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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  















Vicarious Liability - From: 1985 To: 1989

This page lists 10 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Thomas v National Union of Mineworkers (South Wales Area) [1986] Ch 20; [1985] 2 All ER 1; [1985] IRLR 157; [1985] ICR 886; [1985] 2 WLR 1081
1985
ChD
Scot J
Vicarious Liability, Torts - Other, Nuisance
Threats made by pickets to those miners who sought to go to work were not an assault because the pickets had no capacity to put into effect their threats of violence whilst they were held back from the vehicles which the working miners were within. The plaintiffs were, however, entitled to enjoy their right to use the highway to go to work without unreasonable harassment and that picketing by 50 to 70 striking miners shouting abuse was a tortious interference with that right. The actions of the striking miners were therefore actionable in nuisance.
1 Citers


 
Aldred v Nacanco [1987] IRLR 292
1987
CA

Employment, Vicarious Liability, Negligence
The claimant sought damages. At the end of the day, a co-employee tried to startle her by pushing an insecure washbasin against her, but caused her actual injury. Held: The plaintiff's appeal was dismissed. It was an independent act not sufficiently connected with the employment. An employer would be liable for acts actually authorised and for the way the employee carries out those acts. It was not foreseeable that the washbasin would cause injury, or that it would be used in this way.
1 Citers


 
Irving and Irving v Post Office [1987] IRLR 289
1987
CA

Discrimination, Vicarious Liability
The defendant's employee disliked his neighbours - the plaintiffs. Whilst working in the sorting office, he wrote racially abusive materials on letters addressed to them. The plaintiffs appealed a finding that the defendant was not liable because the acts were not carried out as part of the employee's work. Held: The test was whether the act was merely unauthorised, or whether it was entirely outside the scope of the employment. The employee had not merely done something as a prohibited mode of carrying out his work. The employment merely gave him the opportunity to carry them out.
Race Relations Act 1976 1(1)(a) 32(1)
1 Citers



 
 Heasmans v Clarity Cleaning Co; CA 1987 - [1987] ICR 949
 
Maxwell v Pressdram Ltd [1987] 1 WLR 298; [1987] 1 All ER 656
1987
CA
Kerr LJ, Parker LJ
Defamation, Vicarious Liability, Damages, Contempt of Court, Media
The court was asked whether disclosure should be ordered in the context of the statutory privilege which was created by s.10 of the 1981 Act. The publisher defendant had deposed that it would justify the material. At trial, however, the defence of justification was abandoned and the judge said he would make a (strong) comment adverse to the defendant in the course of his charge of the jury, but he held that the witness need not reveal the source of his material. Held: The appeal failed. A plea of negligence is insufficient to found a claim for exemplary damages. Some conscious wrongdoing is necessary.
Parker LJ made the point that "it is not sufficient merely to say that the information which is sought (to be obtained) is information which is relevant to the determination of an issue before the court. Were that so, it would always be possible to obtain an order for disclosure . "
Contempt of Court Act 1981 10
1 Citers



 
 Aldred v Naranco; CA 1987 - [1987] IRLR 292
 
Aldred v Nacanco Limited Unreported, 27 March 1987
27 Mar 1987
CA
Sir John Donaldson MR, Lawton, Glidewell LJJ
Vicarious Liability
Several women were in the washroom provided by the employers at their factory. One decided to startle another by giving the wash basin a push, as a result of which the claimant twisted her back. Held: Lawton LJ, with whom Sir John Donaldson MR and Glidewell LJ agreed, said: "What she did was a deliberate act which had nothing whatsoever to do with anything she was employed to do. It was not an improper way of doing her job; it was something wholly outside her job."
1 Citers


 
General Engineering Services v Kingston and Saint Andrew Corporation [1988] 3 All ER 867
1988
PC

Employment, Vicarious Liability
There was a fire at the petitioner's premises. The firemen, employed by the respondent, were in an industrial dispute and drove to the fire slowly. The company claimed damages. Held: The respondent was not vicariously liable. The actions of the firemen were not a way of perfoming an authorised act.

 
United Bank of Kuwait Ltd v Hammond and Others [1988] 1 WLR 1051
1988
CA
Glidewell LJ
Vicarious Liability, Legal Professions
It will only be in the ordinary course of business of the firm for a solicitor to do an act where there was an underlying transaction of a kind which was part of the usual business of a solicitor. "On the facts represented to the [third party] would a reasonably careful and competent person [such as the third party] have concluded that there was an underlying transaction of a kind which was part of the usual business of a solicitor?"
An undertaking given by a solicitor or clerk in the course of the business of a firm is enforceable against the firm for which he works.
1 Citers


 
Ellis v Wallsend District Hospital [1990] 2 Med LR 103; (1989) 17 NSWLR 553
1989

Kirby J, Samuels JA
Vicarious Liability
(Court of Appeal of New South Wales) Samuels JA discussed the circumstances in which a non-delegable duty of care arises: "It arises from a relationship which combines the dependence of A upon the reasonable care, skill and judgment of B with the legitimate expectation that B will ensure that those qualities will be exercised in protection of the person or property of A. A further policy decision will be required to determine when that peculiar combination of dependence and expectation . . exists. But it can scarcely be doubted that it does so in the case of the relationship between hospital and patient . . The basis of the duty is, more persuasively, the satisfaction of expectations about where liability ought to be sheeted home."
Kirby J (dissenting) said that "As the intensely technological nature of modern hospitals necessitates the occasional invitation of visiting experts (who are not in the strict sense employers or even honorary staff members of the hospital) it is highly desirable that the law should make plain the protection of patients who suffer as a result of the professional expert's mistakes. So far as the patient is concerned he or she is in the hospital. He or she should be able to look to the hospital to ensure (by insurance or otherwise) that proved wrongs by health care staff occurring at the hospital or arising out of its activities are compensated in full degree."
Samuels JA said that proof of the relationship of hospital and patient "will generate a special duty of some kind, closer scrutiny of the facts . . is necessary in order to establish its scope. It is a question of what medical services the hospital has undertaken to supply." and "It is true that while considerations of loss distribution may have been potent in developing the principle in the area of relations between employer and employee where small independent contractors were at one time notoriously likely to be uninsured against public risk., they are no longer of the same importance, as Whippy points out (op cit at 202). There is no reason to suppose that surgeons are significantly less protected by the embrace of underwriters than hospitals are. The basis of the duty is, more persuasively, the satisfaction of expectations about where liability ought to be sheeted home."
1 Citers


 
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