BOSTON (Legal Newsline) – His employer won’t be liable for the actions of a man who brutally beat and sexually assaulted a woman while he was on a work trip but off-duty.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court made that decision June 15 when it ruled for Mills Van Lines and Allied Van Lines in a lawsuit stemming from the actions of Robert Koontz.
Koontz drove a moving truck from out-of-state to Quincy in August 2011 to help a customer of Mills Van Lines move the next day, but he sexually assaulted Olga Ledet the night before the move. Ledet and her husband sued the company, arguing it was negligent in hiring Koontz, given a criminal history that included drug and alcohol abuse and 10 felony convictions (one of those was threatening domestic violence by use of a hammer).
Mills Van Lines also went against its own policy when it failed to perform a criminal background check on Koontz and overlooked evidence that he didn’t have a driver’s license.
But that wasn’t enough for Ledet to prove her allegations.
“Koontz’s mere presence in Quincy occasioned by his employment, without more, did not create a legal duty,” Chief Justice Mark Green wrote.
“The decision to entrust the U-Haul truck to Koontz was entirely within Mills’ control and discretion. It is not unreasonable to expect employers to make entrustment decisions carefully after being informed of the facts.”
Claiming its negligence in failing to perform a background check on Koontz led to the assault of Ledet is too far of a reach, the court said.
“As a matter of law, Koontz’s criminal acts, committed while Koontz was off duty and not engaged in the work for which Mills employed him, against a person with whom Mills held no commercial or other relationship, was not a sufficiently foreseeable result of Mills’ hiring of Koontz, or its decision to allow him to drive a truck incident to the move to which he was assigned,” Green wrote.
Koontz was sentenced to 10 to 13 years in prison after pleading guilty to kidnapping, assault to rape and three counts of assault and battery.