Chris Pawlowska considers recent cases raising issues of vicarious liability & asks whether the courts are any closer to providing clarity on this area of law
In brief
- Earlier case law and the Haringey decision.
- A change of direction?
On 18 February 2020, the Court of Appeal in London Borough of Haringey v FZO [2020] EWCA Civ 189, [2020] All ER (D) 125 (Feb) concluded that an employer could be vicariously liable for the torts of a physical education teacher who groomed and engaged in the sexual abuse of his pupil from the age of 13. Of itself, this would not be so ground-breaking if the liability were confined to the years that the pupil attended the school, even if some of the assaults had occurred outside school times or even away from school premises. This would have been consistent with existing case law.
What is entirely new here, is that the Court of Appeal concluded that the employer’s liability should not be limited to the time the claimant
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