Loughlin v. State
| Decision Date | 22 March 1887 |
| Citation | 11 N.E. 371,105 N.Y. 159 |
| Parties | LOUGHLIN v. STATE. |
| Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
This is an appeal by the defendant from an award of $1,200 to the respondent, made on the tenth of September, 1885, by the board of claims of the state of New York for an injury to the person of respondent while employed on the state boat, on the Champlain canal, in Fort Edward, in May, 1883.
D. O'Brien, Atty. Gen., for appellant.
A. D. Wait, for respondent.
We think the award in this case is in conflict with the decisions of this court defining the responsibility of employers for injuries sustained by servants while engaged in performing the service for which they were employed, resulting from the negligence of co-servants. The master is sometimes responsible for the negligent act of one servant causing injury to a co-servant; but this liability, when it exists, does not rest upon the doctrine of respondeat superior, but solely upon the ground that in the particular case the co-servant whose act or neglect caused the injury was, by the appointment of the master, charged with the performance of duties which the master was bound to perform for the protection of his servants, a failure to perform which, or a negligent performance of which, by a servant delegated to perform them, is regarded in law the master's failure or negligence, and not merely the failure or negligence of the co-servant.
The liability of the master, when the negligence was not his personal act or omission, but the immediate act or omission of a servant, turns, as was said in Crispin v. Babbitt, 81 N. Y. 521, upon the character of the act, and this was but the enunciation of the established doctrine in this state upon the subject. If the co-servant whose act caused the injury was at the time representing the master in doing the master's duty, the master is liable. If, on the other hand, he was simply performing the work of a servant in his character as a servant or employe merely, the master is not liable. The injury in the case last supposed would, as between the master and the servant sustaining the injury, be attributable solely to the immediate author, and not to the master. In harmony with the general principle that the character of the act is the decisive test, it has been repeatedly decided in this court that the fact that the person whose negligence caused the injury was a servant of a higher grade than the servant injured, or that the latter was subject to the direction or control of the former, and was engaged at the time in executing the orders of the former, does not take the case out of the operation of the general rule, nor make the master liable. Hofnagle v. New York Cent. R. Co., 55 N. Y. 608;McCosker v. Long Island R. Co., 84 N. Y. 77; ALLEN, J., in Wright v. New York Cent. R. Co., 25...
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