Dave works as a driver for Empire Courier Service where he is regarded as kind of hothead around the company. He was once involved in workplace fistfight with the employees he worked with during his previous encounter working with another company. This led to criminal charges.
One day, Dave decides to go have lunch which happened between deliveries and in a company vehicle. Big Burrito Bistro, being the favorite lunch spot for most employees at Empire Courier, Dave led a car accident with another vehicle while leaving the parking lot at Big Burrito Bistro. Injuries resulted to Victor, the other car’s driver. As police are waited by Dave and Victor on the side of the road to arrive, Victor says to Dave that it does not surprise him that he works for Empire Courier Services as it hires drivers who are not morally upright and yet charges high prices.Victor offends Dave so much that he insulted his employer’s professional reputation that Dave punches him on the face making him to get even more injuries. As a matter of policy, Empire Courier Service does not carry out criminal background checks for its employees.
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What is to be answered is what liability falls to Empire Courier Service and what Dave’s liability should be. To answer this, we must consider the superior doctrine of the respondeat. The Latin for “Let the superior speak” is Respondeat superior. It’s a legal principle which an employer holds vicarious responsibility in case of harm by the employees in service of the employer (Glaser, 2017).Using this rule, if an employee’s negligence causes harm to the third party, the third party has the right to sue either the employer or the employee.
To find out whether it is the employer liability or not, the third party must be at a position to show negligence as it occurred with the individual working as an employee to the company. Here, Dave was between the deliveries for Empire Courier Service, he was in a company vehicle, having gone for a lunch break. This means that Dave was not acting on the employer’s behalf. Whenever an employee “leaves the employer’s business, the employer is not liable” (Bouillard & Thierry, 2016).This clearly shows that Since Dave had gone for a lunch break while the accident occurred, Empire Courier Service therefore should not be held liable for the accident.
Relating to Dave’s act of intentionally punching Victor, different factors are to be put into considerations. Where this happened, Dave was not in the company vehicle and neither was he technically in the process of working for empire courier service. Victor might succeed in suing Empire as well as Dave acted in its defense. The court puts into considerations two factors in establishing the scope of employment: whether the interests of the employee were advanced by the act and whether force was used unexpected to the by the employee. Empire should have expected this since they had failed to conduct thorough employee’s background check since its clear had violent behavior and was short tempered and was still hired. If the company conducted a background check, if Dave was properly punished for his actions, he would not have harmed Victor. As a result, force that Dave used was predictable by Empire. The event was avoidable, leaving Empire Courier Service responsible.
References
Bouillard, A., & Thierry, É. (2016). Tight performance bounds in the worst-case analysis of feed-forward networks. Discrete Event Dynamic Systems , 26 (3), 383-411.
Glaser, F. (2017). Pervasive decentralisation of digital infrastructures: a framework for blockchain enabled system and use case analysis.
