Beard v. Mobile Press Register, Inc.

This appeal, transferred to this court by the Alabama Supreme Court pursuant to § 12-2-7(6), Ala. Code 1975, concerns the nature of an employer's liability in the context of an employee's slaying by a co-worker.

On the afternoon of February 5, 2002, Roderick Seals, a mailroom worker who had been an employee of The Mobile Press Register, Inc. ("the employer"), for 11 years, reported to work armed with a pistol after he had consumed four containers of beer; Seals spent some time that afternoon in a locker room at the employer's premises changing clothes and cleaning the pistol before beginning…