Court Opinion

ID: 9850387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:56:22.369272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:36.130883
License: Public Domain

GEER, Judge,
dissenting.
The fundamental question presented by this case is whether defendants may be held liable for the torts of their independent contractor, Ron Smith. While the general rule in North Carolina “is that an employer or contractee is not liable for the torts of an independent contractor committed in the performance of the contracted work,” Page v. Sloan, 12 N.C. App. 433, 439, 183 S.E.2d 813, 817 (1971), aff'd, 281 N.C. 697, 190 S.E.2d 189 (1972), our Supreme Court has held that “[a] third party not contractually related to and injured by an incompetent or unqualified independent contractor may proceed against one who employed the independent contractor on the *591theory that the selection was negligently made.” Woodson v. Rowland, 329 N.C. 330, 358, 407 S.E.2d 222, 239 (1991).
I believe that plaintiffs’ evidence was sufficient to permit the jury to find that defendants negligently selected Ron Smith because he was unqualified to serve as a salesman going door to door in residential neighborhoods given his convictions for common law robbery, second degree kidnapping, and unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. I would, therefore, reverse the trial court’s order directing a verdict in defendants’ favor. For that reason, I dissent.
The Supreme Court in Woodson cited Page v. Sloan, 281 N.C. 697, 190 S.E.2d 189 (1972) as support for allowing a negligent hiring claim with respect to independent contractors. In Page, the Court held that “[i]f defendants knew, or in the exercise of due care should have known, that [the independent contractor] was not competent to do such work and if the [independent contractor’s] negligence was a proximate cause of the explosion and ensuing death of plaintiff’s testate, defendants would be liable.” Id. at 703, 190 S.E.2d at 193.
Ten years later, this Court relied upon language in the underlying Court of Appeals decision in Page as “controlling” on the question “whether there is any cause of action for the negligent hiring of an independent contractor.” Deitz v. Jackson, 57 N.C. App. 275, 277, 291 S.E.2d 282, 284 (1982). The Court quoted:
“[A] condition prescribed to relieve an employer from liability for the negligent acts of an independent contractor employed by him is that he shall have exercised due care to secure a competent contractor for the work. Therefore, if it appears that the employer either knew, or by the exercise of reasonable care might have ascertained that the contractor was not properly qualified to undertake the work, he may be held liable for the negligent acts of the contractor. ...”
Id. at 277-78, 291 S.E.2d at 284-85 (quoting Page, 12 N.C. App. at 439, 183 S.E.2d at 817). In Deitz, the Court then held that an employer of a general contractor “may be subject to liability for an injury done to a plaintiff as a proximate result of the [employer’s] negligence in hiring an independent contractor to perform [the contracted-for] work.” Id. at 278, 291 S.E.2d at 285.
Based on this authority, I believe that our courts have already established a duty on the part of employers of independent contractors and that the majority opinion’s conclusion that there is no duty *592in this case — as a matter of law — cannot be reconciled with this authority. Under Woodson, Page, and Deitz, a plaintiff may establish a claim of negligent hiring of an independent contractor by proving (1) the independent contractor was not qualified or competent to perform the contracted work, (2) the defendant knew or should have known that the independent contractor was not qualified or competent, and (3) the plaintiff was harmed as a proximate cause of the lack of qualification or incompetence.
In order to flesh out these elements, it is appropriate to look to the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 (1965), which was adopted by both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals in Page. That section of the Restatement provides:
An employer is subject to liability for physical harm to third persons caused by his failure to exercise reasonable care to employ a competent and careful contractor
(a) to do work which will involve a risk of physical harm unless it is skillfully and carefully done, or
(b) to perform any duty which the employer owes to third persons.
Id. The comments to the Restatement explain that “[t]he words ‘competent and careful contractor’ denote a contractor who possesses the knowledge, skill, experience, and available equipment which a reasonable man would realize that a contractor must have in order to do the work which he is employed to do without creating unreasonable risk of injury to others, and who also possesses the personal characteristics which are equally necessary." Id. cmt. a (emphasis added). The Restatement stresses, however, that for liability to exist, it is “necessary that harm shall result from some quality in the contractor which made it negligent for the employer to entrust the work to him.” Id. cmt. b.
In holding that a showing of these elements is not sufficient in the absence of a separate showing of a “duty,” the majority overlooks our Supreme Court’s analysis of when a duty is owed. In Mullis v. Monroe Oil Co., 349 N.C. 196, 505 S.E.2d 131 (1998), the Court held:
A legal duty is owed whenever one person is by circumstances placed in such a position [towards] another that every one of ordinary sense who did think would at once recognize that if he did not use ordinary care and skill in his own conduct with regard *593to those circumstances he would cause danger of injury to the person or property of the other. Every man is in general bound to use care and skill in his conduct wherever the reasonably prudent person in his shoes would recognize unreasonable risk to others from failure to use such care. Risk-creation behavior thus triggers duty where the risk is both unreasonable and foreseeable. . . . [T]he orbit of the danger as disclosed to the eye of reasonable vigilance [is] the orbit of the duty.
Id. at 204-05, 505 S.E.2d at 137 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). A duty arises based on evidence showing that a defendant “should have recognized that [plaintiff], or anyone similarly situated might be injured by their conduct.” Id. at 205, 505 S.E.2d at 137. This analysis directly parallels the elements for negligent hiring set out in Woodson, Page, Deitz, and the Restatement without any further showing. The majority’s holding that there must be “a nexus between the employment relationship and the injury” goes to the question of the foreseeability of the risk or, in other words, whether the employer of the independent contractor knew or should have known that the independent contractor created a risk of injury to plaintiff or others similarly situated because of his incompetence or lack of qualifications — precisely the test set out in Woodson, Page, Dietz, and the Restatement.
The Restatement provides as an illustration:
1. The A Company sells pianos on the installment plan. It employs the B Company, a collecting agent, to collect the unpaid installments on these pianos. The A Company knows that the B Company’s employees are rough and violent and addicted to quarreling with the customers of its clients. The A Company instructs the B Company to collect C’s unpaid installments. The B Company sends D, one of its employees, to do so. D gets into an argument with C and in the course of it unjustifiably knocks C down and seriously harms him. A is subject to liability to C.
Id. cmt. a, illus. 1 (emphasis added). This illustration confirms that these principles of liability apply to an independent contractor’s intentional torts as well as to his negligence. I believe that this factual scenario is closely analogous to that presented in this appeal and it demonstrates that the trial court erred in granting a directed verdict.
In this case, plaintiffs offered evidence that Ron Smith had been convicted of common law robbery and second degree kidnapping and *594that defendants, prior to hiring Smith, knew not only of these convictions, but also that Smith had only recently been released from prison.1 Further, following Smith’s hiring, defendants learned from Smith’s girlfriend, who also worked for Omega Meats, that defendant was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon. He was arrested on that charge while driving an Omega Meats truck.
Defendant Cassano testified that despite these convictions, he hired Smith as an independent contractor to sell Omega Meats products door-to-door while driving an Omega Meats truck. Salesmen like Smith would pick up an Omega Meats truck from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and then return the truck at some time between 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. Cassano explained that the salesmen “cold-call,” going “from door to door at residences.” He acknowledged that Smith “was going to be calling door-to-door at residences” and that he sold and marketed Omega Meat products using an Omega truck.
I believe that a reasonable juror could find that a convicted robber and kidnapper — who also unlawfully carried a firearm while working — did not possess the personal qualities necessary for making cold calls door-to-door in residential neighborhoods. If the jury found that Smith was not competent or qualified to be a door-to-door salesman, then plaintiffs’ evidence is also sufficient to establish defendants’ actual knowledge of that incompetence. Accordingly, I believe this evidence is sufficient to allow a jury to find defendants negligent in selecting Smith as an independent contractor.
The remaining issue is whether plaintiffs were harmed as a proximate cause of that negligence. Plaintiffs’ evidence established that Smith checked out an Omega Meats truck in the morning and that the break-in occurred at mid-day while Smith was still using the Omega Meats truck. Defendants have contended that plaintiffs did not prove causation because they did not offer any evidence that Smith was in fact using the truck at the time of the break-in. Plaintiff Frank Little testified, however, that when he pulled into his driveway, shortly before he was attacked in his home, he noticed a white pickup truck with a freezer that had the logo for Omega Meats on it in his neighbor’s driveway. The truck’s engine was running. Little was familiar with Omega Meats because salesmen had previously come to his door *595offering to sell meat products. In addition, plaintiffs offered evidence that an Omega Meats truck was impounded by the police from the scene. While it would have been helpful to have evidence that this truck was in fact the truck provided to Smith, a jury could infer from the evidence offered that Smith was using the Omega Meats truck when he committed the break-in.
The question remains whether the injuries to plaintiffs resulting from the break-in and attack were reasonably foreseeable to defendants. As our Supreme Court has noted, “it is only in exceptional cases, in which reasonable minds cannot differ as to foreseeability of injury, that a court should decide proximate cause as a matter of law.” Williams v. Carolina Power & Light Co., 296 N.C. 400, 403, 250 S.E.2d 255, 258 (1979). I do not believe that this case falls into the exceptional category.
Although the critical issue with respect to proximate cause is the foreseeability of the plaintiffs’ injuries, the law does not require that the precise injury be foreseeable to defendants. Hairston v. Alexander Tank & Equip. Co., 310 N.C. 227, 233-34, 311 S.E.2d 559, 565 (1984). Instead, “[t]he test of proximate cause is whether the risk of injury, not necessarily in the precise form in which it actually occurs, is within the reasonable foresight of the defendant.” Williams, 296 N.C. at 403, 250 S.E.2d at 258.
In this case, I believe that a jury could conclude — in light of Smith’s convictions for robbery, kidnapping, and possession of a firearm (the latter while using an Omega Meats truck) — that it was reasonably foreseeable to defendants that there was a risk that Smith would use the Omega Meats truck as a cover while breaking into homes during the day, at a time when most homeowners would be away from their homes. See Read v. Scott Fetzer Co., 990 S.W.2d 732, 737 (Tex. 1998) (“A person of ordinary intelligence should anticipate that an unsuitable dealer [who had previously engaged in sexual misconduct] would pose a risk of harm” in connection with door-to-door sales.). While the jury could also decide that the risk was not foreseeable based either on the convictions or defendants’ actual experience with Smith, I do not believe that a court can decide the foreseeability issue as a matter of law given the evidence in this record.
I recognize that this case presents a troubling policy issue. Imposing liability on defendants for hiring Smith despite his criminal record risks chilling defendants and other employers from hiring individuals with criminal records. Without the ability to obtain employ-*596merit, rehabilitation becomes nearly impossible. Nevertheless, under the law of North Carolina, hiring is only a problem if the conviction renders the individual unsuitable for the position. For example, few would question that a person convicted of drug offenses would be unsuitable for a position providing access to narcotics. I believe that the evidence in this case is sufficient to permit, but not require, a jury to conclude that Smith was unsuitable for an unsupervised position as a door-to-door salesman.

. Smith was convicted of those crimes while working for Omega Meats the first time. Defendant Cassano testified that he learned of the convictions when Smith did not return to work. Had Cassano performed a criminal record check, he would also have learned that Smith had been convicted of five assault on a female charges, five indecent exposure charges, and one simple assault charge.