## Facts

- Norwalk Yellow Cab, Inc. employed Johnley Sainval as a taxicab driver.
- While working, Sainval stopped at Carlton Court, a public housing complex described in the pleadings as a high-crime area.
- Sainval left the cab unattended with the keys in the ignition (and, as alleged, the vehicle left running) while he accompanied a passenger into an apartment.
- Two teenagers, Deondre Bowden and Shaquille Johnson, stole the cab.
- Johnson initially drove the stolen cab, then allowed Bowden to drive.
- While Bowden was driving in Stamford, Connecticut, he attempted to maneuver around stopped traffic near an intersection, struck a stopped vehicle, reversed, drove over a curb, hit a fire hydrant, and then struck Brenda Snell, dragging her beneath the cab before fleeing.
- After Bowden fled, the unmanned cab continued moving and collided with another vehicle before coming to rest.
- Snell did not sue Bowden or Johnson. She sued Sainval for negligence and sued Norwalk Yellow Cab under respondeat superior, alleging Sainval acted within the scope of his employment.
- Sainval and Norwalk Yellow Cab filed an apportionment complaint against Bowden and Johnson seeking to apportion fault for Snell’s damages.
- The apportionment complaint asserted, among other claims, that Johnson was liable for negligent entrustment because he permitted Bowden to drive the stolen cab.
- Snell moved to strike the negligent-entrustment count directed at Johnson. The court evaluated the pleadings under the motion-to-strike standard, taking the alleged facts as true.

## Issues

1. Whether Connecticut law recognizes a negligent-entrustment claim against a person who is neither the owner nor a lawful custodian of a vehicle, when that person allegedly allowed another to drive a vehicle the two had stolen.
2. Whether the court should treat “physical dominion” over stolen property, without any lawful right to possession or control, as sufficient “control” to support negligent-entrustment liability.

## Decision

- The court granted Snell’s motion to strike the negligent-entrustment count in the defendants’ apportionment complaint.
- The court held that, as pleaded, Johnson’s status as a participant in the theft and his temporary, unlawful control of the cab did not amount to the type of ownership or lawful custody/control contemplated by Connecticut negligent-entrustment doctrine.
- The court declined to extend Connecticut negligent-entrustment law to the broader rule urged by the defendants (drawn from Massachusetts decisions) that would allow liability based on physical dominion alone.

## Legal Principles

- A motion to strike tests the legal sufficiency of a pleading; the court assumes the truth of well-pleaded facts and asks whether the allegations state a recognized cause of action.
- Connecticut negligent entrustment in the vehicle context requires, in substance: (a) a defendant with ownership or lawful custody/control of the vehicle (or a similar right to control its use), (b) a voluntary act of entrusting the vehicle to another, and (c) knowledge, or reason to know, that the person entrusted is incompetent or unfit to operate the vehicle safely, with resulting harm.
- Unlawful possession obtained through theft is not treated as the kind of legally recognized control that supports negligent-entrustment liability under existing Connecticut authority.
- A trial court will not expand negligent-entrustment doctrine to new categories of “entrustors” absent Connecticut precedent supporting that expansion, particularly where the proposed rule would treat a thief’s temporary possession as equivalent to lawful custody or ownership.

## Conclusion

In *Snell v. Norwalk Yellow Cab, Inc.*, the Connecticut Superior Court struck a negligent-entrustment claim asserted in an apportionment complaint against a teenager who allegedly let another teenager drive a stolen taxicab, ruling that Connecticut negligent-entrustment law requires an entrustor with ownership or lawful custodial control, not merely transient physical possession obtained through theft.


Snell v. Norwalk Yellow Cab, Inc., 52 Conn. L. Rptr. 43 (2011)