Vicarious liability: extension, extension, extension

 “The law of vicarious liability is on the move” are the opening words to the opinion of Lord Reed in Cox v Ministry of Justice [2016] UKSC 10 (quoting Lord Phillips in Various Claimants v Catholic Child Welfare Society [2012] UKSC 56). The Supreme Court has handed down two judgments in the field of vicarious liability (Cox and Mohamud v WM Morrison [2016] UKSC 11) which continue to extend its scope.

The five policy reasons for the vicarious liability relationship identified in the Christian Brothers case have effectively been narrowed to three in Cox – a case in which the Supreme Court found that the prison service was vicariously liable for the negligence of a prisoner working in a prison kitchen.

In Mohamud the Supreme Court stuck to the articulation of the law in Lister v Hesley Hall [2002] 1 AC 215 but elaborated saying that the court has to consider (1) what functions or “field of activities” have been entrusted by the employer to the employee (a question to be approached “broadly”) and (2) whether there was a sufficient connection between the position in which he was employed and his wrongful conduct to make it right for the employer to be held liable. That broad approach meant that the employer of an attendant at a petrol station was vicariously liable for the attendant’s violent attack on the claimant on the petrol station forecourt.

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