Vicarious Liability - 1900- 1929

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This page lists 14 cases, and was prepared on 28 October 2012.

Beard -v- London General Omnibus Company [1900] 2 QB 53; [1900-3] All ER Rep 112; [1900] LJQB 895; [1900] 83 LT 362; [1900] 48 WR 658; [1900] 16 TLR 499
1900 CA	Negligence, Vicarious Liability
	One of the defendant's conductors, in order to save time, drove the bus quickly around some side streets, negligently injuring the plaintiff, who now sought damages against the bus company. Held: The plaintiff had failed to provide any evidence that the conductor had been authorised to drive the bus, and therefore failed to establish that they had any resonsibility in negligence for his acts. The action failed.

Hamlyn -v- John Houston & Co [1903] 1 KB 81
1903 CA Collins MR	Information, Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers
	One side of the defendant's business as grain merchants was to obtain, by lawful means, information about its competitors' activities. Houston, a partner in the firm, obtained confidential information on the plaintiff Hamlyn's business by bribing one of Hamlyn's employees. Held: The firm was liable for the loss suffered by Hamlyn. If it was within the scope of Houston's authority to obtain the information by legitimate means, then for the purpose of vicarious liability it was within the scope of his authority to obtain it by illegitimate means and the firm was liable accordingly. This was on the broad 'risk' principle: the principal having selected the agent, and being the person who will have the benefit of his efforts if successful, it is not unjust he should bear the risk of the agent 'exceeding his authority in matters incidental to the doing of the acts the performance of which has been delegated to him'.

Sanderson -v- Collins [1904] 1 KB 628
1904 CA Collins MR	Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers
	The defendant's coachman had taken out for his own purposes a dog-cart which belonged to the plaintiff and had been lent to the defendant. Held: The defendant was not vicariously liable for the coachman's actions: "If the servant in doing any act breaks the connection of service between himself and his master, the act done under those circumstances is not that of the master".

Stanbury -v- Exeter Corporation [1905] 2 KB 838
1905 Lord Alverstone CJ	Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers

Cheshire -v- Bailey [1905] 1 KB 237
1905	Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers

Radley -v- London Council (1909) 109 LT 162
1909	Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers

Padbury -v- Holliday & Greenwood Ltd [1912] 28 TLR 492
1912	Vicarious Liability, Personal Injury
	A sub-contractor installing some windows left a tool on a window sill. It blew off, and hit the plaintiff, who now sought to recover damages from the main contractor. Held: This was an act of collateral negligence by an employee of sub-contractors, and the main contractors were not responsible.

Lloyd -v- Grace, Smith and Co [1912] AC 716; [1912] UKHL 1
1912 HL Lord Macnaghten, Earl Loreburn LC	Vicarious Liability, Legal Professions	Casemap 1 Cites 1 Citers
	Mrs Lloyd delivered the title deeds of her cottages at Ellesmere Port to the solicitors' fraudulent managing clerk. Held: Vicarious liability can extend to fraudulent acts or omissions if those were carried out in the course of the employment or within the scope of the apparent authority, albeit by an employee or a partner conducting the business of a type which he had a right to conduct. The principal was liable for the fraud of the agent because conveyancing is part of the ordinary business of solicitors. The client had been invited by the firm to deal with their managing clerk. It was irrelevant that the agent acted with a dishonest purpose for his own ends. His act was of the class or kind of acts which fall within the ordinary business of solicitors.
	Link[s] omitted

Plumb -v- Cobden Flour Mills Co Ltd [1914] AC 62
1914 HL Lord Dunedin	Vicarious Liability, Health and Safety	Casemap 1 Citers
	In looking at restrictions by an employer to limit his vicarious liability, the court must distinguish between prohibitions which limit the sphere of employment and those which only deal with conduct within the sphere of employment:" "there are prohibitions which limit the sphere of employment, and prohibitions which only deal with conduct within the sphere of employment".
	Workmen's Compensation Act 1906

Bugge -v- Brown (1919) 26 CLR 110
1919 Isaacs J	Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers
	When an employee acts 'so as to be in effect a stranger in relation to his employer with respect to the act he has committed', his employer does not have vicarious liability for his acts.

Percy -v- Corporation of Glasgow [1922] 2 AC 299
1922 HL	Scotland, Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers
	A pursuer's averment, in what appeared to be a claim at common law arising out an alleged breach by employees of a Scottish corporation's bye-laws and regulations, should be allowed to proceed to trial.

The Koursk [1924] P 140
1924 CA Scrutton LJ	Vicarious Liability, Torts - Other	Casemap 1 Citers
	The navigators of two ships had committed two separate torts or one tort in which they were both tortfeasors. Held: Three situations were identified where A might be jointly liable with B for B's tortious act. Where A was master and B servant; where A was principal and B agent; and where the two were concerned in a joint act done in pursuance of a common purpose: “Certain classes of persons seem clearly to be “joint tortfeasors”: The agent who commits a tort within the scope of his employment for his principal, and the principal; the servant who commits a tort in the course of his employment, and his master; two persons who agree on common action, in the course of, and to further which, one of them commits a tort. These seem clearly joint tortfeasors; there is one tort committed by one of them on behalf of, or in concert with another.” and “I am of the opinion that the definition in Clerk and Lindsell on Torts, 7th ed., p59, is much nearer the correct view : “Persons are said to be joint tortfeasors when their respective shares in the commission of the tort are done in furtherance of a common design” . . ”but mere similarity of design on the part of independent actors, causing independent damage, is not enough; there must be concerted action to a common end.”

Central Motors (Glasgow) Ltd -v- Cessnock Garage and Motor Co 1925 SC 796
1925 Lord Cullen, Lord President (Clyde)	Scotland, Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers
	A night watchman at a garage drove off in a car left there for his own purposes and damaged it. Held: The garage had delegated to their employee the duty of keeping the car safely secured in the garage and they were liable to the owners of the car for his failure in performance. The Court noted the difficulty which can occur in deciding whether a particular act falls within the "purely personal and independent sphere of life and action" which an employee may enjoy or within the sphere of service: "The question is not to be answered merely by applying the test whether the act in itself is one which the servant was employed or ordered or forbidden to do. The employer has to shoulder responsibility on a wider basis; and he may, and often does, become responsible to third parties for acts which he has expressly or impliedly forbidden the servant to do. A servant is not a mere machine continuously directed by his master's hand, but is a person of independent volition and action, and the employer, when he delegates to him some duty which he himself is under obligation to discharge, must take the risk of the servant's action being misdirected, when he is, for the time, allowed to be beyond his master's control. It remains necessary to the master's responsibility that the servant's act be one done within the sphere of his service or the scope of his employment, but it may have this character although it consists in doing something which is the very opposite of what the servant has been intended or ordered to do, and which he does for his own private ends. An honest master does not employ or authorise his servant to commit crimes of dishonesty towards third parties; but nevertheless he may incur liability for a crime of dishonesty committed by the servant if it was committed by him within the field of activities which the employment assigned to him, and that although the crime was committed by the servant solely in pursuance of his own private advantage. The servant is a bad servant who has not faithfully served but has betrayed his master; still, quoad the third party injured, his dishonest act may fall to be regarded as an ill way of executing the work which has been assigned to him, and which he has been left with power to do well or ill."

Poland -v- Parr (John) & Sons [1927] 1 KB 236
1927	Vicarious Liability	Casemap 1 Citers
	To fix a master with liability for an unauthorised mode of performing an authorised act, the act must be sufficiently connected with the authorised act as to be a mode of doing it.