O’Connor v. McDonald’s Restaurants of California, Inc.

Facts

Evans was a McDonald’s employee in California. As Evans desired a managerial position with McDonald’s, Evans made sure to volunteer to help the store off of company time, a policy that McDonald’s fostered in potential managers. As part of this volunteering strategy, Evans worked one evening from around 8 PM to 1 AM as part of a team cleaning the store playground area for the McDonald’s “spring-blitz” program, a competitive cleaning competition between McDonald’s locations sponsored by McDonald’s corporate decision-makers.

After finishing cleaning, Evans and several other employees went from the store location to Evans’s coworker “Duffy’s” house. At Duffy’s house, the coworkers continued to talk about both store policy and the “spring-blitz” program for several hours. At 6 AM, Evans left Duffy’s house. On the way home, Evans’s vehicle struck O’Connor’s motorcycle, causing permanent disability. O’Connor sued several entities for his injuries, including Evans and McDonald’s.

McDonald’s moved for summary judgment on the grounds that, as Evans was outside the scope of his employment at the time of the injury, the doctrine of respondeat superior did not apply. O’Connor argued that Evans was working outside the scope of his regular employment, and therefore on a “special errand” for McDonald’s at the time of the injury. The trial court found that Evans was on a special errand at the time of the store cleaning, but he had stopped working in the scope of his employment when he went to a social event at a coworker’s house, therefore respondeat superior did not apply. O’Connor appealed.