Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Re: Can I seek damages for pain and suffering on behalf of minor child?

You may well have a good case against the roller rink as well as against the perpetrator (who might turn out to have money or insurance coverage). Have no contact with the roller rink or the perpetrator, and do not sign anything or give any statements to their insurance company. Consult a lawyer in your local community who is experienced in personal injury law and in whom you have confidence. Do this right away, because if you wait too long you could lose the right to sue.

Re: Can I seek damages for pain and suffering on behalf of minor child?

I'm so sorry to hear that this happened to your daughter. Unfortunately I can't offer you much encouragement. Additional facts might lead me to a different answer, but based upon what you have written I don't believe the roller rink is liable.

An employer is liable for the wrongful conduct of its employees while they are acting within the course and scope of their duties. It is generally not liable for what employees do on their own time. Otherwise, every time someone with a job is sued his employer could be dragged into the case.

If the employer somehow contributes to the employee's wrongdoing then it can be held liable, but its liability would have nothing to do with being the defendant's employer. Instead, the employer would be liable because it had taken part in the wrongdoing; in that sense the employer would be treated just like anybody else who had participated in the same manner.

To hold the employer liable, you have to show that it acted wrongfully, or at least negligently. If the rink had told this man when he could find your daughter alone you would have a good argument, but there is no reason an employer should expect that a worker who asks a customer for her phone number intends to harm her. The employer could also be held liable if it knew (or should have known) this man was likely to commit sexual assaults but, unless he has a history of such conduct which the employer should have known about, this will be a hard argument to win.

As far as I can see, the rink did not participate in the crime its employee committed. It did not help him find your daughter, it did not participate in the assault, and it almost certainly did not encourage him to do what he did. It didn't even give him her phone number; instead, it merely had no policy against him asking for it. This is not nearly enough to hold the rink responsible.

Your question doesn't say that the man was on duty when he asked for the phone number, but that seems to be implied and I will presume that it is true. The man probably was acting within the course and scope of his duty when he asked for the phone number, and if asking for a phone number were illegal or harmful the store could be held responsible. But your daughter wasn't harmed by the request for her phone number; she was harmed by a completely different act which took place somewhere else while the employee was on his own time.

The fact that he learned her phone number while at work is not enough, by itself, to make the rink liable. If it was, then the telephone company would be liable every time a criminal found his victim via the phone book, and internet search engines would be responsible for what their users do with the information they find on-line. Merely being involved -- indirectly, I might add -- in letting information reach a criminal does not make someone else responsible for his crime.