Legal Alerts

CA Appellate Court Expands Employer Liability For Vehicle Accidents Occurring During Daily Commutes

An employer may be held vicariously liable for its employee’s tortious conduct if the employee’s conduct falls within the “course and scope” of the employment relationship. Prior to the court’s expansion of the “coming and going” rule, an employee’s conduct during his daily commute to and from work would not have been considered within the “course and scope” of his employment.

But in a recent decision, Moradi v. Marsh, the California Court of Appeal held that an employer can be liable for an automobile accident involving an employee which occurs after the work day and when the employee is running personal errands.

In Moradi, the employee left her office in downtown Los Angeles toward her home in Woodland Hills, California. She planned to stop at a Menchie’s yogurt shop and attend a yoga class, both in Woodland Hills. On her way to the yogurt shop, the employee struck a motorcyclist. The plaintiff-motorcyclist sued both the employee and the employer. The employer won summary judgment, arguing that the employee was “neither at work, nor working, nor pursuing any task on behalf of her employer, but was pursuing personal interest.”

However, on appeal, the Moradi court reversed the decision, holding that the going and coming rule is inapplicable because of the “required vehicle” exception to the rule. Under the required vehicle exception, the coming and going rule is inapplicable if

(1) use of a personal vehicle is an express or implied condition of employment or
(2) the employee has agreed, explicitly or implicitly, to make his personal vehicle available as an accommodation to the employer and the employer has reasonably come to rely upon its use and expects the employee to make the vehicle available on a regular basis while not making it as a condition of employment.

In Moradi, the individual defendant employee was a salesperson for an insurance broker. The insurance broker required the employee to use her personal vehicle for business travel. The employee frequently used her personal vehicle for work-related purposes such as driving to presentations, meetings with clients and prospective clients, following leads, driving co-workers to company-sponsored events, and driving to educational seminars. The employee used her vehicle for work-related purposes from two to five times per week.

After finding the coming and going rule inapplicable, the Moradi court subsequently held that the employer can be liable under the traditional course and scope of employment analysis.

First, the planned stops for yogurt and yoga on the way home did not change the incidental benefit to the employer of having the employee use her personal vehicle to travel to and from the office and other destinations. Second, the planned stops did not constitute an unforeseeable, substantial departure from the employee’s commute. Finally, the planned stops were not so unusual or startling that it would be unfair to include the resulting loss among the other costs of the employer’s business.

Notably, under Moradi, the coming and going rule also applies to accidents occurring during the daily, routine commutes of “ordinary members” of the work force who do not use their personal vehicles for work-related purposes. But the extent to which an employee must use his personal vehicle for work-related purposes is unknown. In Moradi, the employee used her vehicle extensively (about two to five times per week), but California employers are left to guess the upper and lower bounds of the required vehicle exception. Accordingly, the recent Moradi ruling will likely lead to increased litigation as the extent of an employer’s liability is still unclear.

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