The El Paso Court of Appeals has admonished an El Paso district court for failing to comply with a mandamus order issued by the Texas Supreme Court.
Rudolph Automotive, LLC d/b/a Rudolph Mazda v. Andrea Juarez, Individually and as Executor of the Estate of Irma Vanessa Villegas, Deceased (No. 08-24-00142-CV; August 20, 2025) arose from a vehicle-pedestrian accident. On December 27th, 2013, an office celebration went badly awry when employee Irma Vanessa Villegas was hit by a car driven by her coworker. The employees of Rudolph Mazda had been drinking to celebrate a successful day of sales and Villegas was struck by Christian Ruiz’s car after she had accompanied him to his vehicle in the parking lot. She sustained severe injuries, including traumatic brain injury and paralysis. Villegas passed away in 2020 after seven years in a nursing home.
Villegas’s daughter, Andrea Juarez, filed sued against Ruiz and Marcelo Flores, the manager on duty on the day of the accident (Rudoph did not subscribe to workers’ compensation insurance). She asserted negligence and premises liability claims and sought to hold Rudolph vicariously liable for her mother’s injuries. The jury found that (1) Villegas and Ruiz were not acting in the scope of employment at the time of the accident, 2) Flores was acting in the course and scope of employment at the time of the accident, 3) the negligence of Flores, Ruiz, and Villegas caused the accident, and 4) Rudolph’s negligence did not proximately cause the accident. The jury apportioned 10% of the responsibility to Rudolph, 25% to Flores, 35% to Ruiz and 30% to Villegas. It awarded $4 million in damages to Juarez and Villegas.
The trial court granted Villegas’s motion for new trial based in part on the inconsistency between the jury’s answers finding that Rudolph was not negligent but assigning ten percent of responsibility to it. Rudolph filed a petition for mandamus, which the court of appeals denied but SCOTX granted. In re Rudolph Auto., LLC, 674 S.W.3d 289 (Tex. 2023). SCOTX ordered the trial court “to vacate its new-trial order, harmonize the verdict, and proceed in the normal course with post-trial stages of litigation.” Now back in the trial court, Rudolph moved for new trial requesting the trial court to comply with the order. Instead of doing that, the trial court set aside the jury’s finding that Villegas and Ruiz were not acting in the course and scope of employment and issued a decision which held that Villegas and Ruiz had been in the course and scope of their employment at the time of the accident, which had the effect of apportioning. 100% of the liability to Rudolph in spite of the jury’s non-negligence finding. Rudolph appealed.
In an opinion by Chief Justice Mendoza reversed and remanded to the trial court. Section 406.033, Labor Code, deprives employers who do not subscribe to workers’ compensation insurance of certain common law defenses, but only when the was injured in the course and scope of employment. Here the jury found that Villegas was outside of the course and scope of her employment at the time of the accident. Under the statute, consequently, Rudolph could assert the defenses of contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, and that the injury was caused by the negligence of another employee. But once the trial court overrode the jury’s finding, Rudolph lost both the contributory negligence defense based on Villegas’s negligence and the defense attributing Plaintiff’s injury to another employee (Ruiz). As the court observed, “[t]he trial court could not disregard the jury’s findings on the ground that they were immaterial; whether Rudolph can be held liable for their negligence depends on those findings.” The question thus became whether there was any evidence to support the jury’s findings. The court further observed that Juarez, in her motion to disregard the jury’s findings and on appeal, “relies on different definitions than the ones used in the jury charge.”
To rectify this discrepancy, the court evaluated the evidence in light of the charge, not Plaintiff’s refashioning of it. The trial court’s charge used a different definition of course and scope than the statutory definition in § 401.011(12). The common law definition provides that “[a]n employee is acting in the scope and course of employment if he is acting in the furtherance of the business of [his] employer and within the scope of the general authority given him by his employer.” Generally, an employee “is not in the course and scope of employment when he is going to or from work.” § 401.011 (12). But “access doctrine” exception to that rule, however, broadens course and scope to include a “place intended by the employer for use by the employee in passing to and from the actual place of service on premises owned or controlled by the employer, or so closely related to the employer’s premises as to be fairly treated as a part thereof” (citations omitted). Although the jury charge had somewhat different language, the court observed, “[b]oth definitions (the one Juarez relies on now and the one in the jury charge) have the effect of characterizing an activity as one within the course and scope of employment if it occurs while the employee is entering or leaving the employer’s premises.”
Plaintiff argued that the access doctrine applied, whereas Rudolph asserted that the doctrine only applies in workers’ compensation cases, not non-subscriber cases. The court, however, determined that it didn’t need to decide the latter issue because the evidence supported the jury’s finding that Villegas and Ruiz were on the premises for personal reasons rather than to further Rudolph’s business. Ruiz did not force them to remain on Rudolph’s premises, and employees who remain on the employer’s premises for personal undertakings are not acting within course and scope. Additionally, several employees testified that they did not believe they were working at the time. Juarez responded that even if the workers were exclusively socializing, those activities fell within course and scope. She relied on a case in which an employee was considered within course and scope when he was injured while tossing a football on a recreational break. The court found this reasoning unconvincing, not only because the employees’ shift had ended and “the employer received no specific benefit beyond general morale of its employees.” Finally, the court rejected Juarez’s argument that an employee is considered to be in the course and scope for at least 30 minutes after a shift, citing a prior El Paso Court of Appeals opinion. The court, however, found that case inapposite here.
The court thus ruled that the trial court erred in disregarding the jury’s findings and in not following the SCOTX’s instructions. It did not, however, render judgment but remanded to the trial court to reallocate the percentages of fault among parties found to be at fault.
TCJL Intern Satchel Williams researched and prepared the first draft of this article.
