CASES:
In Edgewater Motels, Inc. v. GatzkeI, the employee, A.J. Gatzke, was staying in a motel in Duluth while he helped the Walgreen Company open a new restaurant. 277 N.W.2d at 13. One evening, after several hours discussing the new restaurant over drinks at a Duluth bar, Gatzke returned to his motel room and smoked a cigarette while he finished filling out some expense reports. Id. at 14. His cigarette butt later started a fire in the motel room’s waste basket and caused over $300,000 in damage to the motel. Id. The motel sued Gatzke for the damage and alleged that the Walgreen Company was vicariously liable.
The Gatzke court first concluded that it could not dismiss the possibility that Walgreen was vicariously liable simply because the damage was caused by smoking, an activity that was not required as part of Gatzke’s job. The court explained, “
an employee does not abandon his employment as a matter of law while temporarily acting for his personal comfort when such activities involve only slight deviations from work that are reasonable under the circumstances, such as eating, drinking, or smoking.” Id. at 16. Thus, “an employer can be held vicariously liable for his employee’s negligent smoking of a cigarette [if] he was otherwise acting in the scope of his employment at the time of the negligent act.” Id.
Compare that with a similar case, Mosby v. McGee. McGee was smoking
after the conference events were over for the day, at a time when he was not doing anything traceable to his work responsibilities, in a place that had
no formal connection to his employment. In those circumstances, the Court found no evidence sufficient to persuade a reasonable juror that McGee’s actions on the night of the smoking caused fire were “in furtherance of the interests of his employer.”
https://jux.law/when-is-an-employer-liable-for-the-action-of-its-employee/