COMMON EMPLOYMENT

Common employment was an historical defence in English tort law that said workers implicitly
undertook the risks of being injured by their co-workers, with whom they were in "common
employment"

This is a phrase used in the law of master and servant to express the relation between servants of
a common master which relieves the master from liability for injury received by one through the
fault of the other. Common employment is service of such kind that, in the exercise of ordinary
sagacity, all who engage in it may be able to foresee, when accepting it, that through the
negligence of fellow-servants, it may probably expose them to injury. The phrase in some,
perhaps in most, jurisdictions, is used to mean co-operation by the servants concerned, the usual
performance by them of duties, the performance of which brings them into habitual consociation
promotive of the exercise of a cautionary and corrective influence by each over the other. This
doctrine was that the general maxim qui facit per alium, etc. (q.v.) had no application to the
principal in this relation and with later delimitations stating more precisely what constituted
common employment, denied to the injured workman a right to damages from his employer in
many cases where, however it might be in logic, not merely humanity but social and commercial
expediency required that he be compensated. The ultimate consequence, in England, was the
employer’s liability law (q.v.), by which in all such cases the refinements of the doctrine of
contributory negligence were put out of the way. The application of the doctrine of common
employment is a matter of almost infinite detail for which there is here no room. It is, however,
in substance the same as the question who are fellow-servants. The Workmen’s Compensation
Acts now in force in nearly all states have greatly reduced the importance of the fellow-servant
doctrine.

Keywords: Implicitly, fault of other, foresee, delimitations, contributory negligence.

Submitted by: Nishant Gulyani

500055626

062