Court Opinion

ID: 9535080
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:45:20.67198+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:10.082132
License: Public Domain

NEAL, Judge (concurring in part and dissenting in part): I concur in the disposition of the discovery and instruction issues. I do not agree that the negligent hiring and retention claim should have gone to the jury. I believe F & T Co. v. Woods supports the directed verdict. In Woods the employer knew of the employee’s past criminal record. Less than a week before the plaintiff was raped, the employer was visited by a police detective who informed him that a “colored person” was suspected in some rapes. The employee was one of two blacks employed by. the employer. Also, the week before the rape, a purse belonging to a previous rape victim was found in the trash area of the business and the employer knew this. Despite this evidence the Supreme Court directed a verdict in favor of defendant, holding that, on these facts, foreseeability was not a jury issue. In this case we have evidence that the employee was drunk and the employer knew it. We have evidence that, after being- terminated previously, the employee came to the hotel to beg for his job back, became violent, and was forcibly ejected from the hotel. In my opinion, these facts are less compelling than those in Woods. Knowledge of prior drunkeness, of drunkeness on the day in question, and that the employee became violent after he was previously terminated, goes only to whether the hotel was negligent in hiring or retaining the employee; it does not establish foreseeability. Woods. While I do not necessarily agree with Woods we are bound to follow it. Alexander v. Delgado, 84 N.M. 717, 507 P.2d 778 (1973). Because I cannot agree with the majority’s attempt to distinguish Woods, I do not join in the disposition of the negligent hiring and retention claim.