conducting the business of the agency does not equate to scope of employment liability the big issue right that is the issue whether read conducting the business of the agency or that it read it read let me give you the exact quote because i don't want to  the holder of any licenses issued under the provisions of this subsection may employ to assist him in his work and conduct of his business as many persons as he may deem necessary and she and he shall at all times during such employment be accountable for the good conduct in the business of each and every person so employed and then at the end of that section and it goes on to say the employer shall be responsible for the actions and conduct of all ploys in connection with such employer's business six they changed to conducting the business of the agency at the time where the courts in other jurisdictions were beginning to divide and some courts were reading this good conduct in our language is narrowing liability the maryland legislature changes it to this more open ended phrase conducting the business of the agency and which the common law cases scope of employment cases say the simple test for determining whether an employer is liable under scope of employment is not whether the employee is conducting the master's business but whether the employees acting in furtherance of the master's interest or to active actuate his purpose and what the district court did was conflate conducting of action well employers with a duty to protect and this is cases like henley kramer evidence that are all cited are proof that the duty to protect of an employer in this line of work extends to members of the public that the employee is reasonably likely to come into contact with and here the home buyers are are more than random members of the public they are business invitees of the developer the regularly on site and under the common law it you know my friend on the other side makes it seem like the statute is a drastic expansion and departure from the common law but these sorts of non d quite common in the common law in exactly these sorts of situations where an employer has a duty to protect people that its employees are likely to come into contact with from harm  in the stewart warner case and in the simmons case which are the other cases that have interpreted the statute the way we proposed the maryland statute be interpreted there was also clear evidence of employer breach as  have so we have direct negligence counts here as well but the point of the statute and the point of allowing this shortcut if you will is that it's appropriate in this highly regulated  age injury where it's a protective service and where the risk of the public of employee harm is exceptionally great impose this kind of liability where if a bad act occurs it's the employer's  responsibility to compensate and that's part of the cost of business and it's meant to ensure that the employer takes every precaution against allowing these things to happen which obviously was not done here in which pled a walsh who is the ringleader was convicted after a jury trial and is in the midst of serving a twenty year sentence everybody agrees with that and judge williams agreed with that yeah i think it is is it is and you're still interested in that we would be delighted to have you reversed that right because we think we're in the or do you all lay out what they would be is that somewhere in yours record what this but supposed questions would be we have been in our motion to certify we proposed one version of a certified the answer to this question if there is a proper question these to be answered properly to be answered properly it needs to be framed properly ok if there are more than one question they need to be framed properly so we are there to the court if they want to yes we agree absolutely and i think the one thing you can't do is a for when maryland law is open on this point and the ruling below effectively reads the statute out of any meaningful existence by saying it does yeah and doesn't advantage of on the job opportunities so speed while he was exercising his authority to let people in or not let in the coconspirators and worked with planting the implements in the houses speed while he was doing his for charles and making his rounds of the houses planned out a map of the neighborhood and which he shared with the coconspirators speed identified the race of the occupants all of these on duty acts that conducting the business in this in the sense of while performing the job while wearing the uniform while having the access while having the opportunity allowed the arson to a cure and do maximum harm in minimum time and the idea that because these acts were done on duty but the arson occurred while he was off duty the statutes didn't cover is not really understandable to me it's like saying that if he had planted the bomb while on duty and then somebody else had li on the statutory question no if you want it's possible to also certify the the negligence i was yes you could know there that's the whole point of the statute that you don't have to then do the extra step of analyzing the  that the only thing i'd like to say i'm happy to unpack it more rebuttal is that they have narrowed their appeal to the sole question of whether the harms where alleging are cognizable under negligent hiring training supervision although they carefully avoided mentioning the term negligent hiring training supervision or unpacking the elements and williams the case cited in our brief demonstrates that if you prove both torts were not a vis orating intentional infliction of emotional distress or say you have to have the breach of duty to place or fail to supervise an employee in a position to do harm and then that employee meets all the elements of i e d then you're liable to collect for emotional damage distress damages from the struction of property in the hunters brooke neighborhood the problem with their authority and you can look at every single case because i know i have all of these cases which recognize a claim for a motion of distress damages and that's all we're talking about is a claim for emotional distress damages have one of two things in common all of those cases involve individuals who were they are they witnessed the destruction sometimes fire sometimes explosions sometimes car accidents run into homes and in every single one of those cases they fear for their lives and the maryland courts have said there are circumstances in which if you're in the zone of danger and you have damage to property you can get an emotional distress damages calling and then they have another group of cases and all of those cases or along the lines of the exception listed in ziegler where if you have property damage standing by itself the rule in maryland is you don't have an emotional distress damaged like you'd have more than that there is not a case in maryland that i will certainly not that have been cited and i don't know a case in the country in which someone says you can have an emotional distress damages claim when someone injures someone else's property but you have some sort of claimed interest whether it's a contractual i want to buy it someday or whether it is a personal emotion what tach meant there are no cases and maryland law has never held that when you're not in the zone of danger you're not sitting there fearing for your life and incidentally there were two property owners who were in the neighborhood when the houses burned down but as it turned out the arsonist targeted empty houses because he didn't want to hurt anybody and those two people testified record in pots and it's in the record we looked around we saw the fire we thought propane tanks were going to explode those claims survived why would it not make a difference is that this is  so you are taking an axe to indicate that your security is something you have to be worried about to burn someone's house down is pretty serious stuff to burn down a house that you potentially would live in it's pretty serious stuff you know we buy these houses that you gonna want a couple when you come home at a place you don't feel safe but when you get home you want to be safe and if you're buying in a neighborhood and you've got a group i've been hurt because the properties been m yes and those people need to go to jail and they did and the people who own the property got to destroy need to be compensated and they were i think what we're missing here is these are people who were sitting in the homes they w what's that mean well to begin with the district court concluded because they did not have a property interest had a contract to acquire i thought you said they did have a property i said what they had was a contractual interest to buy the gone why would it be on the people that hired to guard my only point and i mean all the people have a garden so they're going to check them out and do background investigations or didn't do it right and that's more than negligent hiring well that's more than negligent hiring that's absolutely reckless hiring while you're on at that is it that is until right and that was never alleged that was never proven that's not the issue on appeal the issue on appeal is is it the negligence that they can be liable for and the law in maryland is clear if you are negligent and it results in property damage you have no claim for emotional distress damages recklessness result property damage well i think that  found are they would have quite frankly i think that i don't even know that if they find criminal activity in the background if they had done speeds background check they just didn't do it and that's where the negligence came from i think that what we're doing is we're assuming that while they burn the place down clearly they w get the intent element to s s a now judge william says if they don't own the property it doesn't matter the intent element is irrelevant if they don't own the property you have to own the property but if this court wants to say we think maryland law means if you don't own distress claim when you don't own the property and all we have a property damage that's they're saying tell us maryland law means that there aren't any cases in maryland that suggest that and every single case in maryland that deals of obviously it isn't an off duty employee they gather together with a number of other folks that burned the house down it wasn't one on duty it was one security guard from s s a that joined up with a bunch of arson isn't committed this criminal act and what i think what your real question is how do you get that intentional act attached to s s a clearly s s a isn't going to go burn down the property that is charged as that they acted recklessly in letting him official that's not in giving him a badge that is neither on the record nor alleged on appeal which is lightly in the record they did don't you just told me they did look around after they said they did and they gave him the right to go out there and gave him the responsibility of protecting like well i and he got with these other characters and burn the record is what it is with regard to what s s a did and on this appeal they don't even say the facts in the light most favorable to them right i understand it but it don't make findings that the issue was the issue that they argued is two things judge s s a s negligence they're responsible for and the judge said in maryland if negligence results and destruction of property don't have a claim then they say s s a is intentionally liable because they are absolutely responsible for the act of speed and that's where i'd like to spend the rest of my time on that because i i think that's their primary argument is that the maryland security guard act makes speed absolutely makes s s a absolutely liable for speed zakk speeds act was intentional it was malicious it was criminal meets all of those ziegler standards that would give rise to a mental distress claim if you own the property but assuming we were going to satisfy that if you own the property prong the next question is can this be attributed to  and we think the judge williams correctly concluded that but the statute doesn't prevent the s s a because to say that that act can be attributed to s s a read something out of the  was off duty he left he got together off duty with these other characters and burned it down that's exactly what they did and just williams i think correctly concluded how in the world can you say that conducting the business of the agency includes does the maryland security act then say is that better in terms of the position of the other side to say well you know we're not going to ask you about all these common law negligence principles here you brought this appeared curity agency in here and regardless of what the reasons were these people depended on you was here at it and you violated this you just live well that sounds reasonable i mean if you hire a security agency to work on your house and i've just taken that i know that's not th is if you want to call yourself security in you valley security you just lop well whether strict liability or not they did sue and they did recover but no no i want to know at least you see i guess the developers because i want to know does it exist in that instance with the owners of the property or with the developer with the developer i don't think strict liability exists but they do have a contract and they did allege negligence and they did occur let common law principles then with in terms of what the law ability would be this is this is an employee that burn the place down off duty and i'm not even the even the those handful of cases that are cited in other jurisdictions which hold the agency responsible for the act house right and that's the danger you just brought in your house but the it all of this has to be seen in the context of giving rise to a particular type of client the developer had his property damage claim and he brought it up in minor standing in those claims had to get resolved the people who were in the neighborhood brought claims against s s a saying you were charged to protect us you're a security guard how can you let this place but they got claims and those claims proceeded we're talking about we're talking about these folks here but whether those big sigh writings or not all of the only things whether these plaintiffs right and under maryland law somebody who's sitting in their home across town and learned on the news that homes that they don't own they do have a contract but they don't own gets burned down under maryland law that has never given rise haven't under contract what if they had another contract i have an undergrad i'm close the next going to change the common law it's going to say that it changes the comment on that'll be clear i mean when the common law gets changed in virginia or anywhere else in maryland practically anywhere everybody knows about it a long time ahead and  that's exactly right and there's no indication that legislation and right that's right and in fact the chairman of the committee chairman this is what he said when he introduced this bill the proposals  quoting to proposals under the bill find their basis an actual law in practice and do not deviate substantially from the current law as it is now apply there's just nothing in this statute that suggests that we're changing things and that's what judge william hung his hat on when he said look i've got to read while conducting the business of the agency to mean something and i'm looking at the legislative history and they really and the appellant's really hung their hat on that history so that people went in there and what the court basically said is you've got a lobbyist is coming to a particular person saying we like this language better argue the best way you can to get the lobbyist what was it that was the it was a lobbyist for the yabby copies i think so law right and what the what the court says is is silence in the face of a proposed amendment can mean anything and if you've been involved in the law you history or you are to get a hold of it yeah that but out what  or or x number of questions of the awkward of maryland do you have any suggestion you don't have right now all right and i understand all that and that's why i didn't argue abuse of discretion in failing to sort of fact that you guys can do whatever you  questions that if if if if i wanted to get this thing taken care of and not have to be back arguing another issue my question would be does marilyn the security guard act make the security guard company absolutely liable such that intentional  them acts like this and i'm talking off duty acts and the extent to which those off duty acts would rope in knowledge that they may have gained on duty because there are many cases that interpret acts just like this that says it doesn't matter west and i know to be a long question how long but what is that act mean exactly but the other questions issue that in my mind has to be answered is if do we do we have a bright property line or don't we because your questions judge things or are good questions how far down the line of well you know i like that house somebody burns it down because you like it well no i contract for well i'm four months into closing i've gone in and actually gotten the key but i haven't signed the closing docket where does the line in i think maryland we believe maryland says you don't have emotional distress claims arising out of damage to property unless it's intentional and you own it and those two questions i think especially the end you yeah i think so because you still have to answer the question of do you have an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim when you the only act is the property damage and they weren't within the zone of danger so the only question is do you have that w honor a few points first of all in terms of a certified question on the statue we would propose something along the lines of just the maryland security guard act expand security agencies vicarious liability for the torches acts of its employees beyond the common law scope of employment without regard to whether the on duty acts are in furtherance of the employer's purpose so this detour about the off duty acts  whether the you know whether they foreseeable resulted in the arson that occurred you know like the bomb being planted later and being ignited being planted earlier and being ignited later that's a foreseeability question for the jury and it's interesting here you know all this talk of we didn't the ledger a recklessness they do not dispute in this appeal breach foreseeability causation all they're talking about is the cognize ability of harm and if you want to certify another question you could certify the question of does the negligent training in hiring and supervision recognized cause of action in maryland law allow for employer liability for employee infliction of emotional distress we believe it does we believe the williams case establishes that but that's a federal district court decision that refused to dismiss the complaint and then the party settled after we've found two other cases where the possibility of such a cause of action has been recognized by which didn't satisfy the elements of either negligent hiring and training of supervision or intentional infliction of emotional distress but we believe that if you satisfy both those high hurdles which are facts do then recovery would be allowed without regard to property ownership because the alum that you would need what you would need would be the duty of the employer to protect the plainti as members of the public who are reasonably expected to come into contact with the employer just like in henley a vandal was protected against the physical assault of a security person charged with guarding the premises no property interest no contract not even supposed to be on the property but some property but someone reasonably expected to come into contact with a guard there it was a physical saw but the cases and the logic make no distinction between an emotional assault emotional harm was there the outrageousness of the act is uncontested in fact they hide behind the outrageousness in disavowing scope of employment liability intentionality is alleged and not disputed and so then the only thing left again is direct intentional infliction of emotional distress against the agency in hindsight which is twenty twenty i think we should've left that in the case life because i think you're absolutely right your honor this was reckless conduct wrong well certainly gross negligence and recklessness in terms of the hiring and rehiring of speed and in addition to what they mentioned there was an act of violence in high school there was a juvenile detention there was tires squealing drive play a customer referencing back to your previous case and that was the incident that he was fired for there was an incident this is it j four sixty six of kicking a do down when he was trying to help somebody in you know who's locked out this was an erratic and undependable person who walked away from his post and was fired because of that who was the two nights before the arson not at his post that was the night that the yeah it was between august to november so a little bit more than that and it was because of saving money they didn't want to pay overtime to other  other new employees and the same thing with fitzpatrick being authorized to abandon his post early the record is open as to whether he was part of the conspiracy or not but it was because there's that that he was ill and was planning on leaving early and that knowledge put the train in motion for the events to to occur and the reason that he was he left even earlier than he normally did but he always left before his shift ended why again to save s s a money because they only had one light that they had to share and he and so he was allowed to leave early to return it on the clock as we see i honor if i may one more sentence there are two options here either reverse because we are comfortably within the heartland but for conducting the business of the agency this arson by speed and the way they conducted the business as one of the other jurisdictions say responsibility for conducting the business is liability for poorly conducting the business but for the but for these acts by the scars of this arson wouldn't have occurred the statute exists to do something other than