Law Commons^™

The Tennessee Statutory Presumption Of Agency By The Operation Of A Motor Vehicle, Eugene N. Collins

Vanderbilt Law Review

In cases involving the negligent operation of a vehicle by a person not the owner plaintiffs have experienced extreme difficulty in proving that a master-servant relationship existed between the driver and the owner at the time of the accident so as to render the owner liable under the doctrine of respondeat superior.' It is frequently of the utmost importance to a plaintiff to prove that this relationship did exist, because in a large number of cases it is the owner of the vehicle, not the driver, who is financially responsible. A large majority of the courts came to recognize the …