Court Opinion

ID: 9457118
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:13:07.190931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:13.570654
License: Public Domain

PICKETT, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in reversal of the judgment in this case, but I think the decision should be based on broader grounds. The record is without dispute that the two girls left the place of their government employment to go on vacation. They were on vacation when they left their place of employment for Oklahoma City, and the real purpose of their trip was personal. Even if they intended to transport the government automobile to Oklahoma City for safekeeping, this would not meet the Oklahoma test of “scope of employment.” In 1929, Justice Cardozo, in Marks’ Dependents v. Gray, 251 N.Y. 90, 167 N.E. 181, 183, said:
“ * * * To establish liability, the inference must be permissible that the trip would have been made though the private errand had been canceled. * * * The test in brief is this: If the work of the employee creates the necessity for travel, he is in the course of his employment, though he is serving at the same time some purpose of his own. Clawson v. Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Co., 231 N.Y. 273, 131 N.E. 914. If, however, the work has had no part in creating the necessity for travel, if the journey would have gone forward though the business errand had been dropped, and would have been canceled upon failure of the private purpose, though the business errand was undone, the travel is then personal, and personal the risk.”
This “Cardozo Formula” was specifically adopted by the Supreme Court of Oklahoma in Anderson v. Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, 387 P.2d 479, 482 (1963), and Dobson v. Commercial Oil Transport, Inc., 371 P.2d 709, 711 (1962). No contention is made that the work of the girls created the necessity for the travel or that the travel to Oklahoma City would have been made on behalf of the employer if the employees’ vacations had been canceled.