Court Opinion

ID: 9707217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:05:36.980946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:29.370382
License: Public Domain

*402FLAHERTY, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
The majority holds that the employer, Kriss & Senko Enterprises, is vicariously liable for injuries suffered when a gasoline drenched employee entered a work area and was burned when a fellow employee lit a cigarette, igniting his clothing. The rationale for liability is Section 229 of the Restatement (Second) of Agency, which sets out the generally accepted principles developed by courts dealing with the subject:
c. Acts of a personal nature. Although the servant is authorized to act, the master is not liable for his conduct unless the servant is in fact acting in the employment and for his master's purposes. Getting ready to work or clearing away after work may be within the scope of employment. So, even such personal matters as eating and cleaning of the person may be so much a part of the work and under such control that it is part of the employment. This is true if the master assumes control over the general conduct of the servant during such period. If however, such acts are for the personal convenience of the employees and are merely permitted by the master in order to make the employment more desirable, the acts are not within the scope of employment. As in other situations, the fact that the acts are done upon the master’s premises or with his instrumentalities is important but not conclusive. Illustrations:
8. P, an engraver, requires all servants employed in finishing work to wash their hands in his wash room before beginning work. The washing of hands by the employees as part of their daily work is within the scope of employment.
9. P, employing ball players, requires them to eat what he directs and under his supervision. The conduct of the players during meals while under P’s control is within the scope of employment.
*40310. P furnishes a lavatory in which employees may wash, if they wish, before or after working hours, P retaining no control over it except with regard to keeping it clean. An employee turns on the water to wash his hands after hours and fails to turn it off. This act is not within the scope of employment.
(Emphasis added.)
What is plain from Section 229 and its illustrations is that personal acts of employees may be within the scope of employment when they are part of the work, but not when they are for “personal convenience of the employees and are merely permitted by the master in order to make the employment more desirable____” Smoking is an activity which is in no way related to the work of remodeling a service station, and is permitted solely for the personal convenience of the employees to make their work more desirable. The conclusion is inescapable, therefore, that smoking is not within the scope of employment applying Section 229 and that the employer, therefore, is not vicariously liable for the injuries suffered by Iandiorio.*
Whether a given act is within the scope of employment is a question with which courts have been repeatedly faced. The difficulty has been not so much that the law is unclear as that application of the law to the facts has been uncertain. The general principles of the applicable law are stated in the Restatement of Agency, 2d:
§ 228. General Statement
(1) Conduct of a servant is within the scope of employment if, but only if:
*404(a) it is of the kind he is employed to perform;
(b) it occurs substantially within the authorized time and space limits;
(c) it is actuated, at least in part, by a purpose to serve the master, and
(d) if force is intentionally used by the servant against another, the use of force is not unexpectable by the master.
(2) conduct of a servant is not within the scope of employment if it is different in kind from that authorized, far beyond the authorized time or space limits, or too little actuated by a purpose to serve the master.
# * * * * *
§ 235. Conduct Not for Purpose of Serving Master
An act of a servant is not within the scope of employment if it is done with no intention to perform it as a part of or incident to a service on account of which he is employed.
§ 236. Conduct Actuated by Dual Purpose
Conduct may be within the scope of employment, although done in part to serve the purposes of the servant or of a third person.
The general theory of these rules is that while an employer ought to be answerable for acts committed by his employees when those acts are related to the employer’s business, the employer ought not be liable when they are not. In other words, an employer ought to be liable for injury caused by activity which he sets in motion, even if the acts in question are done through the agency of another person, but he ought not be liable for acts which the agent performs on his own and which are totally unrelated to the employer’s business. In a given case, however, it may be arguable whether an employer set a particular act in motion, whether an employee was acting on his own, or whether the act was related to the employer’s business.
Superior Court correctly held that this case is governed by this Court’s decision in Herr v. Simplex Paper Box Corporation, 330 Pa. 129, 198 A. 309 (1938). In that case *405we held that an employer was not liable for injuries suffered by plaintiff, who was burned while delivering gasoline to defendant’s box manufacturing plant. Plaintiff was burned after he had spilled gasoline on himself while pouring it from five gallon cans into defendant’s underground tank, and defendant’s employee (according to plaintiff’s testimony) walked from the plant toward the plaintiff in order to sign a receipt for the gasoline. As he approached plaintiff, the employee struck a match to light a cigarette and plaintiff’s clothing ignited. The Court, over two dissents, held that the employer was not liable, because “Smoking was an act in no way connected with the business of his employer or with service to it”, Id., 330 Pa. at 132, 198 A. 309; because “It was not part of [the employee’s] duty to strike the match, or an act the performance of which was in any way in furtherance of his employer’s business, but was done by him on his own account____” Id., 330 Pa. at 133, 198 A. 309; and because the employer knew nothing of the employee’s smoking, Id., 330 Pa. at 138, 198 A. 309.
Applying the holding in Herr to the present case, both lower courts reasoned that William Simon could not be regarded as acting within the scope of his employment. In Herr the employer was not liable for the employee’s act even though the employee was in the process of securing a receipt when he struck the match which caused the injury. Therefore, the lower courts reasoned that William Simon could not be said to have been acting within the scope of employment because at the time of the injury he was on a break and was conducting no business of his employer.
I agree with this analysis. Although I would not comment on the continued viability of all aspects of the Herr decision, I am persuaded that Sections 228 and 235 of the Restatement 2d of Agency set forth a sound basis on which to assess questions of scope of employment. A plain reading of Sections 228 and 335 requires that in order for an employee to be regarded as acting within the scope of employment, he must, inter alia, be doing the kind of thing *406he was employed to do and he must be acting, at least in part, with a purpose to benefit his employer. Lighting a match to smoke a cigarette while on a break is not the type of thing Simon was hired to do and it was not done for the purpose of serving his employer. Nor does it fall within Section 236 as activity which serves both the purposes of the master and of the servant. He was not, therefore, acting within the scope of his employment.
NIX, C.J., joins this dissenting opinion.

 For reasons that are not apparent from the record, it has not been raised on appeal, although it was pleaded and argued at the trial level, that Kriss & Senko were directly negligent.
Nor has it been argued that Iandiorio’s own testimony bars his recovery on the grounds that, according to that testimony, William Simon’s conduct was reckless or malicious (and therefore outside the scope of employment) in that Simon lit a match in spite of the fact that he was told of the presence of gasoline, witnessed his brother’s alleged joking threat to ignite Iandiorio’s clothing with a lighter, and could smell gasoline on Iandiorio’s clothing. See Lunn v. Yellow Cab Co., 403 Pa. 231, 236, 169 A.2d 103 (1961).