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Vicarious Liability - From: 1960 To: 1969
This page lists 7 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.
ÂHilton v Thomas Burton (Rhodes) Ltd [1961] 1 WLR 705
1961
Diplock J
Vicarious Liability, Agency
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Daniels v Whetstone Entertainments Ltd [1962] 2 Lloyd's Rep 1
1962
Vicarious Liability
Allender, a steward at a dance hall, and employed to keep order, assaulted a customer inside the hall in the mistaken belief that he had previously been himself assaulted by the customer. Allender explicitly rejected his employer's instructions to return to the hall. Outside the dance hall the steward, in a rage, made an unprovoked attack and injured the customer who was not intending to re-enter. Held: The employer was not liable to the injured patron. The first assault was held to be within the scope of the steward´s employment, but the second assault was an act of private retaliation and outside that scope.
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Ilkiw v Samuels [1963] 1 WLR 991
1963
CA
Diplock LJ
Vicarious Liability
The plaintiff was injured by the careless manouvering of a lorry by the defendant's employee. Held: When considering the vicarious liability of an employer, the proper approach to the nature of the servant's employment is a broad one. Referring to nouns such as 'sphere' and 'scope': "As each of these nouns implies the matter must be looked at broadly, not dissecting the servant's task into its component activities - such as driving, loading, sheeting and the like - by asking: what was the job on which he was engaged for his employer? and answering that question as a jury would."
As to distinctions between restrictions on the sphere of employment and restrictions on conduct within that sphere of employment: "the decision into which of these two classes the prohibition falls seems to me to involve first determining what would have been the sphere, scope, course (all these nouns are used) of the servant's employment if the prohibition had not been imposed. As each of these nouns implies, the matter must be looked at broadly, not dissecting the servant's task into its component activities — such as driving, loading, sheeting and the like — by asking: what was the job on which he was engaged for his employer? and answering that question as a jury would."
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 Meekins v Henson; 1964 - [1964] 1 QB 472
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 Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd v Shatwell; HL 6-Jul-1964 - [1964] 2 All ER 999; [1965] AC 656; [1964] UKHL 2
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 Morris v C W Martin and Sons Ltd; CA 1965 - [1966] 1 QB 716; [1965] 3 WLR 276; [1965] 2 Lloyds Rep 63; [1965] 2 All ER 725
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Williams v A and W Hemphill Ltd 1966 SC(HL) 31; [1966] UKHL 3
1966
HL
Lord Pearson
Vicarious Liability
Against his employers's instructions a driver of a lorry deviated substantially from his route. On the detour an accident occurred owing to the fault of the driver. The question arose whether the employers of the lorry driver were vicariously liable. Held: Lord Pearson said: "Had the driver in the present case been driving a lorry which was empty or contained nothing of real importance, I think that so substantial a deviation might well have constituted a frolic of his own. The presence of passengers, however, whom the servant is charged qua servant to drive to their ultimate destination makes it impossible (at all events, provided that they are not all parties to the plans for deviation) to say that the deviation is entirely for the servant's purposes. Their presence and transport is a dominant purpose of the authorised journey, and, although they are transported deviously, continues to play an essential part. It was said in argument that there must be some limits to that contention and that one could not hold that, if the driver had gone to Inverness, he would still be acting on his master's business. No doubt there are such limits to the argument as common sense may set on the facts of each case. But when there are passengers whom the servants on his master's behalf has taken aboard for transport to Glasgow, their transport and safety does not cease at a certain stage of the journey to be the master's business, or part of his enterprise, merely because the servant has for his own purposes chosen some route which is contrary to his instructions. . . . The more dominant are the current obligations of the master's business in connection with the lorry, the less weight is to be attached to disobedient navigational extravagances of the servant. . . . In weighing up, therefore, the question of degree, whether the admittedly substantial deviation of the vehicle with its passengers and baggage was such as to make the lorry's progress a frolic of the servant unconnected with or in substitution for the master's business, the presence of the passengers is a decisive factor against regarding it as a mere frolic of the servant. In the present case the defenders remained liable, in spite of the deviation, for their driver's negligence."
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