A rental car was stolen from an auto body shop and later involved in a crash, resulting in a passenger suffering a traumatic brain injury. Two and a half years later, the passenger died from a fentanyl overdose. The passenger’s parents filed wrongful death actions against multiple defendants, including the body shop and its owner. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants. The trial court found no triable issue of material fact regarding vicarious liability because the individual who stole and drove the car was not an employee or agent at the relevant time. The court also concluded the defendants owed no duty to protect the injured party since no special circumstances existed to impose such a duty.
Plaintiffs appealed and defendants retained Horvitz & Levy to preserve the judgment on appeal. The Court of Appeal affirmed in a published opinion. Procedurally, the Court of Appeal held that the trial court properly excluded deposition testimony from an earlier case because it contained inadmissible hearsay. Substantively, the court held that Horvitz & Levy’s clients were not vicariously liable; the car was stolen by an individual who was neither an employee nor an agent of the body shop at the time of the incident, as supported by a declaration stating that the individual had not worked there since 2014 and was not employed during the theft in 2016. The court also followed well-established California law holding that the owner of a vehicle is not responsible for an accident caused by the thief of the vehicle, absent special circumstances.
Murphy v. Pina 
