The car owner

One post above says the car owner, not the driver, will also be responsible for the damage. This is not true.

In common law and statutory laws, vicarious liability is very narrowly interpreted, such as an employer responsible for torts committed by his employee with the scope of employment. Parents are not even liable for their children's fault unless they recklessly supervise their children or their children intentionally harm others.

In the present case unless the car owner knows the driver was drunk but still lend the car to him, the owner himself would not be liable.

Vicarious liability is often misunderstood with joint and several liabilities. One should remember the New Jersey case several years ago. The guy consumed 16 beers in a Giant game and hit another car on the way home. The girl in the car was paralyzed and sued the driver as well as the concession company in Giant stadium for negligence. The damage of $278 million was awarded to the victim and it was the largest damage in the history for similar cases. However, the concession company was a defendant because it failed to instruct its employees to refuse selling beer to obviously drunk people, not because of its vicarious liability to the drunk driver.

所有跟帖： 

• 回複：The car owner -謝過了- ♂ (444 bytes) () 11/21/2005 postreply 17:19:22