 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Guy v. Mitchell3/1/2002
aining issues are whether Mitchell's actions were primarily employment-rooted and whether his actions were reasonably incidental to the performance of his duties.
It is evident that Mitchell's violence was not reasonably incidental to the performance of his job duties. The performance of his duties did not involve violently striking his co-employee in the head and neck area. Instead, the attack was the result of Mitchell's anger and was unprovoked by Guy. In Watkins, supra, a janitorial employee kicked his supervisor after the supervisor had approached him about the theft of radios from a locker at the workplace. In finding no vicarious liability on the part of the employer for the employee's intentional tort, this court noted that the employee's job entailed cleaning bathrooms and offices, and did not include stealing radios and kicking his supervisor in the head and chest. Instead, the employee clearly was acting on personal motivations.
Similarly, in Eichelberger v. Sidney, 34,040 (La. App. 2d Cir. 11/3/00), 771 So. 2d 863, writ denied, 2000-3476 (La. 2/9/01), 785 So. 2d 827, this court found no vicarious liability on the part of the employer where a receptionist at a hair salon physically attacked a hairdresser after the receptionist refused the hairdresser's request to play a videotape to entertain a client's children, and the hairdresser then attempted to play the videotape herself. We noted that the receptionist's refusal was not within the ambit of her assigned duties, but was actually contrary to them. We also concluded that it was unreasonable to conclude that the receptionist's attack of her co-employee for performing a task that the receptionist refused to perform was a foreseeable extension of the performance of the receptionist's job duties. In the present case, Mitchell's tortious conduct was neither within the ambit of his duties, nor a foreseeable extension of the performance of his duties.
The remaining LeBrane factor is whether the tortious act was "primarily employment-rooted." With regard to this factor, in Miller v. Keating, 349 So. 2d 265 (La. 1977), the Louisiana Supreme Court described the tort in LeBrane as "one which evolved out of a dispute relating to the employment." This factor was satisfied in LeBrane because the dispute which led to the violence evolved out of circumstances in which the employee who committed the violent act had been acting for his employer in the discharge of a recalcitrant co-employee. However, this factor is not satisfied in the instant case because the confrontation between Guy and Mitchell did not evolve out of a dispute related to their employment at Fibrebond, but evolved from Mitchell's purely personal considerations in taking out his anger on his co-employee for being reprimanded by the supervisor. Workplace violence is not "primarily employment-rooted" for purposes of an employer's vicarious liability merely because the violence occurred at work as the result of an incident that took place at work. Instead, to be "primarily employment-rooted" we look to the degree to which the tortious act was prompted by an employee's purely personal considerations as opposed to an employee's duties and the employer's interests. Mitchell's tortious actions plainly were prompted entirely by personal considerations; his acts were neither connected to his employment duties, nor in his employer's interests.
The instant case is distinguishable from Benoit v. Capitol Manufacturing Company, 617 So. 2d 477 (La. 1993). There, co-employees fought over whether a door to the employment facility should be left open because of the temperature. Our supreme court found that the intentional act was clearly employment-rooted where the temperature
Page 1 2 3 4 5 Louisiana Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|