I’m an awful cook. I might even be dangerous. But at least I can say that I’ve never started a fire while attempting to cook. Mr. Timothy Spradley, however, did just that when he was staying at a Candlewood Suites Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina. Spradley apparently left a pan of grease unattended on a stove in his hotel room and the resulting fire caused thousands of dollars worth of damage. Oops.
At the time of the fire, Spradley, a resident of Georgia, was working as a pipefitter for Shaw Construction in North Carolina. Shaw required Spradley to stay in North Carolina and gave Spradley money to cover his hotel.
Spradley was “off the clock” at the time of the fire. Nonetheless, the hotel sued Shaw arguing that Shaw was responsible for its employee’s negligence under principles of agency. The trial court, however, dismissed the case against Shaw and the hotel appealed.
In analyzing the dismissal, Judge Dillon of the North Carolina Court of Appeals cited previous case law holding:
To be within the scope of employment, an employee must be acting in furtherance of the principal’s business and for the purpose of accomplishing the duties of his employment. [I]f an employee departs from the purpose of accomplishing the duties of his employment to accomplish a private purpose, the employer is not liable. However, a servant may be acting with the scope of his employment if the servant, although performing his employer’s work, is at the same time accomplishing his own objects or those of a third person which conflicts with those of the master. (emphasis added)
The hotel acknowledged that leaving the pan of grease on the stove was a “personal act” by Spradley, but argued that Shaw should still be liable because there “existed a nexus between the negligent act and the performance of Spradley’s duties.” In support of its position, the hotel cited a Pennsylvania case holding the employer responsible for its employee’s negligence in a very similar fact pattern.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals, unconvinced, unanimously upheld the dismissal of the case against Shaw stating that the hotel’s argument was ”without merit” and that we “decline to apply the law of Pennsylvania.”
