Court Opinion

ID: 9755589
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:43:42.443875+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:09.348592
License: Public Domain

Johnson, J.,
dissenting. Today the majority affirms a decision of the trial court that an employee assaulted in the workplace by his supervisor cannot sustain a claim of negligent supervision because the corporate employer purportedly did not know of the supervisor’s propensity for misconduct. The trial court’s decision flies in the face of both the facts and the law. The majority avoids engaging with the trial court’s reasoning by raising a red herring: the supposed inability of plaintiff to amend his complaint to include particular allegations of battery. Plaintiff did not need to amend his complaint, however, to have his claim presented to the jury, and the trial court’s rationale for not allowing the claim to go to the jury was error. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.
*359The majority affirms the trial court’s decision to grant judgment as a matter of law on plaintiff’s negligent supervision claim, reasoning that (1) plaintiff’s motion to amend his complaint came so late in the proceedings that to grant it would have unfairly prejudiced defendant and (2) plaintiff did not plead or present evidence to support a claim of negligent supervision based on the torts of assault and battery. The result reached by the majority is contradicted by both the facts and the law relevant to this case. First, whether plaintiff was permitted to amend his complaint is irrelevant to the question of whether plaintiff’s negligent supervision claim should have been disposed of as a matter of law. Second, contrary to the conclusions of the trial court, plaintiff did present evidence that defendant was aware of the assailant’s propensity for violence, and this evidence was sufficient to allow consideration of his negligent supervision claim by the jury. Plaintiff presented evidence that the vice-president of Kaytec had received numerous complaints about the assailant’s behavior. Plaintiff also presented evidence that supervisory employees were aware of the assailant’s ill-temper, and their knowledge is imputed to the employer, defendant Kaytec. Third, in a cause of action based on negligent supervision, a plaintiff is not required to show that an employer had knowledge of an employee’s propensity for misconduct; rather, a plaintiff may show that an employer was negligent in its duty to supervise the workplace. The trial court erred in applying the knowledge requirement.
I.
The complaint amendment issue, focused on by the majority, is a red herring that does not resolve this appeal or even help its resolution. The amendment, whether granted or not, is irrelevant to whether the case should have reached the jury on a negligent supervision theory.
The complaint allegations at the center of this appeal stated:
27. Defendant negligently failed to supervise its employees to prevent or to take such action to stop the abusive, hostile and discriminatory conduct of its employees toward plaintiff
28. As a result of the negligence and discriminatory conduct of the defendant, plaintiff suffered damages including loss of back and front pay, lost employment opportunities, pain and suffering, emotional and physical distress, anguish and anxiety.
*360Plaintiff never attempted to amend, expand or supplement this allegation. The complaint amendment focused on by the majority related solely to the statement of alleged facts that opens the complaint before the specific counts that contain the claims for relief. Included in these factual statements are allegations that plaintiff’s supervisor, Duane Jewett, ridiculed and humiliated plaintiff, that Jewett physically threatened plaintiff by raising a closed fist and screaming in a menacing manner, that Jewett screamed profanities at plaintiff, and that the production manager threatened plaintiff. The proposed amendment would have added that on at least three occasions plaintiff was physically battered by Jewett and the production manager. By the time that the amendment was proposed, evidence of battery had already been admitted.
When he framed his complaint for negligent supervision, plaintiff was obligated to provide “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that [he] is entitled to relief.” V.R.C.E 8(a). This requirement is “the very essence of modern notice pleading,” Lemnah v. American Breeders Serv., Inc., 144 Vt. 568, 577, 482 A.2d 700, 705 (1984), and “does not require a specific and detailed statement of facts constituting the cause of action. Rather, the test of whether a particular pleading is sufficient under Rule 8(a) is whether it gives fair notice of the claim and the grounds upon which it rests.” Levinsky v. Diamond, 140 Vt. 595, 600, 442 A.2d 1277, 1280 (1982). In other words, “sufficient detail must be given so that the defendant, and the court, can obtain a fair idea of what the plaintiff is complaining, and can see that there is some legal basis for recovery.” Mancini v. Mancini, 136 Vt. 231, 234, 388 A.2d 414, 416 (1978) (citation omitted). To satisfy Rule 8(a), a claim of negligence should allege the traditional elements of duty, breach, causation and harm, but they may be pleaded with “simplicity and generality.” 5 C. Wright and A. Miller, Federal Fractice and Procedure § 1249, at 227-28 (1969) (construing identical federal rule).
Under notice pleading rules, the addition of another unnecessary factual allegation cannot make or break a complaint. Here plaintiff pleaded negligent supervision that failed to prevent abusive and hostile acts that resulted in pain and suffering. These allegations were certainly broad enough to cover physical touchings that resulted in pain and suffering and put defendant on notice from the outset that plaintiff suffered the kind of injury the evidence eventually disclosed. The allegations were not limited, as the majority states, to a negligent supervision claim under the VOSHA statute. Defendant claims it *361would have hired experts had it known that plaintiff claimed to have suffered emotional or physical harm. I find this claim incredible. From the outset, plaintiff alleged that he suffered such harm.
If I understand the majority’s position, it is that plaintiff failed to identify the specific tortious conduct committed by the employee which gave rise to defendant’s liability. I find nothing in the letter or spirit of our notice pleading rules that requires the pleader to identify specifically the subsidiary tort. Indeed, in this case, plaintiff identified no employee tort by name; therefore, under the majority’s theory the case should have been dismissed long before the trial. More importantly, the liability theory relied upon by the trial court does not require that the employee commit a specific tort. It requires only that the employee intentionally harm others or conduct himself as to create an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to others. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 317 (1965).
Like the majority, I find no error in the denial of the motion to amend the complaint, because I believe such a motion was unnecessary. It was error, however, to fail to allow plaintiff’s case on negligent supervision to go to the jury on the evidence submitted.
II.
Despite the fact that the majority declines to address the substance of plaintiff’s negligent supervision claim, the majority nonetheless implicitly adopts the second element of the trial court’s reasoning: that defendant could not be found liable for negligent supervision because plaintiff failed to present evidence that defendant possessed actual or constructive knowledge of its employee’s propensity for misconduct. From this I must also dissent.
The knowledge of a corporation’s supervisory employees is imputed to the corporation for purposes of finding negligence under § 317 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. See Davis v. United States Steel Corp., 779 F.2d 209, 212 (4th Cir. 1985) (once supervisor becomes aware of misconduct, knowledge automatically imputed to employer). Defendant, as a corporation, cannot possess knowledge itself; rather, a corporation “knows” only through its agents. It is for this reason that, in a corporate environment, the knowledge of supervisory employees is automatically imputed to their employer, the corporation. In the absence of such a rule, corporations could render themselves frighteningly unaccountable simply by virtue of willful ignorance and multiple levels of managerial bureaucracy.
In this case, the fact that the supervisory employees were the perpetrators does not prevent their knowledge of their own miscon*362duct from being imputed to the corporation. To hold otherwise, as the trial court did, is to create an inexplicable gap in liability. Under such a rule, supervisors who observe the misconduct of nonsupervisory employees are responsible for taking corrective action, see id. (supervisor has responsibility flowing from employment as supervisor to take action upon observing harassment of employee by co-employee), but when the supervisors commit the misconduct themselves, the law ignores the wrongdoing that has occurred. This creates a perverse scheme in which an employer is least responsible for monitoring the conduct of those persons who have the most power over other employees.
It is obvious that supervisors engaged in misconduct will have little incentive to report their own misdeeds. This, however, is not a risk that should be born by the victim of the misconduct. Rather, the employer, who chooses to cloak particular individuals in supervisory authority, must bear the risk of their being ill-suited for the responsibility that accompanies that authority.
Furthermore, in this case, episodes of the alleged misconduct (and hence the propensity for such misconduct) were also observed by a third-party supervisory employee. James Hemond was plaintiff’s-immediate supervisor. He observed Jewett bullying employees and threatening plaintiff in particular. Because Hemond was a supervisory employee, his knowledge of this behavior is imputed to the corporation. Thus, there was evidence that defendant Kaytec had knowledge of Jewett’s propensity for misconduct, and there was sufficient evidence to proceed to the jury on the issue of defendant Kaytec’s negligence.
The trial court also erred in concluding that plaintiff had to show that defendant Kaytec was aware of actual incidents of past violence by Jewett. Under § 317, knowledge of Jewett’s ill-temper was sufficient to trigger Kaytec’s duty. See Bradley v. H.A. Manosh Corp., 157 Vt. 477, 482, 601 A.2d 978, 982 (1991) (plaintiff need not show that employer knew of specific past acts of negligence on part of employee, only a predisposition to careless behavior with respect to instrumentalities made available to employee by employer).
In addition, plaintiff was not even required to show that Kaytec had knowledge of its employee’s propensity for misconduct to establish a prima facie case of negligent supervision. The trial court erroneously treats plaintiff’s claim as being exclusively governed by § 317 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which deals with a master’s duty to control the conduct of a servant when the servant is on the premises *363of the master but acting outside the scope of employment. Section 317 requires that the master know that he or she has the ability to control the servant and that there is a need for such control. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 317 (1965).
Plaintiff, however, termed his cause of action “negligent supervision,” which is addressed by § 213 of the Restatement (Second) of Agency and is defined as follows:
A person conducting an activity through servants or other agents is subject to liability for harm resulting from his conduct if he is negligent or reckless ... in the supervision of the activity ... or ... in permitting, or faffing to prevent, negligent or other tortious conduct by persons, whether or not his servants or agents, upon premises or with instrumentalities under his control.
Restatement (Second) of Agency § 213 (1958). In contrast to a cause of action based on § 317, negligent supervision contains no explicit knowledge requirement. Negligent supervision is a form of direct liability* stemming from the employer’s duty to supervise the activities of the workplace in an effective manner. The prerequisites for a negligent supervision claim are (1) that the defendant conducts an activity through agents, and (2) that the defendant is negligent or reckless in fulfilling the supervisory duty. “One who engages in an enterprise is under a duty to anticipate and to guard against the human traits of his employees which unless regulated are likely to harm others.” § 213 cmt. g. Delegation of the duty to supervise does not eliminate liability. See § 213 cmt. j.
*364In this case, Mitchell Coleman, the vice-president of Kaytec, testified that he was too busy to supervise the goings-on of the factory floor himself, and so he entrusted Jewett, among others, to be his “eyes and ears” on the factory floor. This act of delegation did not relieve the corporation as an entity of its duty to supervise the activities of workplace effectively. Put another way, a corporation’s vice-president should not be able to eliminate the corporation’s duty to supervise simply by delegating the duty to unqualified, lower-level supervisors. It is both ironic and unjust that Coleman’s negligence in delegating the supervisory function excuses Kaytec from liability for that negligence, and yet this is the result the majority reaches today.
Plaintiff did not need to amend his complaint for there to be sufficient evidence to go to the jury on either the § 317 or § 213 theories of liability, and therefore judgment as a matter of law on plaintiff’s negligent supervision claim was error.
I am authorized to state that Justice Dooley joins in this dissent.

 Negligent supervision is distinct from respondeat superior liability, though the two may co-exist. See § 213 cmt. h. Because negligent supervision is not a form of vicarious liability, there does not need to be a finding that the tortfeasor was acting within the scope of employment. See § 213 cmt. a (“The rule stated in this Section is not based upon any rule of the law of principal and agent. . . .”). This is made clear by the fact that negligence may be found in connection with the activities of persons “whether or not [the employer’s] servants or agents” who commit a tort “upon premises or with instrumentalities under [the employer’s] control.” § 213.
Though plaintiff in this case did not argue respondeat superior liability, evidence was submitted that could have supported this theory of liability. Acts may be within the scope of employment even if they are criminal or tortious as long as the conduct is foreseeable. See Restatement (Second) of Agency § 231 and cmt. a. Additionally, an employer may be found liable for the unauthorized tortious conduct of an employee if the conduct is committed in furtherance of the interests of the employer. See § 216 and cmt. a. When a supervisor observes misconduct and does nothing to correct it, the factfinder may assume that the conduct is not contrary to the interests of the employer. See Davis, 779 P.2d at 211.