A Supreme Court ruling has recently found the supermarket Morrisons liable for the actions of an employee who physically assaulted a customer. This was due to a legal concept called "vicarious liability" under which an employer can be found liable for an employee's actions committed during the course of their employment.
The case arose out of an unusual set of circumstances. The employee was working at a Morrisons petrol station when a customer asked the member of staff if it would be possible to print some documents that he had on a USB stick. The employee responded by using threatening and racist language and ordered the customer to leave the premises. The employee is then reported to have followed the customer to his car, continued to shout abuse at him followed by what has been described as a brutal physical attack. The employee ignored his supervisor's instructions not to follow the customer to his car and subsequently his instructions to stop during the attack. Not surprisingly, the employee was dismissed by Morrisons.
In coming to its decision, the Supreme Court considered the nature of the employee's job and whether or not there was a sufficient connection between the job and his conduct to make his employer liable for his actions. The employee's job was attending to customers and dealing with their enquiries. The Supreme Court decided that the assault took place directly as a result of his interaction with the customer at work and his order to the customer to leave the premises suggested that his actions were sufficiently connected to the job assigned to him and, therefore, the employer should be liable.
This ruling widens the scope of circumstances in which an employer will be held to be vicariously liable for an employee's actions. Employers should consider whether any further training is required for their employees and whether handbooks need to be updated to make it clear how employees are expected to conduct themselves and what sort of conduct is and isn't acceptable by the employer.
This decision overturns the earlier Court of Appeal ruling, which was that Morrisons was not vicariously liable because a sufficiently close connection could not be established. They placed a limit on the extent to which an employer would be held to be vicariously. The Court of Appeal's decision followed a decision in 2013 in a Scottish case in which it was found that Sainsbury's was not liable for the murder of one employee by another. The court found there was no connection between the harassment and the employee's job. Click here for more on the Sainsbury's case.
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