Court Opinion

ID: 9571929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:36:21.357144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:31:11.625889
License: Public Domain

Blackburn, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur with the majority opinion’s affirmance of the trial court’s grant of summary judgment for the defendants in this case. However, I disapprove of the majority’s application of the doctrine of intervening criminal acts of a third party to the theory of negligent entrustment.
The doctrine of independent, intervening criminal acts of a third party as a superseding cause of an injury has never before been applied to cases involving negligent entrustment of motor vehicles in Georgia, and with good reason. Infusion of this doctrine into the law of negligent entrustment is unnecessary; at best, it would duplicate the analysis presently employed in negligent entrustment cases, and at worst, it could confuse the determination of proximate cause.
As noted by the majority, under the theory of negligent entrustment, liability is predicated upon the owner lending his vehicle to another with actual knowledge of the latter’s incompetence or habitual recklessness, and that negligent lending must subsequently concur with the driver’s incompetence or reckless driving. Barnes v. Johnson, 194 Ga. App. 568 (390 SE2d 921) (1990). In the instant case, the only risk associated with Gafford’s driving possibly known to the defendants was that of driving under the influence. The defendants’ act of providing Gafford with a company car thus in no way “concurred” with his intentional use of the vehicle as a deadly weapon to commit an aggravated assault. For that reason, the trial court properly granted summary judgment for the defendants.