Athas v. Hill

In Athas v. Hill, 300 Md. 133, 476 A.2d 710 (1984), the Court of Appeals thoroughly discussed the liability of a supervisory coemployee under the Workers' Compensation Statute. There, Athas, a restaurant employee at a country club, was attacked with a knife by a coemployee. Athas, 300 Md. at 134. Athas sued the supervisors at the country club asserting that they negligently discharged their duty to provide a safe place to work by hiring Athas's attacker despite knowing of the attacker's violent disposition. Id. at 135. The Court of Appeals held that the Workers' Compensation Statute prevented Athas from recovering from the supervisors because the supervisors were performing the nondelegable duty of their employer to provide a safe place to work. Id. at 149. In reaching this conclusion, the Court stated as follows: Under Maryland law the employer owes his employees a nondelegable duty to provide a safe place to work and, thus, the employer cannot escape liability for breach of this duty. Therefore, a supervisory coemployee who performs the nondelegable duty of the employer does not thereby assume a personal duty toward his fellow employees. The decisions in Jarka Co. v. Gancl, 149 Md. 425, 131 A. 754 (1926), and Wood v. Abell, 268 Md. 214, 300 A.2d 665 (1973), established that at common law the ultimate responsibility of performing nondelegable duties remains with the employer notwithstanding the fact that an employee has been charged with carrying them out. Thus, under the workmens' compensation scheme as well as under the common law, the supervisory employee should not be held liable for breaching a duty such as providing a safe place to work. On the other hand, if a supervisory employee commits an affirmative, direct act of negligence toward an employee, and therefore negligently breaches a personal duty of care which is reasonably owed by him to the fellow employee, then he would not be immunized from liability. In that circumstance, he would be a third party within the meaning of Md. Code, (1985), Maryland Workmen's Compensation Act, Article 101, 58. Id. at 148-49. Thus, the Court in Athas recognized the established rule that 58 allows an employee to sue a coemployee whose negligence caused an injury. The Court concluded that in performing managerial and personnel functions, such as providing Athas a safe place to work and retaining only non-violent employees, the supervisors discharged only a nondelegable duty of the country club, their employer, and had no duty to Athas. Id. at 149. Nor did the Court find evidence that the supervisors committed any direct act of negligence by failing to reveal or inquire into the chef's criminal record. Id. The Court, therefore, found no duty of care owed by the supervisor to Athas. In reaching this conclusion, the Athas Court adopted the "Wisconsin approach"8 regarding the liability of a supervisory coemployee, which it described as follows: Under the Wisconsin approach, a corporate officer or supervisory coemployee is subject to liability for negligence if he breaches a duty of care which he personally owed to the plaintiff. The negligence must have been directed toward the particular plaintiff and the tortious act must have been outside the scope of the employer's responsibility. The coemployee is not liable merely for breaching a duty that the employer owed the injured employee. As the Supreme Court of Wisconsin stated, "Liability of a corporate officer in a third party action must derive from acts done by such officer in the capacity of a coemployee, and may not be predicated upon acts done by such officer in his capacity as corporate officer." Kruse v. Schieve, 61 Wis. 2d 421, 426, 213 N.W.2d 64 (1973) (Kruse I). The rationale of this view "is that worker's compensation is the exclusive remedy against an employer, and if there is a failure of an officer or employee to perform a duty owed to the employer, the employee's recourse is solely against the employer. When an officer or supervisor fails to perform the employer's duty, the failure is that of the employer, not the officer or supervisor." (300 Md. at 143-44.) The Athas Court further illustrated the Wisconsin approach by making reference to the decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in Canter v. Koehring Co., 283 So.2d 716 (La. 1973). There, the Court delineated several principles for determining when an officer, agent, or employee should be held individually liable to the injured coemployee. The Canter Court concluded that an officer, agent, or employee could be held individually liable to an injured coemployee where the officer, agent, or employee has breached a duty delegated to him or her by the employer through personal fault. Id. at 721. However, the Court immediately clarified that: "personal liability cannot be imposed upon the . . . employee simply because of his general administrative responsibility for the performance of some function of the employment . . . . If the defendant's general responsibility has been delegated with due care to some responsible subordinate . . . he is not himself personally at fault . . . unless he . . . knows or . . . should know of its non-performance or mal-performance and has nonetheless failed to cure the risk of harm." Id. Thus, the Athas Court concluded that "the duty of proper supervision is a duty owed by a corporate officer or supervisory employee to the employer, not to a fellow employee." 300 Md. at 147 . Therefore, a supervisory coemployee is not liable for injuries to a covered employee when the supervisor is delegating work assignments or supervising others in the performance of these assignments because such conduct is an aspect of the employer's nondelegable duty to provide a safe place to work.