Court Opinion

ID: 9571012
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:28:25.608362+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:11.312553
License: Public Domain

*444Deen, Judge,
dissenting in part.
Division 5 of this opinion relates only to the defendant DeKalb-Chrysler Plymouth, Inc. and grants it a judgment n.o.v. I dissent. The evidence shows that after the plaintiff had taken his car back to this dealer time and time again, after they had ignored his demands, claimed to have done work which was not in fact performed, failed to make repairs, and finally simply refused to have anything more to do with the plaintiff or the vehicle — which under the view of the majority was a breach of warranty — and after open hostility in the dealer’s garage between the plaintiff and the service manager, the plaintiff had the car pulled away from the garage and placed on the plaintiffs property with six signs of four by eight plywood, visible from the road, whereupon two employees of this defendant, during working hours, came up on the property, tore down signs reading, "This is a pile of junk,” "This car comes from DeKalb Chrysler Plymouth” and "Undrivable,” broke out some of the glass of the car, and got back in their car and, when the plaintiff followed them and said, "Why did you do that?” they said, "Because we don’t like you” and cut the car so that he was in danger of being run down. The plaintiff and these employees had had no contacts except in relationship to the Chrysler, the breach of warranty and failure to repair which had engendered the ill feeling between the plaintiff and the company. The acts were rational in this context and utterly irrational in any other. The servant does not cease to be a servant simply because his acts are motivated by ill will or malice; the question is whether the wilful tort is committed for personal reasons disconnected with the employment, or whether it grows out of the employment. "If the master might defend by showing that at the time of the commission of the tort by his servant upon another, within the course of his employment, the servant acted through anger, malice, or ill will, the purpose of the statute (§ 105-108), making the master liable for voluntary torts, would be defeated in most instances.” Frazier v. Southern R. Co., 200 Ga. 590, 593 (37 SE2d 774). See also Harris, Inc. v. Black, 130 Ga. App. 867 (204 SE2d 779). There was evidence here that the perpetrators were *445employed by the defendant, they were within the course of their employment at the time, they were in a company car, and their hostility related directly to the quarrel between the plaintiff and the corporation. Obviously, this corporate defendant is not going to call a board of directors meeting to ratify the assault. Unless (and this is the holding in Frazier) such evidence as is present here makes a jury question, the holding that the master is responsible for the wilful as well as the negligent torts of the servant within the scope of employment is without meaning.