Legal Question in Construction Law in California

Labor Code section 2802 requires you to indemnify your employee for any losses or expenses incurred in the "discharge of their duties." So if he was an employee, you can't sue him for reimbursement, and if he had had to pay he could have sued you for reimbursement. The fact that you only hired him on a day job and paid cash is not relevant to whether he was an employee. The determination of whether or not a person is an employee can be complicated, and involves weighing a number of factors. Some of the key factors are: whether the person provides their own workplace, equipment, tools, etc. or uses the employer's facilities and equipment; whether the worker or the employer controls scheduling and location of the work; and whether the worker is in control of the means and methods and is simply responsible for achieving a result, or follows the supervision, instruction or management of the employer. As for whether the loss was a result of his duties, you don't provide enough information. If he took your truck without permission to go home and get his lunch, it's pretty certain that was not in the discharge of his duties. If he thought the truck was in the way of what he needed to do, so he moved it a few feet or even around the block to find a parking place, that's pretty clearly within discharging his duties, even if it was not actually a duty you assigned him.