Opinion ID: 1717400
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Co-employee Liability

Text: Because of some apparent confusion, both as to the dutythe breach of which, if injury results, will support a claimand as to certain available defenses I now discuss the basis for liability of a co-employee. The mere fact that an employee has incurred a compensable injury under the Workmen's Compensation Act, resulting from an otherwise breach of the employer's duty, does not of itself mandate liability of any particular co-employee. A third-party co-employee's claim of liability is subject to all the common law elements and defenses available in other tort actions. Liability can be imposed only for the breach of a personal duty owed the injured employee. The doctrine of vicarious fault (respondeat superior)which imposes liability upon the principal for the culpability of his agentdoes not operate in reverse to impose liability, as a matter of law, upon the agent (not even a managerial employee) for the employer's breach of a duty of due care to the co-employee. It is not the servant's contract with his master which exposes him to, or protects him from liability to third persons. Liability does not arise from the existence of the relation of master and servant. The servant's liability arises from his breach of a duty owed to a third person under the law to use that which he controls so as not to injure another. 57 C.J.S. Master and Servant § 577 at 346; see, also, Smith Common Law Liability of Supervisory Employee to Subordinate, 41 Ala. Lawyer 230, 238 (April, 1979). Only where the employer, except for employer immunity, owes a duty of due care, the breach of which causes injury, and this duty is delegated by the employer to the co-employee defendant, or voluntarily assumed by him and the defendant breaches this duty through personal fault, can liability be imposed upon the co-employee. As in any negligence claim, the breach consists in the defendant's failure to discharge the delegated or assumed obligation with the degree of care required of a person of ordinary prudence under the same or similar circumstances. Whether such failure or lack of due care is the result of misfeasance or nonfeasance is of no consequence ( Carter v. Franklin, infra, 234 Ala. at 119, 173 So. 861), including the failure to act upon actual knowledge of foreseeable risk of harm to others or the lack of due care in failing to discover and avoid such risks of harm, resulting from the breach of the delegated or assumed duty with respect to such risk. When an agent has undertaken to act in the course of his employment, he will be liable for negligent performance of duties delegated to him by his employer; but, ordinarily, the employee is not responsible for failure to perform duties not delegated to him by his employer. I repeat for emphasis: Liability of a co-employee must be predicated upon the breach of a personal duty owed to the injured employee and not upon general administrative responsibilities of the third-party co-employee defendant. It is insufficient, for example, to merely allege and prove a generalized duty of a co-employee to provide the injured employee with a reasonably safe place to work. An employee is not liable for injuries to another employee because of the failure of the employer to furnish a safe place to work or suitable appliances or instrumentalities. 57 C.J.S. Master and Servant § 578 n. 33, and accompanying text at 350. The burden is upon the injured party to prove with specificity the defendant's delegated or assumed duty and its breach for which recovery is sought. The position he occupies, without more, cannot serve as a basis for a co-employee's liability. The law is well summarized in Carter v. Franklin, 234 Ala. 116, 173 So. 861 (1937). ... it cannot be questioned that in tort actions all persons are jointly and severally liable for the proximate results of their negligence or wanton conduct. The relation of employer and employee excuses neither. In some jurisdictions a mere day laborer acting under superiors is not held liable for acts of mere nonfeasance. This court has not approved such distinction. Whether his failure of duty be one of commission or omission is unimportant. But he must be a wrongdoer in such sort that under the particular facts of the case his negligence or wrongful act was a proximate cause of an injury. 234 Ala. at 119, 173 So. at 863. The chief confusion concerning allowable defenses is focused upon the concept of the employer's nondelegable duty to provide a safe place of employment. Historically, this concept had its inception in the context of the fellow servant doctrinean available defense under the common law in an employee's suit against his employer. Under the fellow servant doctrine, an employer could not be held liable for a violation of a duty owed to his employee if the performance of such duty was delegated by the master to a fellow employee of the injured plaintiff and the master had exercised due care and diligence in making the delegation. Tyson v. The South & North Alabama R. Co., 61 Ala. 554, 32 Am.Rep. 8 (1878); 53 Am.Jur.2d, Master and Servant, § 302, at 331. Such delegation, exercised with due care, absolved the master of the performance of the duty and, consequently, insulated him from personal liability for the breach thereof. Lovell v. DeBardelaben Coal & Iron Co., 90 Ala. 13, 7 So. 756 (1890). The harshness of this doctrine prompted the courts to carve out special sets of circumstances in which the employer could no longer escape responsibility by transposing to a fellow worker of the injured employee the exclusive fault resulting in the injury. It was held that the duty of a master to furnish a reasonably safe work place for his servants was a personal duty which could not be delegated. Foreman v. Dorsey Trailers, 256 Ala. 253, 54 So.2d 499 (1951); Woodward Iron Co. v. Nunn, 205 Ala. 543, 88 So. 659 (1921); Woodward Iron Co. v. Boswell, 199 Ala. 424, 75 So. 3 (1917); Chamberlain v. Southern Railway Co., 159 Ala. 171, 48 So. 703 (1909). The instant individual Defendants, with some supporting authority, contend that this concept prevents the employer's delegation of those very duties which they are charged here with failing to perform. Because this duty rests upon the employer and is nondelegable, the supervisory co-employee Defendants claim they cannot be charged with a breach thereof. This is a misconstruction of nondelegable duty. This concept is grounded upon the notion that certain duties owed by an employer to his employees are so inherent and fundamental to the employer/employee relationship that the employer cannot escape liability to an injured employee resulting from its breach by delegating its performance to other employees and then seeking refuge in the fellow servant defense. It does not mean the duty in fact cannot be delegated. Indeed, within the corporate employment structure, it can be discharged only through its delegation to persons other than the employer. Nondelegable duty, then, means that duty for the breach of which the master, despite its delegation to others, is liable for resultant injuries to the employee. Otherwise, the fellow servant rule charges the injured employee with his co-employee's negligent performance of this delegated duty, thus insulating the employer from liability . This nondelegable duty concept, when applicable, imposes separate and several liability upon the employer and the tortfeasor employee in a claim by a co-employee whose injury results from the breach of such duty. [2] The relation of employer and employee (apart from the employer immunity) excuses neither from joint and several liability for proximate results of their negligent or wanton conduct. Carter v. Franklin, 234 Ala. 116, 173 So. 861 (1937), cited in 57 C.J.S. Master and Servant § 579 n. 46, at 352. To be sure, this concept, when invoked, inures to the benefit of the injured employee, cancelling the fellow servant defense otherwise available to the employer; but it has no field of operation in the context of a co-employee third-party action. The traditional common law defenses of fellow servant and assumption of risk are not available to the co-employee defendant. These relatively latecomers to the law of tortspeculiarly the by-products of the industrial revolutionhad as their avowed purpose the protection of the master against an onslaught of tort actions by injured employees. The greater good inherent in a thriving, expanding industrial society was perceived as justifying the denial of individual employee recovery for the injury and death wrought by the production lines in the new age of machinery. Indeed, the reluctance of the common law to ameliorate the harshness of these defenses combined with their older cousin, contributory negligencegenerated the social pressures that culminated in the passage of Employer Liability Acts and Workmen's Compensation Acts. Throughout the evolvement of these defenses, however, their application (other than for the application of contributory negligence) has never been extended beyond the master-servant relationship context. IV.