Negligent Entrustment in Car Accident Cases in Maryland

Focus on parent liability for child's accident


     The tort of negligent entrustment was recognized by the Maryland Court of Appeals in Rounds v. Phillips, 166 Md. 151 160-61 (1934). In 1997, the Maryland high court in Broadwater v. Dorsey, 344 Md. 548 (1997) utilized the definition of negligent entrustment in the Restatement (Second) of Torts:

One who supplies directly or through a third person a chattel for use of another whom the supplier knows or has reason to know to be likely because of his youth, inexperience or otherwise, to use it in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical harm to others whom the supplier should expect to share in or be endangered by its use, is subject to liability for physical harm . . . .

Id. at 554; Second Restatement of Torts § 390 (1965). The Maryland Court of Special Appeals as flushed it out further with respect to the elements required to establish negligent entrustment

(1) The making available to another a chattel which the supplier
(2) knows or should have known the user is likely to use in a manner   involving risk of physical harm to others
(3) the supplier should expect to be endangered by its use.

Wright v. Neale, 79 Md. App. 20 (1989).

Typically, Maryland accident lawyers can get negligent entrustment accident claims to a jury because the question is what a reasonable person would do. There is no tidy formula to determine what a reasonable person would do. In Morris v. Weddington, 74 Md. App. 650 (1988), the Maryland Court of Special Appeals underscored the relsaid in regard to a negligent entrustment claim:  

There is no litmus test to determine whether a supplier had the requisite knowledge of an entrustee's propensity to use the entrusted chattel in an improper or dangerous manner. For purposes of our review of the summary judgment entered against appellant, however, we note that the Court of Appeals has adopted a very restrictive rule concerning taking cases from the jury in negligence actions. The test of legal sufficiency "is whether the evidence served to prove a fact or permits an inference of fact that could enable an ordinarily intelligent mind to draw a rational conclusion therefrom in support of the right of the plaintiff to recover. (Citations omitted).

Id. at 656.

The idea of negligent supervision of truck drivers is usually a very different animal from negligent supervision of children. Maryland courts certainly do not intend to create liability for parents every time a child has an accident in their parents' car. In spite of what many people assume Maryland law to be, parents are not vicariously liable for the torts of their children based solely on their parenthood. But, on the other hand, parents have to be reasonable in granting their children access to the dangerous instrumentality that is the automobile.