Vicarious liability is always an interesting concept.
It can be very important for the victim of a tort to establish that an apparent third party is vicariously liable for the acts of a tortfeasor. The actual tortfeasor may be uninsured and impecunious. If it is possible to show that an employer was vicariously liable for the acts of that tortfeasor, then the victim might just have found the proverbial pot of gold under the rainbow.
There have been two recent Supreme Court cases on vicarious liability; these have brought a clear end to a gradual widening of circumstances in which courts have found third parties to be vicariously liable. The cases both concern employer liability. They’re definitely worth a mention if you’ve got to research and write an essay in this area. (See the chapters on vicarious liability in our LLB Tort and GDL guides).
In Barclays Bank v Various Claimants [2020] Lady Hale dispatched the claim at speed. Here employees were claiming against the bank for sexual assaults they had suffered at the hands of a doctor who was an independent contractor engaged by Barclays. The Supreme Court held that an organisation cannot be vicariously liable for the acts of an independent contractor.
The case of Morrisons v Various Claimants [2020] was a bit more complicated. Here a disgruntled employee was tasked with sending data on employee payments to auditors. He decided also to put the data on a filesharing site accessible to the public and to spend it to newspapers. He was prosecuted for his actions and some employees tried to claim damages against Morrisons. The key issue was whether the whether the disclosure was so closely related to the acts he was authorised to do that it could be considered to be in the ordinary course of his employment. The Supreme Court gave weight to the intentions of the employee, noted that he had been pursuing a vendetta and that he had been authorised only to send the data to auditors. Morrisons was not liable for his actions. It looks like a good call to us!!