BATON ROUGE, La. (Legal Newsline) - The Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team isn’t liable for an accident caused by an off-duty motorcycle policeman who collided with a sheriff’s deputy while escorting team buses to the airport, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled, overturning lower court decisions that could have exposed the NFL team to damages.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Michael Tisdale was escorting the Bucs after a Saints game in the Superdome in September 2015 when he collided with foot officer Terrance Bolden at the intersection of Girod Street and Loyola Ave. Bolden and his wife sued multiple parties including the Buccaneers organization and three insurance companies, saying Tisdale was an employee of the team at the time of the accident.
The defendants argued Tisdale was under the control of the JPSO but the trial judge disagreed, ruling this was a question of fact for a jury to decide. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear an appeal.
The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed in a Jan. 28 decision, holding that because the motorcycle escort was operating on public streets according to official police regulations, the Buccaneers could not be held liable.
The evidence showed a Bucs executive named Andres Trecasto submitted a written request for a motorcade escort services, including the dates, times and locations as well as a series of specific requests Trecasto felt would be helpful for the safe movement of the buses based on his prior experience as a police officer. In each case he prefaced his remarks with “it is requested.” The New Orleans Police Dept. billed the team $1,995 and Jefferson Parish billed $600.
In a deposition, Trecasto said “I cannot tell them you’re going to do this, this, this, because that would be a disrespect to that law enforcement, so I do not. All we request is an escort from Point A to Point B.”
The plaintiffs cited a Jan. 17, 2018, affidavit by Capt. Greg Lonero, who said Tinsdale was working on a “private paid detail for the Buccaneers” that was unrelated to his employment with the police.
In its decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court said the plaintiffs failed to come up with evidence to disprove the Buccaneers’ argument there was no employer-employee relationship between the team and Tisdale.
In the case of an independent contractor, the test is whether the defendant has hired the contractor to perform “specific piecework as a unit to be done according to the contractor’s own methods, without being subject to the control and direction” of the defendant company. In this case, the off-duty police officers made the final decisions on how to safely conduct the team buses to the airport on public streets, the court said.
In a footnote, the court dismissed the plaintiffs’ citation of a tweet by “Nick Jacobs from Kansas City” who remarked upon the Raiders coach taking a victory lap around Arrowhead Stadium as evidence NFL teams can control the motorcade route. The court also distinguished prior cases where off-duty officers were hired for premises security, saying that entails greater control over the work those officers do. “Governmental entities have exclusive control over public thoroughfares,” the court said.