Negligent Entrustment

What Is Negligent Entrustment?

Negligent entrustment is the owner’s own negligence. It is not a rule that owners automatically answer for whatever happens in their vehicles. The owner is liable because the owner personally failed to use ordinary care in deciding who should drive. The law imposes a duty on every person who owns, leases, or is responsible for a motor vehicle to exercise ordinary care in giving possession of it to another.

The claim is most common with cars and trucks, but the same idea applies to other dangerous things. What ties the cases together is knowledge: the owner knew, or would have known by paying reasonable attention, that the person receiving the vehicle was likely to hurt someone with it.

What Are The Elements Of Negligent Entrustment In North Carolina?

North Carolina’s pattern jury instruction lists five things the plaintiff must prove by the greater weight of the evidence. The fourth is the heart of the claim: the owner was negligent in giving possession because the owner knew, or in the exercise of ordinary care should have known, that the driver was incompetent, habitually careless, or reckless and likely to cause injury.

How Do You Prove A North Carolina Owner Knew The Driver Was Unfit?

With the driver’s history and the owner’s connection to it. Driving records, prior crashes, license suspensions, impaired-driving convictions, and insurance claims show the driver’s unfitness. Family relationships, shared households, employment files, text messages, and the owner’s own statements show what the owner knew. An employer that never checked a driving record may be found to have had reason to know what the record would have shown.

Two statutes help. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-34 makes it unlawful to authorize or knowingly permit a vehicle to be driven by a person who has no legal right to drive. And under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-71.1, proof that the defendant owned the vehicle is prima facie evidence that it was being operated with the owner’s authority, consent, and knowledge, while proof of registration is prima facie evidence of ownership. That presumption gets an injured person past the owner’s first line of defense, the claim that the driver took the car without permission, and into the question of what the owner knew.

• Driver’s record: convictions, suspensions, prior at-fault crashes.
• Condition at the time: visible intoxication, exhaustion, or a known medical problem when the keys changed hands.
• Owner’s knowledge: household ties, prior incidents with the same vehicle, employer records.
• Permission: ownership and registration create a presumption of consent.

How Is Negligent Entrustment Different From Vicarious Liability And The Family Purpose Doctrine?

North Carolina has three main routes to a vehicle owner. Vicarious liability holds an employer responsible for an employee’s negligence within the scope of the job, with no need to show the employer did anything wrong. The family purpose doctrine, which North Carolina courts apply, holds the person who provides a vehicle for a household’s use responsible for a family member’s negligent driving. Negligent entrustment is different in kind: it is based on the owner’s own fault, and it applies to anyone who hands over a vehicle, whether or not the driver is an employee or relative.

That difference has consequences. Because the owner is personally at fault, what the owner knew about the driver’s record becomes part of the case. It also matters for punitive damages. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1D-15 bars punitive damages against a person solely on the basis of vicarious liability, so an owner’s personal participation in the wrongful conduct can be important when the driving was willful or wanton. And each route can bring in a different insurance policy, on top of the owner’s auto policy, which already covers people driving with permission.

What Defenses Apply To A Negligent Entrustment Claim In North Carolina?

The owner will deny permission, deny knowledge, or argue that the driver’s unfitness had nothing to do with the crash. A driver with an old speeding ticket who is rear-ended at a red light is not a negligent entrustment case, because the fifth element is missing.

Contributory negligence applies as well. If the injured person’s own negligence contributed to the injury, the claim against both the driver and the owner is barred, and under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-139 the defendants bear the burden of proving it. The defense has particular force when the injured person is the borrower: North Carolina allows a borrowing driver to sue the owner for negligent entrustment, but the owner may respond that the driver’s own negligence caused the harm. A passenger who knowingly rode with an unfit driver can expect the same argument.