Court Opinion

ID: 9737154
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:17:23.663743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:56.822842
License: Public Domain

DOYLE, Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the result because the complaint of the Department of Public Welfare (DPW) contained no allegation that the defendant, Virginia Hickey, either knew or had reason to know that William Lloyd was an unlicensed driver; and as made clear in the opinion of the trial court, when the “Court informed plaintiffs counsel that leave to amend would be granted, counsel informed the Court that he did not wish to amend the Complaint.”
Section 1574(b) of the Vehicle Code, 75 Pa.C.S. § 1574(b), became effective on July 1, 1977 as part of a major revision of the former Vehicle Code1 and added explicit liability where the statute had been silent before. I agree with the argument of DPW, therefore, that Section 1574(b) was intended to overcome the need to establish proximate causation. I do not agree, however, with the argument which advances strict liability and suggests that it is not necessary that the owner know that the driver is unlicensed.
The Superior Court in Chamberlain v. Riddle, 155 Pa.Superior Ct. 507, 511, 38 A.2d 521, 523 (1944) wrote:
In some states the owner is considered negligent, per se, when permission to operate a car is given to a person forbidden by law, if harm ensues from the carelessness of the operator, but in this state it has generally been held that a violation of a statute will allow a recovery by the plaintiff “only where such violation was the proximate or an efficient or ‘legal’ cause of the accident — that is, in the language of the Restatement — Torts—when the actor’s *232conduct was ‘a substantial factor in bringing about the harm.’
In my opinion Section 1574(b) of the Vehicle Code thus “supplies” the proximate causation by statute; that is to say, it shifts the focus from the negligence of the unlicensed driver to the negligence of the owner of the automobile who is deemed negligent for permitting the unlicensed driver to have the car, thereby causing injury to others. In this case, that injury would include Casey Molek. It would still be necessary, however, for the owner to know or have some reason to know, that the unlicensed driver was indeed unlicensed. The statute, by legislative fiat, considers the unlicensed driver incapable of driving precisely because he does not have a license, and further considers that the person who allowed that unlicensed driver to drive, thus causing injury to others, is negligent per se.

. Act of April 29, 1959, P.L. 58, as amended, formerly, 75 P.S. §§ 101— 1503, repealed by Section 7 of The Vehicle Code, Act of June 17, 1976, P.L. 162.