Castro v. State of California

Opinion

COBEY, J.

This is an appeal by plaintiff, Marina Castro, from two judgments (Code Civ. Proc., § 58Id) dismissing her second amended complaint as to defendants, the State of California and the County of Los Angeles only, following the sustaining, without leave to amend, of their respective general demurrers to the pleading. The appeal lies. (Code Civ. Proc., § 904.1, subd. (a); 6 Witkin, Cal. Procedure (2d ed. 1971) Appeal, pt. 1, § 42, p. 4057.)

The fundamental question posed by this appeal is whether defendants state and county may be held liable for injuries allegedly inflicted upon plaintiff when she was struck while in a crosswalk by an automobile allegedly negligently operated by defendant Sederberg, while responding

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to a summons to serve as a trial juror in the superior court.

1

The- answer to this question depends upon the answers to two subsidiary questions: (1) Was Sederberg then an employee or servant of either the state or the county? (2) If so, was he at the time of the accident acting within the scope of that employment? Since we answer both the subsidiary questions in the. negative, our answer to the fundamental question will likewise be in the negative. We therefore will affirm.

Discussion

In deciding whether Sederberg, as a prospective trial juror in the superior court, was an employee at the time of the accident of either the state or the county for the purpose of imposing upon them vicarious liability in tort for Sederberg’s alleged negligence, the first thing that must be borne in mind is that workers’ compensation cases (while useful and at times illuminating) should not control our answer to this question. The Workers’ Compensation Act is a protective statute (see Cal. Const., art. XIV, § 4;

California Comp. Ins. Co.

v.

Ind. Acc. Com.,

128 Cal.App.2d 797, 805-806 [276 P.2d 148, 277 P.2d 442]) whose provisions must be liberally construed in favor of protecting injured workers. (Lab. Code, § 3202.) It is a shield for the injured worker. The imposition of vicarious tort liability, on the other hand, is a sword. Vicarious liability is a method of extending tort liability beyond those directly and immediately negligent. (See Prosser on Torts (4th ed. 1971) § 69, p. 458.) Stated otherwise, the fact that a prospective trial juror may be regarded as an employee for the purpose of providing him, when injured, some monetary relief when that injury was sustained in the course of his or her employment, does not compel that such individual be so regarded when the effect of doing so is not to provide the individual with protection from the adverse consequences of an injury sustained in the course of employment but, instead, to enlarge the group of those liable for the torts of the individual.