## Facts

- Hyland, an electrical contractor building and repairing telephone lines, sent his foreman Ludwig from Hillsboro, North Dakota, to McKenzie County for line work, traveling in Hyland’s car with tools and accompanied by another employee and Hyland’s son.
- Hyland instructed Ludwig to travel via Mayville, Finley, Cooperstown, and Carrington, and to stay overnight in Carrington.
- Ludwig followed the route to Finley, then deviated at a companion’s request to go to McVille, where the group stayed about an hour.
- After leaving McVille, Ludwig did not return to Finley; he proceeded toward Carrington by way of New Rockford.
- Near New Rockford, Ludwig’s car collided with the Kohlman family’s vehicle; the plaintiff, a 13-year-old passenger, suffered injuries allegedly caused by Ludwig’s negligent driving.
- Hyland denied vicarious liability, arguing Ludwig had abandoned the employer’s business by deviating from the instructed route and was on a personal mission at the time of the collision.
- In the first trial, the court dismissed the case at the close of the plaintiff’s evidence on the ground that Ludwig was outside the scope of employment as a matter of law.
- On remand after the first appeal, a jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff; Hyland appealed again, challenging, among other things, the sufficiency of the evidence and the submission of scope of employment to the jury.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence permitted only one conclusion—that Ludwig had abandoned Hyland’s business—so that scope of employment could be decided as a matter of law rather than submitted to the jury.
2. Whether, after retrial, sufficient evidence supported the jury’s finding that Ludwig had resumed Hyland’s business at the time of the collision, and whether the trial court properly instructed the jury on that question.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of North Dakota reversed the initial dismissal and remanded, holding the scope-of-employment question should have been submitted to the jury because reasonable inferences supported either continued employment activity or personal deviation.
- After retrial, the court affirmed the plaintiff’s judgment, concluding the evidence supported the finding that Ludwig had reentered the scope of employment by the time of the collision and that the case was properly submitted to the jury.

## Legal Principles

- Under respondeat superior, an employer is liable for an employee’s torts committed within the course and scope of employment.
- A complete abandonment of the employer’s business for a purely personal mission generally removes the employee from the scope of employment during that period.
- A temporary deviation in route or conduct does not necessarily terminate the employment relationship for the entire trip; an employee may reenter the employer’s business after the deviation ends.
- When the facts permit competing inferences about whether an employee has departed from, or returned to, the employer’s business—particularly in route-deviation automobile cases—the issue is ordinarily for the jury and should be decided as a matter of law only in clear cases.

## Conclusion

The court treated route deviation as a fact-sensitive scope-of-employment question: even if an employee briefly detours for personal reasons, the employer may remain vicariously liable once the employee resumes the employer’s mission, and whether that resumption occurred is generally for the jury.


Kohlman v. Hyland, 54 N.D. 710, 210 N.W. 643 (N.D. 1926)