Negligent Entrustment in Maryland

The doctrine of negligent entrustment has been part of the law of Maryland since 1934. Negligent entrustment is a cause of action personal injury lawyers in Maryland bring on behalf of injury victims. The theory behind negligent entrustment is that the entrustor is negligent because it negligently provided the entrustee party with a dangerous instrumentality that caused injury to a third person.

All of the negligent entrustment cases our lawyer see in Maryland involve motor vehicle accidents, mostly truck crashes.  

Subpart C to Part 391 of Volume 49 of the CFRs is titled "Background of Character." This regulation sets forth the rules and regulations that must be followed by trucking companies before putting a truck driver behind the dangerous instrumentality that is a truck. These regulations place an affirmative duty on trucking companies. This is not "know or have reason to know." The trucking companies have to do their due diligence to find out whether a truck driver poses a risk.

Negligent entrustment as a cause of action was first recognized by the Maryland Court of Appeals over 80 years ago in Rounds v. Phillips.  Today, Maryland adopts the tort of negligent entrustment as expressed in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 390, which provides:

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 ....

In Wright v. Neale, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, our intermediate court, set out the elements of negligent entrustment in Maryland: 

(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.

The principal feature of this tort is the knowledge of the supplier concerning the likelihood of the person to whom he entrusts the chattel to use it in a dangerous manner. 

While we keep talking about chattel, which makes it more complicated, all of the reported Maryland cases holding on negligent entrustment involve injuries or death in a car or truck accident.  

Not surprisingly, many truck accident lawyers in Maryland bring causes of action under the theory that the truck accident occurred because the trucking company negligently entrusted an extremely dangerous instrumentality, for example, a semi truck, in the hands of someone they knew or should have known was not trustworthy. When this claim is made against a trucking company, it will be found negligent if the entrustee had a history that made a truck accident foreseeable. 

For example, suppose a trucking company hires a truck driver who has a record of drunk driving, which the company could have learned of through a search of available records. In Maryland, that trucking company may be liable for the negligent entrustment of that semi truck to that truck driver if the driver was drinking and caused an injury to a third person.