Piedmont Operating Co v. Cummings, (No. 19198.)

• Decision Date: 03 October 1929
• Docket Number: (No. 19198.)
• Citation: 40 Ga.App. 397,149 S.E. 814
• Parties: PIEDMONT OPERATING CO. v. CUMMINGS.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

40 Ga.App. 397

149 S.E. 814

PIEDMONT OPERATING CO.

v.CUMMINGS.

(No. 19198.)

Court of Appeals of Georgia,

Division No. 2.

Oct. 3, 1929.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 5, 1929.

(Syllabus by Editorial Staff.)

On Motion for Rehearing.

Error from Superior Court, Fulton County; E. D. Thomas, Judge.

Suit, by W. H. Ciimmings against the Piedmont Operating Company. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant brings error. Reversed, and new trial granted.

Frank Maloney and Sutherland & Tuttle, all of Atlanta, for plaintiff in error.

Underwood, Haas & Gambrell, of Atlanta, for defendant in error.

Syllabus Opinion by the Court.

STEPHENS, J. [1, 2] 1. The rule that a principal is bound to the extent of the authority which he has apparently conferred upon his agent has no reference to a situation in which a person affected by the acts of the agent does not deal with the agent in reliance upon the authority which the principal has apparently conferred upon him. 2 C. J. 575. Where an employee, in operating an automobile without actual authority from the employer, runs over another person and injures him, the injured person is not injured as a result of any dealings which he has had with the driver of the automobile as the agent of the employer, or in reliance upon any authority to operate the automobile which the employer has apparently, but not actually, conferred upon the employee. Where the employee, when operating the automobile and causing the injury, had no actual authority from his employer to operate the automobile, the injured person cannot recover for damages resulting from the employee's operation of the automobile.

2. Upon the trial of a case brought by a person injured as the result of the operation of an automobile while it was being driven along a public street, where there was evidence from which the jury could have inferred that, although the driver of the automobile, who was a bell boy of a hotel operated by the defendant, had, no actual authority from the defendant to drive the automobile, but that it was apparently within the scope of the driver's business, as an employee of the defendant, to take automobiles belonging to guests of the hotel to a garage, it was error prejudicial to the defendant for the court to charge as follows: "A principal is bound to the extent of the apparent authority that he has knowingly conferred upon his agent, and not by the actual or expressed authority, where that differs from the apparent authority. A principal may knowingly permit a person to hold himself out as agent, and act in such a way that authority to do the act will be presumed. However, before this principle of law can be applied, the defendant company must have knowingly permitted its bell-boys to make delivery of cars over such a period of time that it had become a custom for them to do so, or must have knowingly permitted the bell-boy Faulkner, to make the particular delivery in question."

3. Where a person, when registering to become a guest of a hotel, inquires of the clerk as to what arrangements can be made for the storage of the guest's automobile, and the clerk informs the guest that "the boy at the door will look after that, " and where' the guest immediately proceeds to his automobile, which is just outside the door of the hotel, and is followed by one of the bell boys of the hotel, who takes charge of the automobile and starts with it to a garage, and where it is the duty of the bell boy to help the doorman, and the bell boy actually helps the doorman in unloading the automobile for the guest, and where there was a custom known to the authorities of the hotel, for bell boys of the hotel to take to a garage automobiles of the hotel, the inference is authorized that the bell boy, in taking charge of the automobile for the guest, and in driving it to a garage, had actual authority from the authorities of the hotel so to do, and in so...