Court Opinion

ID: 9451090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:06:17.641941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:34.238720
License: Public Domain

WASHINGTON, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
The majority opinion criticizes the approach taken by this court in the past to “borrowed servant” problems. In Haw v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., 86 U.S.App.D.C. 86, 180 F.2d 18 (1950), the court reviewed the case law in the area and affirmed a jury verdict for plaintiff on a charge directing the jury to consider the locus of control and whose work was being done. This approach was reaffirmed in Poole v. Clagett, 90 U.S.App.D.C. 412, 196 F.2d 775 (1952). Without expressly abandoning those decisions, indeed citing them as “controlling authorities,” the majority states that the questions traditionally asked in assessing liability have not “elicited particularly responsive or satisfactory answers”; and the answer to the question of whose work is being done is “inevitably ambivalent.” In what seems to be an effort to avoid the “shortcomings” of the traditional tests, the majority grafts on a new presumption. While I agree that the traditional tests lack logical precision, they have not proved unworkable and I am not willing to abandon them or complicate them further unless the change appears to be a genuine advance. In my view the majority’s opinion will only increase the confusion in this already troubled area.1
*793The majority establishes in the most general terms a presumption that a general employer will be held liable for the negligence of a borrowed servant unless there is “an especially strong showing.” The opinion states:
“It is probably accurate to say that one who seeks to suspend, for purposes of respondeat superior, what is concededly a general employment of A by B, and to convert A into a special and temporary employee of G, must make an especially strong showing.”
The form of this statement is perhaps misleading in that it suggests that the statement describes the existing state of the law. But the majority cites no cases in which such a presumption has been stated or applied.2 The appellee did not suggest the existence of such a presumption in its brief.3
The majority never states why it adopted this presumption rather than the opposite one. It seems equally logical to say that the special employer will “normally be answerable,” absent “an especially strong showing.” If there are policy reasons for the majority’s choice, they are not stated in the opinion.4
Furthermore, while the majority states that there must be “an especially strong showing” to hold the special employer liable, it does not state what must be shown or what elements make one showing stronger than another. Presumptions do not decide cases. The opinion seems to fall back on the control and “whose work is being done” criteria; hence, it is hard to see this opinion as an advance beyond Haw and Poole.
One additional departure from the Haw and Poole cases should be noted. The majority seems to concede that those cases are indistinguishable from the instant case on their facts. In those cases our opinions upheld the practice of submitting to the jury the question of the *794general employer’s liability under respon-deat superior as well as the question of the borrowed servant’s negligence. The majority opinion, however, states that the appellee is liable as a matter of law on this record if the employee is found by the jury to be negligent. I see no justification for treating this case differently from Haw and Poole and taking the question from the jury. Presumably, if additional facts are adduced in a new trial, the judge will not be bound by the majority opinion to decide this question as a matter of law.
In my view the trial judge erred in directing a verdict for the appellee. The question of appellee’s liability should have been submitted to the jury, both as to the borrowed servant’s negligence and the liability of the appellee under respondeat superior. Until a more satisfactory solution can be evolved, I see no reason to abandon our previous opinions.

. I see no justification for the majority’s assertion that “a great deal of the confusion” in the borrowed servant problem arises from confusion of the respondeat *793superior issue with the question of whether or not the borrowed servant was negligent at all. This problem causes very little confusion, as our Emo and Poole decisions indicate. The majority acknowledges that the trial judge was not confused by this problem. I see no reason to consider that issue in this case in its present posture.

. This presumption is quite different from the inference that the original employment relationship continues noted in Restatement ob Agency 2d, § 227, Comment b. This inference exists only “in the absence of evidence to the contrary,” placing the burden of going forward with the evidence on the party challenging the liability of the general employer. It does not require a higher degree of proof. See Falk v. Unger, 33 N.J.Super. 589, 111 A.2d 283 (1955).

. Footnote 3 in the majority opinion reasserts the presumption of the general employer’s liability:
“In this equipment-leasing situation, we are hard put to say why, where an accident is soley attributable to failures by the operator in the handling of his machine, his employer — the equipment lessor — should not normally be answerable.”
In this statement the majority drops any pretense of relying on precedent; the footnote limits the application of the presumption to equipment-leasing situations, where the operator’s negligence leads to the injury.

. The only suggestion of a reason for the majority’s choice of one presumption rather than the other is an analogy contained in footnote 3 of the opinion:
“If the accident was due to defects in the machine itself, it would hardly be claimed that the lessor was not liable simply because it was being operated at the time under directions given by a representative of the general contractor.”
But the analogy does not bear analysis. If the machine’s defects caused the accident, the lessor would be held liable, if at all, for its own negligence. See Socash v. Addison Crane Co., 120 U.S.App.D.C. 308, 346 F.2d 420. (1965). Respondeat superior rests on a different theory: “Fault on the part of the employer has never been required as a condition of his liability.” Gregory & Kalven, Cases on Tobts 704 (1959). Where the machine’s defect causes an injury, the issue is whether negligence led to the defect. Where a borrowed servant’s negligence causes an injury, the issue is which employer should the negligence be imputed to. The common modern explanation of the doctrine is that “the burden of accidents of a business enterprise should *794be reflected in the costs of the enterprise.” IMA. See generally Calabresi, The Decision for Accidents: An Approach to Non-fault Allocation of Costs, 78 Harv.L.Rev. 713, 725-742 (1965). The opinion disregards this justification in relying on the specious analogy of the defective leased machine.