During the evening hours, Hen Horn, a truck driver employed by Ralphs Grocery Co. (Ralphs), was driving in California on Interstate 10 as part of his job duties. Horn stopped his tractor-trailer rig on a large dirt shoulder alongside the highway in order to eat a snack he had brought with him. He regularly stopped for a snack in that spot when driving in the vicinity. The dirt shoulder was part of a somewhat larger dirt area that sat between Interstate 10 and an intersecting highway. Near the spot where Horn parked, California’s Department of Transportation had placed an “Emergency Parking Only” sign. Horn saw the sign from where he parked, approximately 16 feet from the outermost traffic lane of Interstate 10.

That same evening, Adelelmo Cabral was driving home from work alone in his pickup truck on Interstate 10. Juan Perez was driving behind Cabral on that same highway. Perez saw Cabral’s vehicle, which was traveling at 70 to 80 miles per hour, swerve within its lane, then change lanes rapidly, and then pass other vehicles. Cabral’s pickup truck crossed the outermost lane of traffic, left the highway, and traveled parallel to the road along the adjacent dirt until it hit the rear of Horn’s trailer. Perez saw no brake lights or other indications of an attempt on Cabral’s part to slow down before the collision. A toxicology report on Cabral, who died at the scene, was negative. Because there was no evidence of intoxication, suicide, or mechanical defect in the pickup, it appeared that Cabral had either fallen asleep or had been victimized by an unknown medical condition. 

Cabral’s widow, Maria Cabral, sued Ralphs for the allegedly wrongful death of her husband. She contended that Ralphs should be liable because its employee (Horn) had caused her husband’s death through negligence in stopping for nonemergency reasons on the freeway shoulder. Ralphs responded by denying that Horn was negligent and by asserting that the decedent’s own negligence was the real cause of the accident. A California jury concluded that both Cabral and Horn were negligent and that their respective negligent acts were substantial factors in causing Cabral’s death. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Maria Cabral, but, as required by California law, the trial court reduced the amount of damages awarded by the jury in order to allow for the fact that the decedent’s own negligence had partially accounted for his death. Ralphs appealed to the California Court of Appeal, which reversed the lower court’s decision. The Court of Appeal held that there was no basis for holding Ralphs liable for negligence because neither Ralphs nor Horn owed the decedent a duty of reasonable care to prevent a collision with Horn’s parkedoff-the-roadway rig. Maria Cabral appealed to the Supreme Court of California. 

Was the Court of Appeal correct in its conclusion that neither Horn nor Ralphs owed a duty to the decedent? In any event, why would Ralphs even be at risk of liability? If there was negligence here, wasn’t it Horn’s? Why wouldn’t the decedent’s own negligence in falling asleep at the wheel bar Cabral from recovery, regardless of whether Horn or Ralphs was negligent?