Background
A collision involving a Tesla service truck presented a recurring Indiana respondeat-superior question: when does an employee’s trip home remain within the scope of employment? Tesla service assistant Kyle Kaszuba had delivered a company trailer for repair near the end of his shift. Returning the company truck to Tesla’s service center before retrieving his personal vehicle would have added nearly an hour in rush-hour traffic, so his manager authorized him to drive the truck home and bring it back the next morning. Employees could take work vehicles home with managerial approval, although they normally commuted in personal vehicles.
On the way home, Kaszuba stopped to put gasoline in the truck and later collided with Christopher Dugan. Tesla’s service team had an informal practice that a company vehicle returned with less than a quarter tank should be refueled. The evidence did not speak with one voice about whether that practice was a required duty, a recommendation, or a courtesy to coworkers. The trial court nevertheless entered partial summary judgment against Tesla on vicarious liability, deciding as a matter of law that Kaszuba was acting within the scope of his employment. The Court of Appeals largely affirmed, and the Indiana Supreme Court accepted transfer.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court reversed the partial summary judgment on Tesla’s vicarious liability. Justice Slaughter’s majority opinion held that the designated evidence created a genuine issue of material fact about whether Kaszuba was acting within the scope of employment when the crash occurred. Indiana’s going-and-coming rule generally places an employee’s ordinary commute outside the scope of employment. But the rule has an exception when the employee is performing assigned work or remains subject to the employer’s control. Scope ordinarily turns on facts and is therefore a jury question unless the evidence permits only one conclusion.
The record allowed competing inferences. A jury could find that stopping for gasoline furthered Tesla’s business because the truck belonged to Tesla, contained a company gas card, and was subject to the service team’s refueling practice. It could also find that Kaszuba was commuting home under a personal accommodation and refueled voluntarily for his own convenience or as a courtesy, rather than to perform assigned work. The Court emphasized that the question was not whether one inference seemed stronger but whether reasonable jurors could disagree. Because they could, neither side was entitled to judgment as a matter of law on scope of employment.
The Court remanded the vicarious-liability issue for trial and summarily affirmed the Court of Appeals in most other respects, including its treatment of liability allocation between the drivers. Justice Goff, joined by Chief Justice Rush, concurred in part and dissented in part. The dissent would have affirmed summary judgment against Tesla, reasoning that taking the truck home saved company time and that refueling an employer-owned vehicle with an employer-provided gas card appreciably furthered Tesla’s business even if the refueling policy was merely informal.
Key Takeaways
- Indiana’s going-and-coming rule generally excludes ordinary commutes from the scope of employment, but employer authorization, control, and assigned or business-serving tasks can bring a trip within an exception.
- When evidence supports competing reasonable inferences about an employee’s purpose and the employer’s expectations, scope of employment belongs to the factfinder rather than the judge on summary judgment.
- Informal workplace practices still matter. Whether a refueling practice was mandatory, recommended, or simply courteous helped create the factual dispute that required a trial.
Why It Matters
For Indiana tort lawyers and employers, the decision is a caution against treating an authorized trip in a company vehicle as automatically within or outside employment. The analysis is intensely factual: who owned the vehicle, who paid operating expenses, what the manager authorized, whether the employee performed a work-related errand, and whether the conduct appreciably advanced the employer’s business all can affect the outcome.
The ruling also reinforces summary-judgment discipline. A court may not choose between plausible accounts of an employee’s purpose merely because the underlying historical facts are largely undisputed. Employers should document vehicle-use and refueling rules, while litigators should develop evidence about both formal policy and day-to-day practice. Here, ambiguity in an informal policy was enough to send a consequential vicarious-liability question to a jury.