Jessica has proven she can answer incoming calls for three months. Her supervisor entrusts her with creating the schedules for coworkers. This illustrates which tort concept?

Jessica has proven she can answer incoming calls for three months. Her supervisor entrusts her with creating the schedules for coworkers. This illustrates which tort concept?

• A. Nuisance
• B. Negligent entrustment
• C. Negligence per se
• D. Duty of care

Answer: (B)

Negligent entrustment involves giving someone a duty or access to a task or instrument that could cause harm, when you know or should know the person isn’t competent to handle it. In this scenario, the supervisor is entrusting Jessica with creating schedules for coworkers. Even though she has shown she can handle answering calls, scheduling is a different, more complex responsibility that can impact safety, workload balance, and operational coverage. If Jessica isn’t qualified to manage that duty and her scheduling decisions lead to harm or significant risk to coworkers or operations, the supervisor could be liable for negligent entrustment. Nuisance is about interfering with others’ use of land, which isn’t at issue here. Negligence per se would require a specific statute being violated. Duty of care is a general obligation to act reasonable in all cases, but the specific tort concept at play is the act of entrusting a task to someone who isn’t qualified to perform it safely.

Negligent entrustment involves giving someone a duty or access to a task or instrument that could cause harm, when you know or should know the person isn’t competent to handle it. In this scenario, the supervisor is entrusting Jessica with creating schedules for coworkers. Even though she has shown she can handle answering calls, scheduling is a different, more complex responsibility that can impact safety, workload balance, and operational coverage. If Jessica isn’t qualified to manage that duty and her scheduling decisions lead to harm or significant risk to coworkers or operations, the supervisor could be liable for negligent entrustment.

Nuisance is about interfering with others’ use of land, which isn’t at issue here. Negligence per se would require a specific statute being violated. Duty of care is a general obligation to act reasonable in all cases, but the specific tort concept at play is the act of entrusting a task to someone who isn’t qualified to perform it safely.