An employer might be liable for a passenger’s injuries resulting from an accident that occurred while an off-duty employee was driving a company truck, because the employee was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a California appellate court ruled.
The plaintiff was injured in a single-vehicle, rollover accident. He sued the company that employed the driver and an affiliated corporation that owned the truck, alleging that the driver was acting in the scope of his employment at the time of the accident, and therefore the companies were liable under California’s doctrine of “respondeat superior,” which provides that an employer can be held vicariously liable for an employee’s negligence in certain situations.
