San Francisco Truck Accident Lawyers

Recent Case Settlement

Legal Accountability Runs All the Way to the Top

A tow truck driver accidentally lost control of a car, which rolled downhill and killed a young mother. Seems like an open and shut case, doesn’t it?  But in every personal injury case, you need a source of monetary recovery. The tow company only had a $1 million insurance policy, which is woefully under insured for a wrongful death case.

So I began to look up the ladder of responsibility.  Who hired the tow company?  It depends on whom you ask. The whole chain of events began when a proverbial “little old lady” (age 96!) had car trouble, so she called her auto insurance carrier, a mega company whose logo you see in commercials every day, especially at major sporting events.  The insurance company routed her call to a middleman, another huge company specializing in emergency roadway assistance.  That middleman then hired the tow company.

The big insurance carrier and the middleman company both said this accident was not their responsibility– the tow company was an “independent contractor” that they had no control over. This was complete hogwash! They exercised lots of control over the tow company– everything from how fast they had to respond to calls to what kind of uniforms the drovers had to wear. But as a legal matter, they had some decent defenses. Both the insurance company and its middleman refused to pay a dime in settlement.

I filed suit against the tow company, the insurance company and its middleman.  I took about 20 depositions of various witnesses and company representatives.  I got public record documents showing the tow company’s license had been suspended a bunch of times. I also found that the driver had been poorly trained, but I already knew he was negligent simply by virtue of dropping a car during a routine tow.

The documents produced by the big insurance carrier and the middleman showed how much control they both exercised over the tow company.  Amazingly, the big insurance carrier retained the right to fire the small tow company for any reason, including poor customer service.  The ability to terminate is a key indicator of control under the California Supreme Court decision of  Malloy v. Fong (1951) 37 Cal.2d 356.

What this all added up to is that the huge insurance company and its middleman were both legally liable for the bad conduct of the tow company under the legal principle of respondeat superior. Under this principle, the principal (big company) is responsible for harm caused by its agent (little tow company). The reason for this is loss spreading– innocent injured people should have a remedy. Injury accidents are a cost of doing business. The big players can protect themselves by buying insurance.  And the big players in our case had something like $50 million in insurance.

But the huge insurance company and its middleman still wanted to scurry from responsibility, like cockroaches from bright light.  They tried every trick in the book, including trying to get a court order (summary judgment) letting them out of the case completely.  I filed what I consider one of the best briefs I have ever written, which certainly would have defeated their misguided motions.  And they knew it!  On the day before the motions were to be heard in court, the defendants agreed to pay a combined $9 million to settle the wrongful death claim.

  This was the biggest settlement of my career. It felt great, because it had been a long two year road.  I became the premier expert on agency law. Most important, I helped this grieving family.  I remain good friends with all of the family members who help me pursue justice for them and their mother/daughter.