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This is part of a series of articles by Wright Lindsey Jennings’ labor and employment team examining key trends for employers and the workplace in 2026, authored by attorney Troy Price. The series was originally featured in Arkansas Business.
Most employers know that they can be held responsible as a company for motor vehicle accidents caused by their employees’ negligence while on the job.
But some may not know of a recent Arkansas Supreme Court decision holding that, under certain limited circumstances, an employer might have to answer for an employee’s negligent driving of a personal vehicle on the way to a job site.
The Arkansas Supreme Court held in a 4-3 decision on Nov. 20, 2025, that an employer may be vicariously liable for an accident caused by an employee if there is sufficient evidence to show that the employer had policies incorporating travel, such as travel to a project site, into the employee’s on-the-job duties.
It is important to understand that not all jobs requiring an employee to travel in his or her own vehicle expose the employer to potential liability for a resulting accident. Instead, in Skala v. Comfort Systems USA, the court decided that it may be up to a jury to decide whether a given set of travel policies bring road trips into the “course and scope of employment,” resulting in potential employer liability.
In general, a non-employee who is injured by an employee’s negligence can sue both the employer and the employee. Arkansas law imputes (assigns responsibility for) the employee’s on-the-job negligence to the employer. Still, injuries caused while an employee is commuting to or from the workplace typically are not the employer’s responsibility.
In the Skala case, the Arkansas Supreme Court majority explained that there may be exceptions to that general rule. The key question to be determined is whether in traveling the employee is “carrying out the object and purpose of the enterprise, as opposed to acting exclusively in [his or her] own interest.” Unless the evidence is overwhelmingly one-sided, the court held, it is up to a jury to decide whether the travel is part of the business enterprise.
Among the factors the jury can consider is whether company policy provides compensation for the driving time from an employee’s home address to the job site. Other considerations may include whether the employer requires access to the employee’s driving record, or whether the job description refers to the ability to travel.
In reaching its decision, the Arkansas Supreme Court held that the trial court made a mistake by reaching a decision based on the “going and coming rule,” which applies to workers’ compensation cases and generally prohibits such benefits to employees injured while commuting to and from the workplace. Instead, the court held, the question in motor vehicle accident cases is the traditional negligence determination of whether the employee was performing job tasks when the accident occurred.
In Skala, a welder was alleged to have negligently caused an accident while driving his own vehicle en route to a job site. The court did not impose automatic vicarious liability on the employer. But the majority of the court believed that reasonable jurors could have found that the accident did occur in the course and scope of employment, based on evidence of the employer’s “business model of sending field employees to remote locations to perform skilled labor on projects,” as well as the company’s access to driving records, its compensation for driving time in some circumstances, and its right to discipline employees who violated company travel procedures.
On the other hand, the three justices who disagreed with the ruling compared the facts in Skala to cases in which there was no vicarious liability because the employee had finished his job duties and was headed home, or on a personal errand. These justices pointed to a case decided by the Iowa Supreme Court, in which that court found no vicarious liability for an employer who did not dictate how its employee got to the job site, what vehicle he drove, or how fast he drove it.
The Bottom Line
As of early December 2025, the lawyers for the employer in Skala had asked the Arkansas Supreme Court to reconsider its decision. If the court does not, employers in Arkansas who require travel to remote job sites should review their policies on this requirement, as well as any exclusions or limitations in their liability insurance coverage.
Employers who pay for travel time in personal vehicles or access driving records for safety reasons (before or after hiring) may be at risk of facing a jury question on liability for their employees’ motor vehicle accidents.
It is unclear whether a jury question might also arise based on the employer’s reimbursement of travel expenses, apart from paying for travel time.