Court Opinion

ID: 9610834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:47:58.383493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:05.374426
License: Public Domain

Bell, Chief Judge,
concurring specially.
Involved in this case is a criminal propensity of an agent tending at least toward assault and battery — a propensity of which the company had notice and did nothing about. Under this circumstance, the employer having knowledge of this criminal propensity, cannot be insulated merely because the injury resulting from this propensity was by an act not within the scope of its agent’s authority for no one can lawfully authorize another to commit a crime. Nor is the employer relieved by the fact that the fellow servant herself was aware of the propensity and nevertheless remained in the master’s employment for one may not be forced lawfully to assume *194the risk of being the victim of a crime. Liability for an incident of this type should be governed by the principle that an employer is required to furnish its employees a safe place to work. There is a failure to fulfill this duty where an employer retains in its service about its premises one whom it knows has criminal propensities. Liability is incurred by the master when injury results to another within his premises from an act arising out of that natural inclination to commit a crime. Whether this occurred in this case is a jury question.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Pannell concurs in this special concurrence.