## Facts

- Rita Trahan-Laroche and Lucien Laroche were injured when a flatbed trailer separated from a pickup truck and struck their vehicle.
- The truck and trailer were owned and driven by Patrick J. Maimone, a maintenance mechanic employed by Lockheed Sanders, Inc.
- As part of his job, Maimone was assigned to hay fields at Lockheed Sanders’s facilities in Hudson and Litchfield.
- Maimone supplied most of the haying equipment and typically towed it to Lockheed Sanders’s premises with his own truck and trailer.
- Lockheed Sanders paid Maimone normal wages while haying and allowed him to keep hay he removed, but did not separately compensate him for transporting or using his equipment.
- Before the accident, Maimone had completed haying at the Litchfield facility but had not removed his trailer or all farm machinery from the premises.
- On October 24, 1990, after work but before leaving the premises, Maimone hitched the trailer to his truck to transport hay from his farm to a store for sale that evening.
- Maimone planned to return the trailer to retrieve remaining farm machinery from Lockheed Sanders’s facility.
- While driving from Lockheed Sanders’s Litchfield facility toward his farm, the trailer detached and collided with plaintiffs’ vehicle.
- Plaintiffs sued Lockheed Sanders under respondeat superior and negligent supervision, alleging negligent attachment and inadequate safety chains while on company premises, and alleging Lockheed Sanders had notice of prior vehicle-related incidents involving Maimone.

## Issues

1. Whether a jury could reasonably find that Maimone’s conduct at the time of the accident was within the scope of employment (or incidental to authorized conduct) for purposes of respondeat superior.
2. Whether plaintiffs alleged sufficient facts to avoid summary judgment on a negligent supervision theory based on Lockheed Sanders’s control over conduct on its premises and alleged knowledge of risk.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of New Hampshire reversed the grant of summary judgment for Lockheed Sanders and remanded.
- The court held that the summary judgment record permitted competing inferences on whether Maimone’s trailer-related conduct was incidental to his employment arrangement, making scope of employment a jury question.
- The court held that plaintiffs’ negligent supervision allegations, including unsafe hitching and safety-chain use on company premises and alleged prior notice of risk, were sufficient to present material fact questions.

## Legal Principles

- An employer may be vicariously liable for an employee’s torts committed within the scope of employment, including acts incidental to authorized conduct.
- Scope of employment commonly presents a fact question; summary judgment is improper if reasonable inferences could support a finding that the employee acted, at least in part, to serve the employer.
- A negligent supervision claim may proceed where facts support an inference that the employer knew or should have known of a risk created by an employee’s conduct and failed to use reasonable care in supervision, with resulting injury.
- At summary judgment, the court must credit the nonmovant’s supported allegations and reasonable inferences when deciding whether genuine issues of material fact exist.

## Conclusion

The court reinstated both respondeat superior and negligent supervision claims because the employee’s mixed personal and work-related use of his trailer, combined with alleged unsafe attachment on company premises and alleged prior notice of risk, created triable fact disputes that could not be resolved as a matter of law.


Trahan-Laroche v. Lockheed Sanders, Inc., 139 N.H. 483, 657 A.2d 417 (N.H. 1995)