Plaintiff Richard Finaldi (“Finaldi”) was in an automobile accident with defendant Matthew Knight (“Knight”), one of defendant Cornucopia Logistics, LLC’s (“Cornucopia”) dispatchers. Knight had stolen a Cornucopia delivery van, fell asleep while operating the van, went through a red light and collided with plaintiff Finaldi. Plaintiff Finaldi suffered serious injuries as a result of the accident. An issue in Finaldi v. Knight, 2024 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 7 (App. Div. Jan. 3, 2024) was whether the defendant Cornucopia could be held responsible for its employee’s actions in causing this accident.
Cornucopia had an agreement with Amazon to deliver groceries ordered through Amazon Fresh. Pursuant to its agreement, Cornucopia had exclusive responsibility for its employees and employment conditions. It used leased delivery vans to make the deliveries, which it stored at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Avenel, where Cornucopia also had an office.
Back at the time of the accident, Cornucopia had several employees at this facility including managers, four dispatchers and about thirty drivers, each for the morning and the night shifts. Each shift had one dispatcher. The dispatcher would log in and assign the drivers their routes. When a driver clocked in, the dispatcher would give them a handbag containing a key to a van, an EZ pass, vehicle registration and insurance and a scanner which permitted the drivers to scan each package in and out. The scanner also acted as a GPS and had a camera. It allowed supervisors to see where each driver had dropped off their last package.
When the vans were not in use, Cornucopia kept the keys in a cabinet behind the dispatch table. It was supposed to be locked after the dispatcher checked in the drivers and gave them their handbags. Each dispatcher had a key to the cabinet, as well as two of the managers. The standard operating procedure was for the dispatcher to log in each key and take inventory of those keys. The dispatcher would count the keys after the drivers returned. If one of the dispatchers discovered a key was missing, they would see if the vehicle was in the parking lot and, if not, notify one of the managers.
Knight, initially worked for Cornucopia as a driver but, after his license was suspended, he became a dispatcher. This position did not require driving so he could continue to work at Cornucopia.
The day before the accident, Knight had stolen the van to assist his mother in moving. His plan had been to return the van to the facility in time for the next shift. He entered the facility, found the cabinet with the keys to the van unlocked and took one of them. Only after the accident did Knight inform the Cornucopia fleet coordinator that he had taken the van. No one at Cornucopia knew the van was missing until after the accident. According to the testimony, this was the first time that an employee had used a van for personal use.
Plaintiff sued for Cornucopia for both negligent hiring and retention, as well as general negligence.
At the trial court level, Cornucopia moved for a summary judgment which was granted as to both claims. The court found that Cornucopia owed no duty to plaintiffs because Cornucopia had no reason to know “that there was an enhanced risk of harm to a third-party by hiring Knight to work as a dispatcher.” The court also found that there was no history of Cornucopia employees stealing vehicles and that it had adequate security measures in place.
Further, the trial court ruled that plaintiffs failed to establish that Cornucopia’s actions were the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries. The court reasoned that Knight was not working at the time of the accident, he was not using the vehicle with Cornucopia’s permission, and Cornucopia took reasonable precautions to prevent against such actions.
A motion for reconsideration was also denied. This appeal ensued. Upon appeal, the Appellate Division noted that the threshold question was whether Cornucopia owed a duty to plaintiffs. The Court held that for a Court to impose a duty, “there must be a foreseeable risk of harm.” Plaintiffs argued in the appeal that Cornucopia’s employees did not follow its procedures to prevent and detect the theft of the van.
The Appellate Division rejected that argument. It found that Cornucopia’s policy in keeping the keys in a locked cabinet, having the dispatcher on duty take inventory of them twice every shift, and that the Avenel facility not being in a high crime area did not result in an imposition of a duty upon Cornucopia.
Further, the Appellate Division noted that Cornucopia had no reason to suspect an employee would take a van for their own personal use. Its policies prohibited an employee from taking the delivery vans for their own use and an employee could be terminated for violating that policy.
Hence, the appeals court declined to follow plaintiff’s argument that the unauthorized use of the van and the accident were sufficiently foreseeable to impose a duty upon Cornucopia. Moreover, the Court noted that even if it was foreseeable that an employee would steal one of the vans, it could not have known that Knight, who had no prior accidents as a driver for the company, would doze off at the wheel and collide with the plaintiff.
Additionally, the Appellate Division rejected plaintiff’s argument that Cornucopia was negligent in promoting Knight to a dispatcher position after his license was suspended. A license suspension alone did not suggest an employee would be deceitful or prone to theft. It would not have put Cornucopia on notice that he would use its vehicle in violation of company policy. Accordingly, the Appellate Division upheld the trial court’s decision, dismissing the case as to Cornucopia.
