Court Opinion

ID: 9868371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-26 18:31:50.300289+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:49.793389
License: Public Domain

On PETITION TO BeiHEAB.
A petition to rehear is filed, which proceeds on the idea that the carrier was guilty of no negligence with respect to the employment of the motorman, had no reason to anticipate his lapse of consciousness, and had breached no duty it owed to the plaintiff. This is the same argument made on the hearing and is, in our opinion, not sound.
If this motorman, in possession of his faculties, had, through inattention or carelessness, driven the bus off the road and injured the passenger, his employer would none the less have been liable although the employer had used the highest degree of care in selecting the motorman and had no reason to believe he would ever neglect his duty.
*64In this jurisdiction civil liability is determined by the conduct, not the mental state, of the tort-feasor.. An insane man is liable for his tort in compensatory damages, although not for punitive damages. Ward v. Conatser, 63 Tenn. (4 Baxt.), 64. Such is the general rule'. Cooley on Torts (4 Ed.), sec. 65:
The negligent act of the motorman in running the vehicle into a pole was still negligence in the eye of the law, although he _ was unconscious, and petitioner concedes that the carrier insures a passenger against the negligent acts of its servants engaged in the performance of the contract of transportation. Petition to rehear is denied.