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Miller v. B.H.B. Enterprises9/3/2002
ve damages shall not be awarded against a person solely on the basis of vicarious liability . . . ." N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1D-15(c). Restaurant managers are not "officers, directors or managers" of a corporation; they are employees of the corporation. The doctrine of respondeat superior provides that "the torts of an employee that occur in the course of employment are imputed to the employer." David A. Logan & Wayne A. Logan, North Carolina Torts, § 10.30 at 233 (1996). The doctrine allows for vicarious liability.
Here, all of the corporate defendant's liability is vicarious. Radford Bennett is an employee of the corporate defendant. B.H.B. Enterprises, Inc., defendant, is owned by Britton McCorkle ("McCorkle"). There is no evidence in the record that McCorkle was present at the restaurant on the evening of the incident. There is also no evidence that Bennett is an owner of B.H.B. Enterprises, Inc. All liability sustained by defendant was acquired through the actions of defendant's employees. This is a classic example of vicarious liability. To ascribe to the majority's definition of the word "managers" obliterates the meaning of the first sentence of G.S. § 1D-15(c).
Plaintiff presented no evidence that McCorkle, or any other "director, officer, or manager of the corporation participated in or condoned the conduct constituting the aggravating factor," or ordered, or ratified outrageous conduct on the part of any of the corporation's employees.
The majority's expansion of the meaning of "managers" beyond its statutory context violates long established rules of statutory construction. "I thought we had adopted a regular method for interpreting the meaning of language in a statute: first, find the ordinary meaning of the language in its textual context; and second, using established canons of construction, ask whether there is any clear indication that some permissible meaning other than the ordinary one applies." Chisom v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380, 404, 115 L. Ed. 2d 351, 369 (1991) (Scalia, J. dissenting) (citations omitted). "Today, however, the Court adopts a method quite out of accord with that usual practice. It begins not with what the statute says, but with an expectation about what the statute must mean . . . . As method, this is just backwards, and however much we may be attracted by the result it produces in a particular case, we should in every case resist it." Id. at 405, 115 L. Ed. 2d at 369.
II. Corporate Complicity
North Carolina's statute is neither unique nor dissimilar to other states. G.S. § 1D-15(c) is a codification of what other states term the "corporate complicity" rule, which requires express and explicit condoning of the act by a corporate defendant in order to be vicariously liable for punitive damages.
Other jurisdictions have enacted similar statutes limiting punitive damages for vicarious liability. While no other state has an identical provision, some other statutes are illustrative of the limiting purposes behind our N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1D-15(c).
Kansas has adopted a statute similar to North Carolina. In K.S.A. § 60-3701(d), the legislature provided that: "In no case shall exemplary or punitive damages be assessed pursuant to this section against: (1) a principal or employer for the acts of an agent or employee unless the questioned conduct was authorized or ratified by a person expressly empowered to do so on behalf of the principal or employer." K.S.A. § 60-3701(d). "K.S.A. § 60-3701(d)(1) limits punitive damages assessed to an employer only in circumstances where the employer has ratified or authorized the act of the employee . . . . he policy of Kansas regarding assessment of punitive damages again
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