Bowman v. State

• Decision Date: 26 August 2004
• Docket Number: 3691.
• Citation: 2004 NY Slip Op 06445,10 A.D.3d 315,781 N.Y.S.2d 103
• Parties: DEMETRIC BOWMAN, Respondent, v STATE OF NEW YORK, Appellant.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

10 A.D.3d 315

781 N.Y.S.2d 103

2004 NY Slip Op 06445

DEMETRIC BOWMAN, Respondent, v STATE OF NEW YORK, Appellant.

3691.

Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, First Department.

Decided August 26, 2004.

Order, Court of Claims of the State of New York (Michael Nadel, J.), entered June 16, 2003, which, to the extent appealed from, denied the State's motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint, unanimously reversed, on the law, without

costs, the motion granted and the amended complaint dismissed. The Clerk is directed to enter judgment in favor of defendant dismissing the amended complaint.

Claimant Demetric Bowman asserts that on November 4, 1997, when she was working as a private security guard at the Bronx County Courthouse, she was raped by a Supreme Court officer. According to Ms. Bowman's deposition testimony, during her lunch break that day, when she was eating at her post the officer told her she could not eat there, but volunteered to show her an area on one of the upper floors where she could eat lunch. He led her to a room she described as a locker room/cafeteria, where she ate her lunch and the officer had coffee and a cigarette, and they talked and watched a talk show on television. Ms. Bowman states that thereafter, he held her down and forcibly raped her.

The officer testified that Ms. Bowman had asked where she could go for her break, and he invited her to hang out with him in the locker room, which offer she accepted. He said they engaged in consensual sexual relations in the locker room.

All criminal charges against the officer were dropped when the grand jury hearing the matter declined to indict him. However, he was disciplined by the Office of Court Administration for engaging in sexual relations in the courthouse and for conduct unbecoming a court officer. This civil action followed.

On defendant's summary judgment motion, the motion court concluded that questions of fact exist as to whether the alleged rape occurred, and if so, whether or not it was committed for wholly personal motives so as to preclude the application of the doctrine of respondeat superior. We disagree, perceiving no questions of fact precluding summary judgment.

An employer may be vicariously liable for its employees' tortious acts on a theory of respondeat superior only if they were committed in furtherance of the employer's business and within the scope of employment (see Riviello v Waldron, 47 NY2d 297, 303 [1979]). The doctrine of respondeat superior may be applied "so long as the tortious conduct is generally foreseeable and a natural incident of the employment" (see Judith M. v Sisters of Charity Hosp., 93 NY2d 932, 933 [1999]). "If, however, an employee `for purposes of his own departs from the line of his duty so that for the time being his acts constitute an abandonment of his service, the master is not liable'" (id.).

Regardless of which participant's version of events is believed, the officer may not be said to have been acting within the scope of his employment, or in furtherance of the business of the State, while in the locker room with claimant. Rather, it is clear that the employee at that time departed from his duties for solely personal motives unrelated to the furtherance of the court's business (see Judith M., supra; N.X....