3 Conn. Cir. Ct. 591 | Conn. App. Ct. | 1966
This action was brought to recover for damage caused to the plaintiff’s automobile, which was struck, while parked, owing to the negligence of the named defendant, whom we shall refer to as the son, in the operation of a 1953 Buick automobile which was registered in the name of his father, Harklis Trent, hereinafter referred to as the father. The court rendered judgment for the plaintiff to recover damages against the son only, and from the judgment in favor of the father the plaintiff has appealed.
It is undisputed that at the time of the accident, which occurred on May 3, 1963, the son was a minor just under the age of twenty-one years. He was a married man. He lived with his wife and children in an apartment of his own in the city of Waterbury. The negotiations for the purchase of the car
The first question presented to us for our determination is whether the family car doctrine applies. To fasten liability upon the father under the family car doctrine (§52-182), it would have to be found that the car was maintained by the father as a car for the convenience of a group constituting the household. But the son had his own household. See Pietrykowski v. Rodek, 16 Conn. Sup. 192,
A more difficult question for our determination is whether the father ought to be held liable under § 52-183, which creates a rebuttable presumption of agency growing out of the fact that the car was registered in his name. See Koops v. Gregg, 130 Conn. 185, 187; Shut v. Boardman, 137 Conn. 675,
In the course of the opinion in Krappatsch v. Thompson, supra, Judge Comley said (p. 147): “Under these circumstances the father is estopped to deny ownership or to evade the responsibility that goes with that ownership.” Judge Comley was, unwittingly perhaps, following the New York rule laid down in the leading case of Shuba v. Greendonner, 271 N.Y. 189. In that case, the plaintiffs, injured in New York by an automobile driven by the defendant’s minor son, sued under a New York
In this state, the “responsibility that goes with that ownership,” referred to by Judge Comley in the Krappatsch case, is the liability imposed upon the owner of the motor vehicle for the torts committed by himself as operator or by an operator who is the “agent and servant of the owner of such motor vehicle and operating the same in the course of his employment.” § 52-183. The concept of “servant” and “employment” in automobile cases, however, is markedly different from that concept in other types of eases. For example, the “business” of the owner of the automobile “may well mean no more than an act ‘to promote legitimate and important interests’ of the defendant owner.” Koops v. Gregg, 130 Conn. 185, 193 (dissenting opinion). Thus, also, the family car doctrine creates an agent-servant relationship in a transaction that in other
And as the use of the automobile expanded, there was at the same time a broadening legislative and judicial policy in favor of finding the owner of the motor vehicle legally liable for torts committed by anyone driving it with his permission. Such a policy has been reflected in the standard form of insurance policies and also in the owner-consent statutes in many states. In our own state, this policy has found its most advanced expression in those provisions of §§ 14-14 and 14-112 where proof of financial responsibility is required for registration by a minor owner of his automobile “for the reasonable protection of other persons.” § 14-112. In other words, the manifest intention of these sections of the statutes is that no minor should be permitted to have his vehicle legally on the highway unless he has filed proof of financial responsibility as required by § 14-112.
In the present case, the father sought to minify these statutes by registering his son’s car. The public was thereby denied the financial responsibility which it would have had if the minor had complied with the statutes. We cannot, of course, require financial responsibility to be filed ex post facto, but we can, and we do, hold that in the furtherance of the legislative policy as embodied in §§ 14-14 and 14-112, where a minor’s vehicle is registered in the name of the father for the purpose of evading finan
There is error, the judgment in favor of the defendant Harklis Trent is set aside and the case is remanded with direction to render judgment in favor of the plaintiff against both defendants.
In this opinion Kosicki and Dearington, Js., concurred.
Section 14-14 was amended in 1963 by Public Act No. 171, by the terms of which the certificate may now be signed by either or both of the parents or by “the spouse, being twenty-one years of age, of a married minor applicant.” The change in the statute has no relevancy to the instant case.
It has been suggested by eminent authority that “a frank judicial reappraisal of the whole judicially created doctrine of vicarious liability with its court-made limits” be made rather than a resort to limitations on the doctrine which reflect distortions which fictions so often involve. See 2 Harper & James, Torts, p. 1421.