Opinion ID: 1860134
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Ordinary Care Liability Instruction

Text: An employer's liability under the doctrine of respondeat superior requires that the proximate cause of a plaintiffs injury must have been an act committed by an employee acting within the course and scope of his employment. Patterson, 172 S.W.3d at 366. An employee's scope of employment includes an intentional tort committed by [an employee] where its purpose, however misguided, is wholly or in part to further the [employer's] business. Id. at 369. If, however, an employee acts from purely personal motives ... which [are] in no way connected with the employer's interests, he is considered in the ordinary case to have departed from his employment, and the master is not liable. This [sound] approach conforms to the economic theory of vicarious liability, [, discussed above,] because when the employee acts for solely personal reasons, the employer's ability to prevent the tort is limited. Papa Johns Intern. Inc. v. McCoy, 244 S.W.3d 44, 52 (Ky.2008) (internal citations omitted). Negligent hiring and retention claims differ, however, from liability based upon respondeat superior. These claims require that an employer use reasonable care in the selection or retention of its employees. Flor-Shin, 964 S.W.2d at 442. Here, under respondeat superior, the employer is strictly liable for the act, while under the theory of negligent hiring/retention, the employer's liability may only be predicated upon its own negligence in failing to exercise reasonable care in the selection or retention of its employees. Thus, [i]n any case in which [an employer] faces liability for the criminal actions of a third party, the focus [must necessarily be] on whether the criminal activity was foreseeable. Ex parte South Baldwin Regional Medical Center, 785 So.2d 368, 370 (Ala.2000). Thus, absent foreseeability, no duty, the breach of which entails liability, could arise. In this regard, instruction No. 3, as given by the court, provided: It was the duty of Ten Broeck Hospital to exercise that degree of care and skill ordinarily expected of reasonable and prudent hospitals acting under similar circumstances. If you are satisfied from the evidence that the defendant failed to comply with that duty and that such failure on their part was a substantial factor in causing injury to Artemecia Brooks, you will find for the plaintiff, Artemecia Brooks, and proceed to Verdict Form A; otherwise proceed to Instruction No. 4. [18] Ten Broeck Hospital's written personnel policy prohibited its employees from engaging in sexual activity with its patients. Thus, sex with its patients by Ten Broeck's employees, whether forcible or consensual, is necessarily outside the scope of their employment. Nor, can it be said to further Ten Broeck's interest. See Cabrini Medical Center, 719 N.Y.S.2d at 64 (No amount of legal rhetoric can ... explain how a sexual assault furthers a hospital's business as a medical care provider.). Analyzing Instruction No. 3 within the context of the evidence introduced at trial, one discerns that a jury may find Ten Broeck liable solely upon the occurrence of Gilbert's sexual conduct with Brooks. If intended to be applied in this context, the instruction violates the rule of an employers' liability enunciated in Patterson and Papa Johns . If, on the other hand, the breach of the duty imposed upon Ten Broeck under Instruction No. 3, is predicated upon the same factual foundation as Instruction No. 4, i.e., negligent hiring/retention, it is redundant. Moreover, an ordinary care instruction is based solely upon negligence and [t]here is properly speaking, no such thing as negligent assault. City of Louisville v. Yeager, 489 S.W.2d 819, 821 (Ky. 1973) ( citing Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts, at 40, 41 (4th ed.1971)); see also State Farm Fire and Cas. Co. v. van Gorder, 235 Neb. 355, 455 N.W.2d 543, 545 (1990); Martin v. Yeoham, 419 S.W.2d 937, 945 (Mo.App.1967) (Testimony tending to sustain the charge of negligence and carelessness would negative [sic] and disapprove willfulness or intentionality, and proof that the wrongdoing on the part of the defendant was deliberate would exclude negligence.). An assault and battery is not negligence. The former is intentional; the latter is unintentional. Yeager, 489 S.W.2d at 822 ( quoting Lamb v. Clark, 282 Ky. 167, 138 S.W.2d 350 (1940)). To instruct in such circumstances on a separate and distinct tort of negligence is not only doctrinally unsound but a potential source of jury confusion. It also raises the risk that even where no [intentional tort is committed], the jury will conclude that some undefined negligence was present for which relief of some sort is justified. District of Columbia v. Chinn, 839 A.2d 701, 707, 708 (D.C.2003). [A] plaintiff cannot seek to recover by `dressing up the substance' of one claim, here assault, in the `garments of another,' here negligence. Id. at 708. In fact, [i]t is well settled that negligence and assault and battery claims are mutually exclusive. Pravda v. City of Albany, N.Y., 956 F.Supp. 174, 183 n. 9 (N.D.N.Y.1997) ( citing United Nat. Ins. Co. v. Tunnel. Inc., 988 F.2d 351, 353 (2d Cir.1993)); see also Armoneit v. Ezell, 59 S.W.3d 628, 633 (Mo.App. E.D.2001) ([P]roof of a willful act resulting in bodily harm ... will not justify or support jury submission of the case on a hypotheses that the injury for which recovery is sought was a result of an act of negligence.) As said before, [n]egligence claims and assault and battery claims are mutually excusive. 65 C.J.S. Negligence, § 12; but see District of Columbia v. White, 442 A.2d 159, 163 (D.C.1982). Since it is clear beyond question that [Gilbert's] act was beyond the scope of his employment and not in furtherance of [Ten Broeck's] interests, [it] can only be held responsible as master[ ] if it is established that they were negligent in selecting, employing or retaining him. Fleming v. Bronfin, 104 A.2d 407, 408 (D.C.App.1954) citing Ledington v. Williams, 257 Ky. 599, 78 S.W.2d 790 (1935). Consistent with the above, we pointed out in O'Roark v. Gergley, 497 S.W.2d 931 (Ky.1973), the familiar principle that when an employe[sic] steps outside the scope of his duties and indulges in some act of a personal nature his employer will not be held responsible in the absence of reasonable forewarning. Instruction No. 3, as given by the trial court, does not guarantee this requirement. In fact, as previously mentioned, Ten Broeck could have been found liable under this instruction strictly upon Gilbert's conduct being a breach of its standard of care, which prohibited sexual relations with patients absent any forewarning to Ten Broeck of any such propensity. The Instruction was therefore erroneous, and should not be given at retrial. Under Kentucky law, the elements of negligent hiring and retention are: (1) the employer knew or reasonably should have known that an employee was unfit for the job for which he was employed, and (2) the employee's placement or retention at that job created an unreasonable risk of harm to the plaintiff. Flor-Shin, 964 S.W.2d at 442. Conversely, in Patterson , we noted: the doctrine of respondeat superior[ ] is not predicated upon a tortuous act of the employer but upon the imputation to the employer of a tortuous act of the employee by considerations of public policy and the necessity for holding a responsible person liable for the acts done by others in the prosecution of his business, as well as for placing on employers an incentive to hire only careful employees. Ordinarily, an employer is not vicariously liable for an intentional tort of an employee not actuated by a purpose to serve the employer but motivated, as here, solely by desire to satisfy the employees own sexual proclivities. Patterson, 172 S.W.3d at 369 citing American Gen. Life & Accident Inc. Co. v. Hall, 74 S.W.3d 688, 692 (Ky.2002) (emphasis in original). The difference being, respondeat superior is based upon the employer/employee relationship and imposes strict liability, whereas claims of negligent hiring/retention focus on the direct negligence of the employer which permitted an otherwise avoidable circumstance to occur. For reasons that Instruction No. 3 violates this rule, it is erroneous.