Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Vicarious Liability
Vicarious Liability
Agent Relationship
Introduction
A tort is a civil wrong for which the law provides a remedy. Probably the essential
thing to worry about tort is that tort only appears in civil courts, which means
that there is no criminal liability from a tort.
Torts can be categorized into three types, i.e. intentional torts, negligence, and
strict liability.
Intentional torts are those torts where the defendant desires to bring about a
particular result is that they intend the consequences of their actions. Now
negligence occurs when one’s conduct without regard to the person’s intent or
state of mind imposes an unreasonable risk of harm to another. In negligence,
the tortfeasor state of mind is irrelevant which means that it doesn’t matter what
they are thinking. The last category of torts is strict liability. In strict liability, one
doesn’t care about the state of mind or whether the person is intended armed.
Here the harm that occurred is the only important thing.
This article discusses vicarious liability which is a form of secondary strict liability.
Vicarious liability is when one party is held liable for the torts of another. Three
conditions have to be established.
The legal term to define the vehicle owner in this situation is ‘principal’ and driver
will be termed as ‘agent’ and the principle is vicariously liable for his agent’s
negligent driving.
1. Collecting Agent;
2. Partnerships;
3. Personal Relations asked to carry out a particular task.
I think this was an interesting part of the article since the same argument was
analysed through various perspectives. And reading about these different
perspectives was deeply refreshing. Next, the author discusses the rationale
against the imposition of liability in master-servant relationships. This again was
too generic and a little bit outside the scope of this particular paper. The author
could’ve easily left this part out and his paper would’ve still made sense. The last
part of the paper focused on the approach and the reasoning behind the said
approach of McHugh J in two cases: Hollis v Vabu and Scott v Davis. The
justification given by McHugh J in both the cases concerning vicarious liability was
not up to the mark. I agree with the author on this issue. The demarcation in
cases where the principal should be liable for the acts done by the agent and the
ones in which he should not; is not very clear by the arguments presented by
McHugh J. A more clear and concise methodology needs to be adopted and
applied.
In the first part, the author talked about the relationship between principal and
agent which is still supposed to be essentially contractual. It is based on the
assumption that relation exists when there is a contract between the parties. He
then further points out the difference and similarities between the Law of Agency
and Law of Contracts. He stated that “a contract accompanies an agency, but
there may be a complete agency without a contract”. Further, many propositions
were presented by the author to establish an exact connection. These
propositions were simple to understand the connection between the two. In the
next part, he discussed the agency and the doctrine of fiduciary relations.
Fiduciary relation is an extension of the law of trust. The author discussed
different forms of fiduciary relation like agents and principals, attorneys and
clients, guardian and awards etcetera. Later in this part of the article, the author
talked about equitable maxim, that there cannot be a conflict between duty and
a person’s interest.
A case has also been discussed in the article: Bentley v. Craven where the agent
must disclose personal interest involved in the transaction.
In another section in the article, he talked about the nature of agency. This
section endeavours to characterize the idea of ‘agency’, especially in the extent
of English and EU law. He mentioned that” three parties are needed for a legal
relationship in English law: a ‘principal’, on whose behalf the agent acts; an
‘agent’, who acts on behalf of the principal; and ‘third parties’ whom the agent
brings into legal relations with the principal”. Moving forward, he stipulated that
how European law has applied an extensive effect on the agency in the context
of English Law. The impacts were explained by the author in a way that can be
easily comprehended.
The last part of the paper talks about the normal incidents of agency in various
points regarding power liability relations. It made it very easy to understand the
incidents since they were explained in points with examples.
Case analysis
Facts
Facts of the case: Castillo v. Case Farms of Ohio, the defendant is an Ohio based
chicken processing plant which has been operational since 1986 and it was during
the years 1996 and 1997 that they were actively recruiting employees. Their
package included free bus tickets to Ohio and a 20$ to bear conveyance expenses.
But the labourers alleged that the terms and conditions promised to them
significantly varied from what Tempcorps made when it recruited. To make their
case, the recruits relied on the theory of the principal-agent relationship, arguing
that an agency relationship existed between the defendant and the agent.
In the above case, since there was no such emergency, there is no case of
appointment by necessity.
The distinguishing feature that the agent has the power to enter into contracts
on behalf of the principal was not experienced in this case as ATC didn’t enter
into any contract other than its contract with the defendants.
Besides, since the job was explicitly delegated by the defendants to ATC, as it
was ATC’s responsibility to hire workers and look for them, it is therefore now
defendants liability.
Since ATC kept them in bare houses or apartments, provided them with bad living
conditions, etc. they didn’t perform their job in a proper and usual manner,
therefore, liability rests upon defendants.
Conclusion
After analysing the case by applying rules to the issues, we can infer that ATC
being an agent of Case Farms makes the defendants liable for ATC’s actions.
Therefore, the damages suffered by the workers will be compensated by Case
Farms.