Mitchell v. Resto
Decision Date | 10 December 1968 |
Citation | 253 A.2d 25,157 Conn. 258 |
Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
Parties | Emma MITCHELL v. Essie ERSTO. |
Tobias Weiss, Stamford, for appellant (plaintiff).
Gregory C. Willis, Bridgeport, with whom, on the brief, was Edward J. Holahan, Jr., Bridgeport, for appellee (defendant).
Before KING, C.J., and ALCORN, HOUSE, THIM and RYAN, JJ.
The defendant, Essie Resto, owned an automobile which she made available for the use of her nephew, Theodore Ingram, and his wife, Essie. On the evening of February 7, 1960, allegedly as a result of the negligence of Essie Ingram in operating the defendant's automobile, the plaintiff, Emma Mitchell, was injured. The plaintiff brought suit against the defendant, claiming that at the time of the accident Essie Ingram was acting as the agent of the defendant and that the defendant was responsible for the plaintiff's damages under the rule of respondeat superior.
The court directed a verdict in favor of the defendant on the theory that the plaintiff failed to establish an actionable agency relationship, that is, an agency relationship sufficient to impose liability under modern respondeat superior concepts or under any other theory of agency. The plaintiff assigns error in the direction of the verdict and in certain exclusionary evidential rulings.
The plaintiff correctly makes no claim that the family car statute (General Statutes § 52-182), which creates a rebuttable presumption of authority of the operator under the family car doctrine, was applicable, since the relationship between the defendant-owner and the operator fell into none of the relationships enumerated in the statute. She also correctly makes no claim under our common-law family car doctrine since the operator was not a member of the owner's household. See cases such as Smart v. Bissonette, 106 Conn. 447, 452, 138 A. 365. Rather, the plaintiff relies entirely on general, common-law principles of agency and, perhaps more specifically, on the common-law doctrine of respondeat superior.
The plaintiff was impeded in her proof of her claims of agency by certain exclusionary evidential rulings of the trial court. These rulings, however, which excluded evidence of the defendant's reasons for lending the car, were not reversible error because they were clearly harmless even though erroneous. That the exclusionary rulings were harmless is apparent from the finding in which the rulings are set forth, together with the offers of proof which the plaintiff made. For reasons hereinafter stated, even had the excluded evidence been admitted, it would not have tended to prove facts on which an actionable agency could have been predicated.
We come then to the court's action in directing a verdict. If we take the plaintiff's evidence and offers of proof most strongly in her favor, they included the following: The defendant was a widow who had no children and was living alone in New Rochelle, New York. She felt toward her nephew as she would have toward a son and was greatly interested in his welfare. He and his wife, who also lived in New Rochelle, but not with the defendant, were having marital difficulties. The defendant thought that she could help preserve the marriage by providing Theodore and his wife with a car for their social and other personal uses. Indeed, the car was being used for their own social purposes at the time of the accident. On the basis of these claims of fact, the plaintiff contends that the Ingrams at the time in question were furthering the interests of the defendant so as to impose liability on her under the doctrine of respondeat superior.
But even if we accept as true the plaintiff's claim that the defendant's interests in a sense were promoted by the loan of her car to her nephew and his wife, it would be only in the way in which, in many cases of a gratuitous loan of a car, the person lending it is emotionally benefited by a feeling of generosity or satisfaction on his part and a hope and expection of appreciation and good will on the part of the borrower. Indeed, it is unlikely that anyone would gratuitously lend an automobile to a person in whose welfare he had no interest. The plaintiff's argument amounts to a claim that, in any case where the operator has been gratuitously loaned an automobile by the owner and is operating it solely for the operator's own purposes, it is at least a question of fact whether he is then acting as the agent of that owner.
The underlying rationale of the modern doctrine of respondeat superior in its application to this type of case is that 'every man who prefers to manage his affairs through others, remains bound to so manage them that third persons are not injured by any breach of legal duty on the part of such others, while they are engaged upon his business and within the scope of their authority.' Wolf v. Sulik, 93 Conn. 431, 436, 106 A. 443, 444, 4 A.L.R. 356; Durso v. A. D. Cozzolino, Inc., 128 Conn. 24, 27, 20 A.2d 392. But it must be the affairs of the principal, and not solely the affairs of the agent, which are being furthered in order of the doctrine to apply. That, at claimed by the plaintiff in the instant case, some incidental...
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...principal, and not solely the affairs of the agent, which are being furthered in order for the doctrine to apply." Mitchell v. Resto, 157 Conn. 258, 262, 253 A.2d 25 (1968); Wells v. Walker Bank & Trust Co., Inc., 590 P.2d 1261, 1264 (Utah 1979) (if employee's actions are not authorized by ......
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