## Facts

- The Virginia Pilot Association was a voluntary, unincorporated group of state-licensed pilots operating within Virginia’s statutory pilotage system.
- Pilots took turns boarding vessels that were legally required to accept the first pilot offering services or else pay statutory pilotage.
- Pilotage fees (fixed by law) were commonly paid into an association fund; business expenses were paid from the fund, and remaining amounts were distributed among pilots based on days on the active list.
- Frank W. Guy, a member pilot, allegedly negligently piloted a steamer, causing a collision with another vessel.
- The steamer’s owners paid damages to resolve the collision claim and then filed an admiralty libel against Guy and all other association members seeking to impose collective liability for Guy’s negligence.
- The case reached the Supreme Court on certified questions from the court of appeals concerning whether the association’s arrangement created partnership status and resulting liability to vessel owners.

## Issues

1. Whether members of the Virginia Pilot Association were partners, as to vessel owners, because they pooled pilotage fees and divided net proceeds.
2. If the members were partners, whether each member was liable to vessel owners for another member’s negligent pilotage.
3. If the members were not partners, whether the association’s structure nonetheless created collective liability for a member’s negligence.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court held that association members were not to be treated as partners, as to vessel owners, for purposes of liability for each other’s negligence based solely on fee collection and distribution through a common fund.
- The Court rejected imposing vicarious liability on the other pilots where they could not select, control, or discharge the negligent pilot within the state-regulated licensing framework.
- The Court answered the certified questions to deny collective liability and reversed the judgment that had imposed liability on all members.

## Legal Principles

- A person carrying on private business may be responsible for the torts of another to whom part of the work is entrusted, but not for the torts of one whom the person cannot select, control, or discharge.
- Profit sharing and use of a common fund, without the ordinary incidents of mutual agency and control associated with partnership or master–servant relations, does not by itself impose partnership-like tort liability to third parties.
- In a heavily regulated profession where licensing, assignment, and discipline are controlled by public authority, association-based administrative arrangements do not necessarily create vicarious liability among members for each other’s professional negligence.

## Conclusion

The Court refused to treat a state-licensed pilot association’s fee-pooling and distribution arrangement as creating partnership-based or other collective tort liability to shipowners for a member pilot’s negligence, emphasizing the absence of member control over selection, direction, or discharge within the state regulatory scheme.


Guy v. Donald, 203 U.S. 399 (1906)