Appellate Practice Group Co-Chair Don Willenburg recently published an article titled “Off-site Subcontractor Accidents: Who’s Liable?” in the Daily Journal, California’s leading legal newspaper.
The article examines a recent case, Lorenzo v. Calex Engineering, Inc. (2025) 110 Cal.App.5th 49, in which a dump truck driver employed by a low-tier subcontractor on a construction project negligently struck and killed two children while driving to work. The decision reversed summary judgment for the owner/developer and the general contractor. The article argued that the decision is notable both because of the expansion of duty in these specific circumstances, and because it illustrates the familiar principle that “the answers you get depend on the questions you ask.”
The defense (and the dissenting opinion) argued for a broad conception of duty: “whether construction companies have a duty to pedestrians injured by a negligent trucker driving from his home, wherever located, to a construction staging area.”
The majority opinion, however, focused on the fact that the defendants’ excavation permit was premised on all dump trucks being staged on-site at the construction project, with no more than 20 trucks at a time. On the day of the accident, defendants ordered 90 trucks to an unpermitted staging area miles away. The driver was on his way from home to the unpermitted staging area when the accident happened. Thus, the question the majority posed was whether there was “a duty of developers and contractors that stage construction vehicles in violation of their permits and representations to the permitting authority,” especially where “the permits [are] undeniably intended to serve, among other interests, public safety?”
This case illustrates a situation in which a narrower conception of duty, which typically favors defendants, did not apply in their favor.
Willenburg has been described as an “appellate luminary” by the journal California Litigation. He is the past chair of the Appellate Practice Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco. For more than a decade, he has chaired the Association of Defense Counsel of Northern California and Nevada’s Amicus Committee, working to advance causes important to the defense community.
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