Negligent Entrustment: What is it and How Can It Help Accident Victims?

Ownership of property matters. That’s true even in personal injury cases. Because in situations where someone injures you using an object, from a gun to a golf cart to a car, who owns the object may have some liability—even if they were not involved in the accident themselves.

Negligent Entrustment

It’s called negligent entrustment. It means that if you own something, especially an object which is dangerous or which could injure someone, and you allow (or entrust) someone else to use it, and that other person injures someone else, the original owner can be held liable.

Examples of Negligent Entrustment

We often see this in cases where minors injure other people. Imagine for example, that a minor is driving a golf cart recklessly, and injures a victim. The minor may be liable, but the golf cart is likely owned by someone else, be it a parent or a business. That someone else has liability, because he or she should never have allowed a minor, or that particular minor, to be operating that golf cart.

It doesn’t matter that the golf cart owner never intended for the gold cart to injure you. In fact, the golf cart owner may never have known that the minor driving the golf cart was using the cart that day, at that time, or in that way. The mere fact that someone else had access to the dangerous item, be it a car, gun, machinery, or other dangerous item, is enough.

In fact, the owner of the golf cart may not have even specifically allowed the minor driver to use it, but rather, may have just allowed or made it easy enough for the minor to access the golf cart.

There are a number of other situations where negligent entrustment may apply. It is very common with vehicles which may be titled in different names—say, the name of an adult child and a parent, or the name of spouses. If the user of the car causes an injury, the other person on the title of the vehicle, may have liability under negligent entrustment.

Vicarious Liability

As you can see, negligent entrustment holds people vicariously liable. That is, the property owners’ liability stems from the negligence of the actual user or owner of the object or vehicle that injured someone else.

This can seem unfair, from the perspective of the owner of the property, who never used the property, nor ever intended for the actual user who injured someone else, to use it. But from a victim’s standpoint, negligent entrustment allows a victim to hold multiple parties liable, and from a social standpoint, allows society to make sure that owners of potentially dangerous items take precautions to keep those items from being used by people who shouldn’t be trusted to use them.

Who is liable for your injury or accident? We can help. Call the Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Joseph Linnehan, Jr. today at 617-275-4200.

Sources:

tmz.com/2016/08/23/blac-chyna-sued-car-accident/

nationallawjournal.com/id=1202773081360/Landmark-Settlement-Reached-in-Mo-Case-Over-Negligent-Entrustment-of-Gun?slreturn=20170311130405