Court Opinion

ID: 9674599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:31:36.042208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:28.446297
License: Public Domain

MORGAN, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent, because of my belief that the law that has been established and applied in Missouri for many years, pertaining to the problem posed in this case, lends itself more readily to reaching a logical and fair result than can ever be attained after adding the “foreseeability” test, advanced in Restatement of Agency 2d, § 231, and now adopted by the majority opinion.
In Haehl v. Wabash R. Co., 119 Mo. 32S, 24 S.W. 737 (1893), this court adopted what it considered to be a “lucid statement of the principle of liability” with which we are now concerned, to-wit:
“ ‘The principle of respondeat superior applies only when what is complained of was done in the course of the employment. The principal is responsible, not because the servant has acted in his name or under color of his employment, but because the servant was actually engaged in and about his business, and carrying out his purposes. He is then responsible, because the thing complained of, although done through the agency of another, was done by himself; and it matters not in such case whether the injury with which it is sought to charge him is the result of negligence, unskillful or of wrongful conduct, for he must choose fit agents for the transaction of *61his business. But if his business is done, or is taking care of itself, and his servant, not being engaged in it, not concerned about it, but impelled by motives that are wholly personai to himself, and simply to gratify his own feeling of resentment, whether provoked or unprovoked, commits an assault upon another, when that has and can have no tendency to promote any purpose in which the principal is interested, and to promote which the servant was employed, then the wrong is the purely personal wrong of the servant, for which he, and he alone, is responsible.’ ”
Thereafter, after determining that the employee’s act fell within the principle noted, the court declared at 1. c. 741, that “ . . . however wanton or malicious it was, the principal is liable if it was done in the course of the servant’s employment.”
Recently, this court considered the same problem in connection with a factual situation almost identical to that here in Panjwani v. Star Service & Petroleum Company, 395 S.W.2d 129 (1965), and therein said:
“The appellants, as manager and owner, do not challenge the general rule that for an assault and battery by an acting manager their customer may recover both actual and punitive damages; ‘the overwhelming weight of authority supports the proposition, either expressly or by necessary implication, that an employer may be held responsible in tort under the doctrine of respondeat superior for an assault committed by his employee while acting within the scope of the employment, even though the latter acted wantonly, and contrary to the employer’s instruction.’ 34 A.L.R.2d 372, 396, ‘Liability of employer * * * for a personal assault upon customer, patron, or other invitee.’ The Missouri cases following and applying this general rule are all collected in that annotation and it is not necessary to list them here.”
Thereafter, it was ruled, 1. c. 131 [2], that “ . . . plaintiff made a submissive case of a vicious, unprovoked assault and battery ‘as plaintiff was engaged in trying to settle a controversy concerning a portion of defendants’ business, on the premises, during working hours . . . ’ ”
In the instant case, as was true in both Haehl and Panjwani, the incident that gave rise to the employee’s violent and criminal act was an incident attendant to the employer’s business. Necessarily, the majority opinion does not find the facts otherwise.
From all of which, it may be fairly stated that heretofore the courts of Missouri have resolved similar cases by determining one ultimate question, i. e., was the employee acting within the scope of his employment ?
Adoption of the “foreseeability” test will not avoid resolving the question as to whether or not the employee acted within the scope of his employment, but will add another factor, i. e., did the employee commit a “minor” crime or a “serious” crime against the customer ? I would submit that if the act is done within the scope of employment — the basis for the respondeat superior doctrine — it is unimportant how the action of the employee might be classified. It would not be facetious to suggest that adding the latter factor would justify a conclusion that an employer would be liable if the employee hit a customer with his left hand (assumed to be a “minor” crime) but would not be if the employee clobbered the customer with his right hand (assumed to be a “serious” crime).
Furthermore, the “foreseeability” test is logically more applicable to a claim premised on a theory that the employer failed “to exercise ordinary care in employing a proper servant,” Priest v. F. W. Woolworth Five & Ten Cent Store, 228 Mo. App. 23, 62 S.W.2d 926, 928 [4], than it is to a claim based on a theory of respondeat superior.
*62Finding no persuasive or compelling reason for Missouri to abandon the reasoning followed by a majority of the states, I would affirm the judgment and necessarily must dissent.