Court Opinion

ID: 9658296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:54:40.473613+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:53.448866
License: Public Domain

O’Hara, J.
(concurring in reversal). I depend on Mr. Justice Black’s recitation of the facts herein and accept them. I reach the same conclusion as did he, hut for a different reason. My concern in this case is with the following statement in the trial court’s charge:
“If you find that the act of the defendant corporation in permitting Jacob Boike to drive 1 of its automobiles when it knew, or should have known the nature and extent of his driving record, you may find such to be an act of negligence, and if it [the act of negligent entrustment] was a proximate cause of the ensuing collision and the injuries to plaintiff, then you should bring bach a verdict for the plaintiff and against the defendant General Motors Corporation.” (Emphasis supplied.)
This is not only reversibly erroneous, it is dangerously confusing and contains the potential for grave injustices. The legal point upon which I would reverse is not the same as that of Mr. Justice Black. It is not that there was insufficient proof that the employer knew or should have known of Boike’s dismal driving record but rather that negligent entrustment can never per se become a proximate cause *572of a given collision. Negligent entrustment is a legal doctrine by which, the act of entrustment relates the actions of the entrustor to the acts of the entrustee. When the entrustee injures a third party by the use of an object entrusted, the entrustor’s liability is to be measured by the same legal rules of responding in damages as the entrustor himself would be measured had he occasioned the injury. Negligent entrustment is a species of agency. Like agency, it is founded in the basic maxim qui facit per alium facit per se. We should not extend agency to the point where entrustment of a motor vehicle to a known incompetent renders the entrustor negligent irrespective of the entrustee’s proximately causal negligence.
I note, as did Mr. Justice Black, that my decision in Perin v. Peuler on rehearing (373 Mich 531, 559) should be read and considered in connection with the decision herein.
I concur in reversal but for the reason herein specified.