Businessmen duck and cover! Calif. courts tap the deep pockets
Thursday was a good day for California personal injury attorneys.
The California Court of Appeal reinstated two auto accident cases involving fact patterns that plaintiff’s attorneys have typically had a tough time getting before a jury.
In one case, the court decided that a business could be responsible for a crash involving a vehicle stolen from a company parking lot.
In a second case, the court said that a company may be liable for an accident involving an employee on his way home from an out-of-town business conference.
Stolen tow truck
Maurice J. Sopp & Son is a seller of commercial vehicles. It operates a vehicle service center in a high-crime area of Huntington Park, California.
On Oct. 6, 2005, the company had a tow truck stolen from its service center yard.
The culprit was Raymond Bermudez, a paroled gang member. An intoxicated Bermudez strolled into the yard, found the keys in the ignition, and drove the truck out of an open gate.
Sopp & Sons’ misfortune turned into tragedy when Bermudez lost control of the tow truck and plowed into a group of people waiting for a bus. Three were killed and a number of others suffered serious injuries.
Now, as the crash victims’ attorneys, you know that Bermudez probably isn’t worth going after.
But what are the chances that you can tap into the (hopefully) substantial assets and/or insurance coverage of Sopp & Sons?
Like most states, California law provides that, absent “special circumstances,” the owner of a motor vehicle has no duty to protect third persons against the possibility a thief will steal the vehicle and injure them with it.
Moreover, the criminal’s act will generally be considered a superseding cause of any injury.
So, it looks pretty hopeless, right?
There’s always hope when you’re a plaintiff in California.
Sopp & Sons probably felt pretty confident after a California court tossed the crash victims’ negligence case on summary judgment.
But, to their credit, the plaintiffs’ attorneys kept grinding and their hard work paid off when the state appellate court found that their case was just the sort of case to find that special circumstances existed.
The court revived the case based on evidence that the tow truck “was a powerful vehicle capable of inflicting more serious injury and damage than an ordinary vehicle” and that Sopp & Sons left the vehicle “unattended and accessible to thieves” within the meaning of the special circumstances doctrine.
The court said the evidence supported a finding that the company’s “security measures or shutdown procedures were either not in place or not followed, even though, at the relevant time, Huntington Park had the highest rate of vehicle theft in the nation. …
“On the record presented, Sopp failed to carry its burden on summary judgment to show it owed no duty to secure the vehicle by undertaking minimally burdensome measures such as removing the key from the ignition and/or closing the gate to the premises.” (Carrera v. Maurice J. Sopp & Son)
Special errand?
Marc Brandon was a vice president for Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. He lived near Bubank, California.
In August 2006, Brandon attended an out-of-town conference on Internet piracy. After leaving the three-day conference early, Brandon flew back to Burbank, picked up his car at the airport.
Rather than going to work, drove past his office at Warner Bros. without stopping and headed home along his normal route.
On the way home, Brandon was involved in a two-car collision.
Both cars struck and injured pedestrians Chuenchomporn Jeewarat, Tipphawan Tantisriyanurak and Kanhathai Vutthicharoen. Vutthicharoen died as a result of her injuries.
The pedestrians’ attorneys placed Warner Bros. deep pockets squarely in the crosshairs.
But just like the Sopp & Sons case above, the plaintiffs had a tough hurdle to climb: California’s “going and coming rule” generally bars an employer’s vicarious liability for accidents occurring during an employee’s commute to or from work.
The plaintiffs’ one chance against Warner Bros. was the state’s “special errand” doctrine. That rule imposes employer liability when the accident occurs while the employee is engaged in a “special errand” or a “special mission” for the employer.
But does the state’s special errand doctrine encompass an employee’s attendance at an out-of-town business conference?
Yes, said the California Court of Appeal.
What’s more, the court said that the doctrine applies to make an employer vicariously liable when, as in Brandon’s case, the accident occurrs along the route that the employee normally takes to work.
‘[W]hen an employee intends to drive home from the errand, the errand is not concluded simply because the employee drives his regular commute route, but rather, the errand is concluded when the employee returns home or deviates from the errand for personal reasons,” the court said. (Jeewarat v. Warner Bros. Entertainment)
— Pat Murphy
patrick.murphy@lawyersusaonline.com
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