I was hit by a company vehicle or delivery van. Can I claim against the company?

When the driver was working, the company is usually responsible

Texas holds an employer responsible for the negligence of an employee acting within the course and scope of the job. If a plumber’s van, a utility truck, a sales rep’s company car or a delivery van hit you while the driver was doing their work, the company that employs them is generally responsible for the harm, in addition to the driver. The Texas Supreme Court has said two questions decide it: whether the driver was the company’s employee (which turns on whether the company had the right to control the progress, details and methods of the driver’s work) and whether the driver was acting within the course and scope of that job when the crash happened.

That matters for a practical reason. A company vehicle is usually covered by a commercial auto policy with limits well above a personal policy, and companies often carry excess coverage on top of it.

The questions the company will raise

The first defense is that the driver was not working: on a personal errand, commuting, or on a lunch break when the crash happened. Where the driver was going, and why, can decide whether the company is responsible. Delivery routes, dispatch records and GPS history usually answer it.

The second defense is that the driver was not an employee. Many delivery networks run through independent contractors or separate local companies that hire the drivers. The large brand name on the package may not be the company that employed the driver, and the contracts between them are written to put distance between the brand and the crash. Sorting out who actually controlled the driver and the vehicle, and which of them is insured, is its own piece of work.

A company can also be responsible for its own decisions, not just the driver’s: hiring a driver with a bad record, putting someone behind the wheel who should not have been there, or setting delivery quotas that made speeding the only way to keep up.

Fleet vehicles record a lot, and keep it briefly

Most commercial fleets now run telematics that record speed, hard braking and location, and many run forward-facing or driver-facing cameras. That data can show exactly what the van was doing before it hit you. It is also kept on a rolling schedule, often weeks and sometimes days, which is why a preservation letter to the company matters early.

If the vehicle belonged to the government

City trucks, county vehicles, METRO buses, school buses and state vehicles are different. Claims against governmental units require written notice on short deadlines — ninety days for both the City of Houston and the City of El Paso, no more than six months under the Tort Claims Act, and sometimes less under other cities’ charters — and the Texas Tort Claims Act caps what can be recovered. Those deadlines are far shorter than the two-year statute of limitations.

When the employee was driving their own car

Not every work crash involves a marked company vehicle. An employee driving their own car to a job site, a client meeting or the bank for the business may still be acting within the course and scope of the job. In that case the employee’s personal auto policy usually pays first, and the employer may be responsible as well — many businesses carry “hired and non-owned auto” coverage for exactly this situation. The ordinary commute to and from work usually does not count, but there are exceptions, such as when the employer sent the employee on a specific errand or made the trip part of the job, like driving a crew to a job site. Being paid for the travel time is not enough by itself. Whether a particular trip qualifies is a fact question worth answering before anyone assumes the only coverage is a small personal policy.

Authority: Painter v. Amerimex Drilling I, Ltd., 561 S.W.3d 125 (Tex. 2018) · Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 101 (Tort Claims Act)