Can Employers Be Liable For Employees’ Car Accidents During Employee Commutes? Maybe

It is rare these days for a California appellate court to weigh in on whether an employer is vicariously liable for accidents involving an employee that occur during the employee's commute to and from work. The law was thought to be fairly settled. Then, in the span of a few weeks last fall, California appellate courts examined this issue not once but twice, issuing decisions that at first blush seemed to come to quite contrary conclusions.

In mid-September 2013, the Second Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal allowed a case to proceed to trial against a company whose employee injured a motorcyclist during her commute home. Moradi v. Marsh USA Inc., 219 Cal. App. 4th 886 (2013). Less than six weeks later, the Fifth Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment in favor of an employer whose employee caused a serious highway accident while driving to work in a company truck. Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. v. Department of Transportation, 220 Cal. App. 4th 87 (2013).

The issuance of the Moradi and Halliburton decisions provides a timely opportunity to consider the law surrounding an employer's potential liability for employee accidents during work commutes. In order to do so, we need to first revisit some familiar legal constructs that provide a framework for examining this question.

Respondeat Superior, the "Going-and-Coming" Rule and Its "Required Vehicle" Exception

A starting point for this analysis is the doctrine of respondeat superior (Latin for "let the master answer"), which prescribes that an employer is vicariously liable for any wrongful actions committed by an employee within the course and scope of that employee's job duties. A long-recognized judicial exception to this doctrine, commonly known as the "going-and-coming rule," provides that an employee's travels to and from work are generally not within the employee's scope of employment. Consequently, an employer is typically not liable for employee accidents that occur during the employee's daily commute to and from work. The "going-and-coming" rule, in turn, has its own exceptionvariously dubbed the "incidental benefit" or the "required vehicle exception"under which vicarious liability can be imposed upon the employer when the employee's use of his or her personal vehicle gives some incidental benefit to the employer. The rationale behind this exception to the "going-and-coming" rule is that, because the employee is required to...