Opinion ID: 1839593
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: employer liability for borrowed servant

Text: In Louisiana, employers are vicariously liable for the torts of their employees under La.Civ.Code art. 2320, which provides: Masters and employers are answerable for the damage occasioned by their servants and overseers, in the exercise of the functions in which they are employed. Teachers and artisans are answerable for the damage caused by their scholars or apprentices, while under their superintendence. In the above cases, responsibility only attaches, when the masters or employers, teachers and artisans, might have prevented the act which caused the damage, and have not done it. The master is answerable for the offenses and quasi-offenses committed by his servants, according to the rules which are explained under the title: Of quasi-contracts, and of offenses and quasi-offenses. Although Article 2320 provides that employers are only liable when they might have prevented the act which caused the damage, the courts of this state have consistently held that employers are vicariously liable for any torts occasioned by their employees. Ermert v. Hartford Ins. Co., 559 So.2d 467 (La. 1990). [6] This judicial interpretation of La. Civ.Code art. 2320 has been codified by the legislature in La.R.S. 9:3921, which provides, in part: every master or employer is answerable for the damage occasioned by his servant or employee in the exercise of the functions in which they are employed. In the past, the courts of this state recognized that under certain circumstances, an employer, called the general employer, who has relinquished control of his employee to another employer, known as the special employer, may be legally absolved of liability for that employee's torts. This legal fiction, known as the borrowed employee defense was recognized by this Court in Benoit v. Hunt Tool Co., 219 La. 380, 53 So.2d 137 (1951). In Benoit, a welder in the general employ of Hunt Tool Company negligently injured two employees of his special employer, Morris and Meredith, Inc., a drilling company. The court stated: [I]t is often difficult where two possible masters are involved to determine which is liable for the tort, and to determine such liability we must look to the doctrine of the borrowed servant or employee pro hac vice. In determining liability under this doctrine, in some cases the courts have imposed liability on the person in whose business the employee was engaged at the time the tort was committed. In others the test has been the right of control over the servant at the time the tort was committed. Benoit, supra at 389-90, 53 So.2d 137. The two prevailing tests for determining borrowed employee status can be summarized as follows. The whose business test inquires as to which employer's work was being performed at the time the accident occurred. The right of control test focuses on which employer had the right to control the specific acts of the employee at the time of the accident, the reasoning being that that employer is in the best position to prevent the injury. The two tests tend to overlap since an employer's right to control is generally coextensive with the scope of his business, and the tests are often used in a complimentary fashion by the courts in an attempt to determine which of the two employers should be liable. Benoit, supra ; The Standard Oil Company v. Anderson, 212 U.S. 215, 29 S.Ct. 252, 53 L.Ed. 480 (1909). In Benoit, the Court held that under the circumstances, Hunt was vicariously liable for the welder's tortious conduct based on a finding that he was not the borrowed servant of Morris and Meredith. This determination was based on the fact that Hunt retained almost complete control over its loaned employee. Hunt selected the welder, provided him with welding tools, paid his wages, and had the right to fire him. Morris and Meredith had no control over the methods employed by the welder in the performance of his job duties on the drilling rig. Under the borrowed servant doctrine as it existed when Benoit was decided, the finding of borrowed servant status eliminated the possibility of vicarious liability on the part of the general employer. Liability was an either or issue: either the special employer was liable or the general employer was liable, but not both. The idea was that a servant could have only one master at a time, and a finding that a loaned employee was a borrowed servant meant that his relationship with the general employer was temporarily suspended, thus precluding liability. [7] Over the years, numerous courts [8] and commentators [9] expressed concern regarding the continuing applicability of the borrowed employee doctrine, especially considering the inconsistent results that the jurisprudential tests produced. The problem associated with the right of control test is that it is inconsistent with the premise of respondeat superior, namely, that direct fault of the employer need not be shown for the employer to be held liable. The test overlooks the fact that in a typical situation, the general employer retains broad control over its employees while the special employer has control over the details of the work. Since liability is based on the right of control, rather than actual control of the employee at the time of the accident, it is unreasonable to choose between the two employers when each shares the right to control the employee's actions. The same can be said of the whose business test; it is not unusual that the business of both the general and special employer is furthered at the same time by the employee's actions. Because the tests were so general, the outcome of many cases with parallel facts depended on which facts the courts chose to emphasize, creating inconsistent precedent. Courts holding general employers liable emphasized the general control those employers had over their employees. Similarly, courts finding against special employers focused on the special employer's right to supervise the employee at the time of the tort.