Plaintiff, the wife of a deceased driver, brought a wrongful death action against defendants, a truck driver, who stopped his tractor-trailer rig alongside an interstate highway to have a snack, and his employer. A jury found the stopped driver 10 percent at fault. The Court of Appeal, California, reversed the judgment on the jury verdict and denial of the employer's motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. Plaintiff sought review.

The California Supreme Court held, contrary to the decision of the appeals court, that the employer owed a legal duty to avoid a collision between the decedent, who was found 90 percent at fault, and the employer's stopped truck. Civ. Code, § 1714, subd. (a), established a general duty of reasonable care for the safety of others, and there were no grounds in the current case to find an exception. That drivers might lose control of their vehicles, leave a freeway for the shoulder area, and collide with an obstacle was not categorically unforeseeable. Nor did public policy clearly demand that truck drivers be universally permitted, without the possibility of civil liability for a collision, to take nonemergency breaks alongside freeways in areas where regulations permitted only emergency parking. The California class action lawyers also held that substantial evidence supported a finding that if the tractor-trailer had not been stopped where it was, the other driver likely would have come to a stop without a fatal collision. The evidence included that in the direction of the decedent's travel there was a large expanse of hard packed dirt without obstacles, ending with a gravel shoulder at a freeway on-ramp.

The court reversed the judgment of the court of appeal.

Petitioner municipality sought review of a decision of the Superior Court of Ventura County (California) that overruled petitioner's demurrers to claims of wrongful discharge under the common law and under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, Cal. Gov't Code § 12900 et seq.

A city employee filed claims of wrongful discharge, discrimination, breach of contract, and infliction of emotional distress after petitioner municipality refused to allow her to return to work after a medical leave for knee surgery. The trial court sustained petitioner's demurrers to the breach of contract and emotional distress causes of action but overruled demurrers to the causes of action for common law wrongful termination and for discrimination under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), Cal. Gov't Code § 12900 et seq. Petitioner sought review and argued that Cal. Lab. Code § 132a provided the employee's exclusive remedy and that the trial court therefore erred in overruling the demurrers. The court held that the exclusive remedy provisions of the workers' compensation law were not applicable to injuries arising from conduct that constituted a breach of an employee's civil rights and that § 132a did not preclude the employee from pursuing her common law and FEHA remedies. The court therefore affirmed the judgment of the court below.

The court affirmed the judgment of the court below that overruled petitioner's demurrers to statutory and common law claims of discrimination and wrongful termination because it held that the workers' compensation exclusive remedy provisions did not apply to conduct that allegedly constituted a breach of an employee's civil rights.