DAWN RENAE DIAZ, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. JOSE CARCAMO et al., Defendants and Appellants., 51 Cal. 4th 1148

Summary

The California Supreme Court reaffirmed its 1954 holding that an employer's admission of vicarious liability for an employee's negligent driving in the course of employment bars a plaintiff from pursuing a claim for negligent entrustment. That decision was not undermined by the court's later adoption of comparative fault principles or by the adoption of Proposition 51, with its related limit on joint liability. It also made no difference that the employer offered to admit vicarious liability at trial, rather than before, or that the claim in the current case was for negligent hiring, rather than negligent entrustment. Therefore, it was error in the current case to admit evidence of the employee's past accidents, including one in which he was at fault and another that had occurred just 16 days before the accident at issue, and evidence of the employee's poor employment record. The error was prejudicial because the jury would probably have reached a different result as to whether the ...