Court Opinion

ID: 9781174
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:19:17.773414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:10:43.523859
License: Public Domain

ANDREWS, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The undisputed evidence in this case establishes that, as a matter of law, neither the contractor Carroll nor the trucking company Griffin can be liable for the consequences of the truck driver Williams’s personal and unauthorized decision to drive past six restaurants and some miles off his route to pick up his lunch at a church. I therefore dissent to Divisions 1 and 2 of the majority opinion.
1. It is longstanding law that where a party hires a vehicle but has
“no supervision or control of the servant’s mechanical operation thereof, and no right to discharge the driver and take over the operation of the vehicle himself or put it in the hands of another to operate, the owner of the vehicle who employs the driver, rather than the hirer, is responsible for the driver’s negligence.”
(Emphasis supplied.) Montgomery Trucking Co. v. Black, 231 Ga. 211, 213 (200 SE2d 882) (1973), quoting Ellison v. Evans, 85 Ga. App. 292, 296 (69 SE2d 94) (1952).
Here, the evidence is undisputed that Carroll did not request any specific driver when it hired the truck at issue from Griffin; that Griffin, not Carroll, told Williams where to report on a given day, including the day of the accident; that Carroll had no duty to instruct Williams as to when he could take a lunch break; and that though Carroll could have requested that Williams not be sent back to a jobsite, it did not have the right to fire him. It is likewise undisputed that Williams maintained mechanical control over the truck at all times on the day of the accident, that he passed six restaurants in the course of driving at least 2.5 miles9 between the dump where he left *789the trash and the church, and that he parked the truck with more than two feet of its driver’s side back corner protruding into the roadway.
Because Carroll did not supervise the mechanical operation of Williams’s truck, it cannot be held liable for any negligent act Williams committed while operating the truck, including the illegal parking that was the alleged cause of the accident at issue here. The fact that Carroll could or did instruct Williams what trash to pick up and where to dispose of it has no bearing on this result. As we held in Flowers v. U.S.S. Agri-Chemicals, 139 Ga. App. 430 (228 SE2d 392) (1976):
Notwithstanding the work was performed under the supervision of an employee of the corporation, who directed the driver of the truck what soil to haul, where to haul it, and when to haul it, and this was the only supervision or control exercised by the corporation over the driver and the truck, and the corporation had no supervision, direction, or control over the driver’s mechanical operation of the truck, and had no right to discharge the driver or replace him or the truck, although the corporation may have had the right to discharge the unit consisting of the driver and the truck by terminating the contract with the owner, the driver of the truck was an employee of the owner of the truck and not of the corporation.
(Citations and punctuation omitted; emphasis supplied.) Id. at 432; see also Helms v. Young, 130 Ga. App. 344, 351 (203 SE2d 253) (1973); Brett v. Thiele Kaolin Co., 86 Ga. App. 506 (1) (71 SE2d 687) (1952); Albert v. Hudson, 49 Ga. App. 636 (1) (176 SE 659) (1934). In short, there is “nothing in the record to show that the collision occurred as a result of any directions given [to] the driver” by Carroll. Montgomery Trucking Co., 231 Ga. at 213 (affirming grant of summary judgment to hirer of truck). It follows that the trial court did not err when it granted summary judgment to Carroll under Coe’s bailment theory.
2. “Where an employee takes a break for lunch and is not otherwise engaged in his employer’s business, the employee is on a purely personal mission,” with the result that his employer cannot be held liable for injuries resulting from the employee’s negligent act. Gassaway v. Precon Corp., 280 Ga. App. 351, 353 (634 SE2d 153) (2006).
*790Decided March 25, 2011
Savage & Turner, R. Bartley Turner, Ashleigh R. Madison, for Coe.
Ellis, Painter, Ratterree & Adams, R. Clay Ratterree, Kimberly Cofer Harris, for Carroll & Carroll, Inc.
Barrow & Ballew, Walter W. Ballew III, Travis D. Windsor, R. Stephen Sims, for Griffin Contracting, Inc.
It is true that where there is a “slight deviation” from the master’s business, “the question should ordinarily be submitted to the jury” whether or not the deviation was “so slight as not to affect the master’s responsibility for the negligent act.” (Punctuation omitted.) Davis Gas Co. v. Powell, 140 Ga. App. 841, 844 (1) (232 SE2d 258) (1976). Likewise, under the so-called “special mission” exception, an employer may be liable for injuries resulting from an employee’s driving when the employee is “on his way home after performing, or on the way from his home to perform, some special service or errand or the discharge of some duty incidental to the nature of his employment in the interest of, or under direction of, his employer.” Jones v. Aldrich Co., 188 Ga. App. 581, 583 (1) (373 SE2d 649) (1988).
There is no evidence in this case, however, that Williams’s detour served anyone’s purpose other than his own. Williams was authorized to use the truck to deliver materials and supplies, to run business errands, and to get to and from his various job assignments, but not to pick up lunch for other employees or to drive off route for any reason. The fact that either Carroll or Griffin may have sometimes permitted drivers to bring or pick up a lunch along their assigned route does not show that Williams was authorized to depart from his route to the extent he did on the day of the collision. On the contrary, the undisputed evidence shows that when Williams went miles off route and parked his truck, he was not authorized to do so by either Carroll or Griffin. In other words, Coe cannot show that Williams’s parking of his truck for the purpose of picking up his lunch was “within the scope of the actual transaction of the master’s business for accomplishing the ends of his employment.” (Punctuation omitted; emphasis supplied.) Gassaway, 280 Ga. App. at 353. It follows that the trial court did not err when it granted summary judgment on Coe’s count concerning Griffin’s liability under a theory of respondeat superior.
I am authorized to state that Judge Doyle joins in this opinion.

 Although the trial court cited two record sources for its conclusion that the church was 2.5 miles off Williams’s route, these sources show that Williams was as much as 5 miles away *789from the dump where he had left the load of trash.