Court Opinion

ID: 9754571
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:04:31.635846+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:54.719911
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion, in which SyberT, J., concurred.
I dissent because I think the evidence conclusively rebutted the presumption that the operator of a motor vehicle owned by another is the agent or servant of the owner, acting within the scope of the owner’s business, and left no room for the jury to find the partnership liable. The holding of the majority extends the liability of a partnership for the tortious acts of a partner to new and, to me, unjustified lengths.
There was no contradiction or impeachment of, or reason to doubt, the testimony that Harris had left the used car lot on the evening of the accident for the day and was driving home to eat supper and spend the evening. He planned to remain at home and to drive back to the used car lot the next morning. It is undisputed that both Harris and Phillips were free to treat vehicles owned by the partnership as their own for personal trips and uses. In the months that the partnership had existed, Harris had returned to the used car lot, after he had gone home, only two or three times. He never kept a car at home for sale, always on the partnership lot. The car he drove he had paid *225for although it was titled in the name of the partnership. He did not solicit business away from the lot and apparently had not sold a car away from there, but if some one had asked him to sell the car he was driving he would have done so at the right price.
Restatement, Second, Agency, Sec. 14A (a) says that the rights and liabilities of partners with respect to each other and to third persons are largely determined by agency principles so that the members of a partnership are liable in tort for the acts of a partner when the act is within the agency power of a partner. This Court has agreed, saying in Schloss v. Silverman, 172 Md. 632, 638:
“The liability of one copartner for the tortious acts of another is analogous to the liability of a principal for the acts of his agent, since each partner acts both as principal and as the agent of the other as to acts done within the apparent scope of the business and purpose of the partnership and for its benefit. 1 Rowley on Partnership, secs. 509, 485; 47 C. J. 884 ; 20 R. C. L., Partnership, secs. 94, 126. The test of the liability of the partnership and of the several members thereof for the torts of any one partner is whether the wrongful act was done within what may be reasonably found to be the scope of the business of the partnership and for its benefit (Ibid; Cooley on Torts, sec. 88), and the scope of the authority of a partner is determined by the same principles as those which measure the scope of an agent’s authority.”
It is established that a master is not liable for harm caused by the use of an instrumentality entrusted by him to a servant when it is not used in the scope of employment. Restatement, Second, Agency, Sec. 238. Comment b of that section says :
“The mere fact that the master habitually allows the servant to use the instrumentality, or even that the master maintains the instrumentality entirely for the use of the servant, does not of itself subject the master to liability. The master is liable only when the instru*226mentality is being used by the servant for the purpose of advancing the employer’s business or interests, as distinguished from the private affairs of the servant. Thus, a master who purchases an automobile for the convenience of his servants is not subject to liability when a servant is using it for his own purposes; * * * ”
The test is not whether the servant on another occasion or at another time might use the instrumentality in furtherance of the master’s business or interests or within the scope of the business of the partnership, it is whether at the time the servant causes harm he then reasonably could be found to be so acting. If the servant’s activities at the time of the infliction of the harm were for his own purposes, or in his own behalf, the master is not liable. It matters not that earlier he had acted for his master or that later he would again act for him; at the time of the harm the immediately predominating purpose of the servant must have some significant relation to the business of the master, if the master is to be held liable. See cases cited in the Annotation, “Automobile—Scope of Employment,” 51 A. L. R. 2d 120, 128-130, and the Annotation, “Car Salesman Respondeat Superior,” 53 A. L. R. 2d 631, 655-661; and also Sauriolle v. O’Gorman (N. H.), 163 Atl. 717; Trucking and Storage, Inc. v. Durkin, 183 Md. 584, 588-590. Other cases include McDowell, Pyle & Co., Inc. v. Magazine Service, Inc., 164 Md. 170 (where the facts permitted recovery against the master but the court said at page 174:
“It is not contended that, if the appellant’s driver was engaged on business of his own, and not on any business of his employer, the appellant would be liable. * * * If the appellant’s driver used the truck to go from appellant’s store for his lunch, as he had frequently done,, with or without express permission of the employer, there would have been no liability, as that would have been merely an accommodation, or a favor granted him (Myers v. Shipley, 140 Md. 380, 116 A. 645; Fletcher v. Meredith, 148 Md. 580, 129 *227A. 795), and would have been wholly independent of, and unmixed with, his employment.”) ;
Wagner v. Page, 179 Md. 465; A. S. Abell Co. v. Sopher, 179 Md. 687; State, Use of Shipley v. Walker, 230 Md. 133; and Tregellas v. American Oil Co., 231 Md. 95.
The majority finds evidence that the driving of the car home to supper and for the night was within the scope of the partnership business because “for sale” signs were on the partnership cars “at various times and places,” the car was always for sale, Harris had on two or three occasions over a number of months gone back to the used car lot at night, and at times in the morning had driven from his home, before going to the lot, to the Department of Motor Vehicles or to' an automobile dealer on partnership business. I find no support in the record for a finding that “for sale” signs were ever on the cars except when they were standing on the lot, certainly none that such a sign was on the car Harris was driving on the night of the accident. The fact that Harris would have sold the car for a price if some purchaser had flagged him down while he was en route home or telephoned him at home, does not make his purpose in driving home to supper and an evening of television and sleep less predominantly personal and unmixed with business than that of a lawyer driving home from the office with a briefcase full of files (which he may or may not open). If the lawyer negligently injures someone while driving home, his partners certainly would not be liable because of the briefcase or because a client involved in a street accident might flag him down en route or another client call him at home for advice. The “possibility of sale” theory as a basis for a master’s liability for a salesman’s negligence (even as a component of a “general entrustment” arrangement) has been rejected by the cases. In Barrett v. Employers’ Liability Assur. Corporation (5th Cir.), 118 F. 2d 799, Judge Hutcheson for the court was unimpressed by this theory. There an automobile salesman, like others employed by his master, was employed to sell used cars, and had the unrestricted right to use a company car at any time and place on company business and to go to and from his home, on other personal trips and uses, and keep the car at home. While *228driving on an admitted pleasure trip, the salesman injured a passenger. The contention of the claimant was that since the salesman was in rightful possession of the car and could sell it at any time, “* * * it must be held that it was being driven on the business of the employer * * The district judge took a different view and instructed a verdict for the employer, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, saying it was clear that the use of the car was personal and not for the business of the owner or the combined pleasure of the salesman and business of the owner. See also Matheny v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co. (La.), 181 So. 647; Oliphant v. Town of Lake Providence (La.), 192 So. 95, 103; Bartek v. Glasers Provisions Co. (Neb.), 71 N. W. 2d 466; and Summerville v. Gillespie (Ore.), 179 P. 2d 719.
Maryland has taken the same viewpoint. See Phipps v. Milligan, 174 Md. 438, where the fact that the salesman was driving a purchaser of a car, which had been shipped to his new distant home, to the train was held not to make the drive other than personal and not to bind the employer, the automobile agency, for the negligence of the salesman while driving his employer’s car; Fletcher v. Meredith, 148 Md. 580, where the fact that the employee was to perform an errand (a delivery) for the employer before he began the trip for which the truck was lent to him, as well as the fact that he had later to return the truck, did not make the tort of the employee on his own trip the tort of the employer; and Tregellas v. American Oil Co., supra.
The answer to the theory of the majority, that because Harris occasionally used the car in the morning to visit the Department of Motor Vehicles or an automobile dealer he was on partnership business when he was driving home in the evening after work, is simply that if he had been negligent on such a morning his partner would have been liable with him, but that •does not make his partner liable because he was negligent when •driving home without any thought of partnership business, any more than it would have if he had been negligent while driving his wife to the doctor after supper, if she had then been taken ill. For illustrative analogous “driving home” cases, see Senn v. Lackner (Ohio), 105 N. E. 2d 49; Crosby v. Braley and *229Graham (Ore.), 134 P. 2d 110; and McCauley v. Steward (Ariz.), 164 P. 2d 465 (there the car later was to be shown to a prospective customer). See also Trucking and Storage, Inc. v. Durkin, supra; and Tregellas v. American Oil Co., supra (where the employee was going to work from home).
The defendant’s prayer for an instructed verdict should have been granted.
Judge Sybert has asked me to say that he concurs with these views.