Atoning for the Sins of Our Agents

Inzuna v. Naranjo, No. B318956 (D2d4 Aug. 21, 2023)

Wrongful death case against a Truck Driver and the Company who employed him. Plaintiff served requests for admission on Truck Driver, who didn’t respond. The court eventually ordered them deemed admitted. Plaintiff served largely the same RFAs on Company, which provided verified denials. Before trial, Plaintiff filed an MIL to preclude evidence of decedent’s comparative negligence, and issue on which an RFA on Truck Driver had been deemed to admit. The granted the MIL. It ultimately read a bunch of the deemed admitted RFAs to the jury. The verdict was $7.6 million, joint and several, against Truck Driver and Company. Company appealed.

Code of Civil Procedure § 2033.410(a) and (b) say that a matter deemed admitted is conclusively established against the party making the admission and biding only on that party. While this case involves vicarious liability, it does not involve vicarious discovery. Truck Driver wasn’t acting as Company’s agent when he failed to respond to the RFAs. The Court notes that the same rule applies in the context of default judgments—an agent’s default does not bind a non-defaulting principal. The court concludes by explaining that “an agent’s deemed admissions do not bind the principal codefendant, even when the basis for the action against the principal codefendant is vicarious liability arising from the acts of the agent.”

This requires a reversal against both Truck Driver and the Company. As the court explains, when the liability of one defendant depends on that of another, even a defaulted defendant is entitled to the benefit of findings in a contested trial on that issue. So Truck Driver’s liability rises or falls with the Company’s result at retrial.

Reversed.

One curiosity here. The caption of the case is formatted [Defendant/Appellant] v. [Plaintiff/Respondent]. That’s not the ordinary practice in state court here (or for that matter, in the 9th Circuit), where generally the trial court’s caption is maintained, even when the defendant is the appellant. Having looked, though, I also can’t find a rule that requires it to be that way. (There is a rule for the Cal. Supreme Court that says the capition needs to be the same as before the Court of Appeal opinion. See R. Ct. 8.504(b)(6).) 

But I just worked on trying to style a caption for a federal appeal of the denial of a non-partys' post-judgment motion to intervene in case where two civil cases were consolidated with an MDL. This seems to be something that’s worth spelling out. Or maybe I am just overly concerned about formatting.