That's how the (Girl Scout) Cookie Crumbles
In March of 2007, Donna Krickl was a pedestrian in a grocery store parking lot when she was struck by a car driven by defendant Philip Arends. Mr Arends was a volunteer assistant of his daughter's Brownie Troop. He and his wife were supervising the troop's Girl Scout cookie sale outside a grocery store in Des Plaines. Mr. Arends delivered the cookies and a table and chairs to the store and parked his van in the store's lot. He promised to take the girls to lunch at the completion of the sale. The girls sold all their cookies, and Mr. Arends loaded up the table and chairs. He then drove over to where his wife was parked, but in doing so struck a parked car, hit the plaintitt, struck a pole and then backed up and and ran over the plaintiff, trapping her under the rear tire. Krickl filed suit against Arends and the Girl Scouts. She alleged that Arends was acting as an agent for the Girls Scouts Council.www.girlscouts.org
The Girl Scouts Council filed a Motion for Summary Judgment arguing that Arends was not acting as an agent and the Circuit Court granted the motion. Plaintiff appealed. The Appellate Court affirmed after reviewing the record. In particular the court pointed out that at the time of the accident, the sale had ended, one of the girls had already been picked up and Arends was in the process of calling his wife to determine where they were going to lunch. This lunch did not further the purposes of the Council. In fact, the Council was not aware of the lunch, it was simply something the Arends had decided under their own accord. The Court ruled that even if Mr. Arends was an agent of the council, he wasn't acting within the scope of the agency when he drove his van to the post-sale lunch. Krickl v Girl Scouts, 402 Ill.App.3d 1, 930 N.E.2d 1096, 341 Ill.Dec. 582
