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The legal principle of vicarious liability applies to hold one person liable for the actions of another when engaged in some form of joint or collective activity. For the civil law system, see vicarious liability. For liability attributed to a corporation, see corporate liability. For liability between joint principals, see common purpose. Image File history File links SmallLadyJustice. ...
Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of law that punishes criminals for committing offences against the state. ...
This article concerns the common-law legal system, as contrasted with the civil law legal system; for other meanings of the term, within the field of law, see common law (disambiguation). ...
Actus reus is the action (or inaction, in the case of criminal negligence and similar crimes which are sometimes called acts of omission) which, in combination with the mens rea (guilty mind), produces criminal liability in common law based criminal law jurisdictions such as the United States, United Kingdom. ...
In law, causation is the name given to the process of testing whether defendants should be fixed with liability for the outcome to their acts and omissions that injure or cause loss to others. ...
Concurrence or Simultaneity is a legal term, from Western jurisprudence, referring to the simultaneous occurrence of actus reus (bad action) and mens rea (bad mind), which must be present for a crime to have occurred; except in crimes of strict liability. ...
The mens rea is the Latin term for guilty mind used in the criminal law. ...
In the criminal law, intention is one of the three general classes of mens rea necessary to constitute a conventional as opposed to strict liability crime. ...
In the criminal law, recklessness (sometimes also termed wilful blindness) is one of the three possible classes of mental state constituting mens rea (the Latin for guilty mind). To commit an offence of ordinary as opposed to strict liability, the prosecution must be able to prove both an actus reus...
Willful blindess is a term used in law to describe a situation in which an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable. ...
Criminal negligence, in the realm of criminal common law, is a legal term of art for a state of mind which is careless, inattentive, neglectful, willfully blind, or reckless; it is the mens rea part of a crime which, if occurring simultaneously with the actus reus, gives rise to criminal...
Ignorantia juris non excusat or Ignorantia legis neminem excusat (Latin for ignorance of the law is no excuse) is a legal doctrine holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape punishment for violating the law merely because they were unaware of the law; that is...
In the criminal law, corporate liability is an aspect of criminal vicarious liability and determines the extent to which a corporation as a fictitious person can be convicted of offences committed by the natural persons it employs. ...
A felony, in many common law legal systems, is the term for a very serious crime; misdemeanors are considered to be less serious. ...
In many common law jurisdictions (e. ...
A hybrid offence or dual offence are the special offences in Canadian criminal law where the prosecution may choose whether to proceed with a summary offence or an indictment. ...
A misdemeanors (or misdemeanour), in many common law legal systems, is a lesser criminal act. ...
A lesser included offense, in criminal law, is a crime for which all of the elements necessary to impose liability are also elements found in a more serious crime. ...
Regulatory offences are a class of crime in which the standard for proving culpability has been lowered so as not to require any fault elements. ...
In many common law jurisdictions, the crime of battery involves an injury or other contact upon the person of another in a manner likely to cause bodily harm. ...
Mayhem, under the common law of crimes, consisted of the intentional and wanton removal of a body part that would handicap a persons ability to defend themselves in combat. ...
In the United States, larceny is a common law crime involving stealing. ...
The Skyline Parkway Motel in Afton, Virginia after an arson fire on July 9, 2004. ...
False pretenses is a common law crime. ...
Extortion is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person obtains money, behaviour, or other goods and/or services from another by wrongfully threatening or inflicting harm to this person, reputation, or property. ...
Forgery is the process of making or adapting objects or documents (see false document), with the intention to deceive. ...
Computer Crime, E-Crime, Hi-Tech Crime or Electronic Crime is a crime in which a computer plays an essential part. ...
Bribery is a crime defined by Blacks Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions as an official or other person in discharge of a public or legal duty. ...
Perjury is lying or making verifiably false statements under oath in a court of law. ...
Obstruction of justice, in a common law state, refers to the crime of offering interference of any sort to the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other (usually government) officials. ...
Misprision of felony, under the common law of England, was the crime of failing to report knowledge of a felony to the appropriate authorities. ...
An inchoate offense is a crime. ...
Solicitation is a crime; it is an inchoate offense that consists of a person inciting, counseling, advising, urging, or commanding another to commit a crime with the specific intent that the person solicited commit the crime. ...
The crime of attempt occurs when a person does an act amounting to more than mere preparation for a criminal offense, with specific intent to commit a crime, if that act tends but fails to effect the commission of the offense intended. ...
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more natural persons to break the law at some time in the future, so a natural person identified with the mind of a legal entity cannot conspire with the company alone. ...
An accessory is a person who assists in or conceals a crime, but does not actually participate in the commission of the crime. ...
Criminal procedure refers to the legal process for adjudicating claims that someone has violated the criminal law. ...
A contract is any promise or set of promises made by one party to another for the breach of which the law provides a remedy. ...
In the common law, a tort is a civil wrong for which the law provides a remedy. ...
Property law is the law that governs the various forms of ownership in real property (land as distinct from personal or movable possessions) and in personal property, within the common law legal system. ...
In the law, a will or testament is a document by which a person (the testator) regulates the rights of others over his property or family after death. ...
The law of trusts and estates is generally considered the body of law which governs the management of personal affairs and the disposition of property of an individual in anticipation and the event of such persons incapacity or death, also known as the law of successions in civil law. ...
The law of evidence governs the use of testimony (eg. ...
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Law Law topics overview List of areas of law List of legal topics List of legal terms List of jurists List of legal abbreviations List of case law lists List of law firms Further reading Cheyenne Way: Conflict & Case Law in Primitive Jurisprudence, Karl...
In the most general sense, a liability is anything that is a hindrance, or puts one at a disadvantage. ...
Vicarious liability is a form of strict, secondary liability that arises under the common law doctrine of agency – respondeat superior – the responsibility of the superior for the acts of their subordinate and can be distinguished from contributory liability, another form of secondary liability, which is rooted in the tort theory...
A corporation is a legal entity (distinct from a natural person) that often has similar rights in law to those of a Civil law systems may refer to corporations as moral persons; they may also go by the name AS (anonymous society) or something similar, depending on language (see below). ...
In the criminal law, corporate liability is an aspect of criminal vicarious liability and determines the extent to which a corporation as a fictitious person can be convicted of offences committed by the natural persons it employs. ...
History Before the emergence of states which could bear the high costs of maintaining national policing and impartial court systems, local communities operated self-help systems to keep the peace and to enforce contracts. Until the thirteenth century, one of the institutions that emerged was an involuntary collective responsibility for the actions committed by one of the group. This was formalised into the community responsibility system (CRS) which was enforced by a fear of loss of community reputation and of retailiation by the injured community if the appropriate compensation was not paid. In some countries where the political system supported it, collective responsibility was gradually phased out in favour of individual responsibility. In Germany and Italy, collective systems were in operation as late as the sixteenth century.
While communities were relatively small and heterogenous, CRS could work well. But as populations increased and merchants began to trade across ever wider territories, the system failed to match the emerging societies' needs for more personal accountability and responsibility. In England, Henry I allowed London to opt out of the CRS system and to appoint a sherrif and justices in 1133, and between 1225 and 1232, Henry III assured the merchants of Ypres that none of them "will be detained in England nor will they be partitions for another's debts" (see Greif for a detailed discussion). Henry I of England (c. ...
Part of the London skyline viewed from the South Bank London is the most populous city in the European Union, with an estimated population on 1 January 2005 of 7. ...
Henry III (October 1, 1207 – November 16, 1272) is one of the least-known British monarchs, considering the great length of his reign. ...
The Bellfry of Ypres Ypres (French, generally used in English;1 Ieper official name in the local Dutch) is a municipality located in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of West Flanders. ...
Nevertheless, the idea of imposing liability on another despite a lack of culpability has remained a tempting common law possibiliy and courts have evolved the principle that an employer can incur liability for the acts and omissions of an employee if committed in and during the course of employment and the employer has the right to control the way in which the employee carries out his or her duties. Although the outcome is inequitable, it has been justified because: Culpability (Blameworthiness) is the state of deserving to be blamed for a crime or offence. ...
This article concerns the common-law legal system, as contrasted with the civil law legal system; for other meanings of the term, within the field of law, see common law (disambiguation). ...
Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ...
- the threat of liability is a spur to accident prevention. The assumption is that rational employers will take steps to ensure that employees avoid injuring third parties if the "penalties" are serious enough. But, the greater the monitoring and control exercised over the workers, the more an employer assumes the risk of the worker's conduct. Rational employers might choose not to supervise and plead ignorance of their rogue workers' activities or increasingly rely on independent contractors for sensitive operations and processes.
- ensuring that there is adequate compensation for injured third parties is socially desirable (the so-called "deep pocket" justification). The problem is that, as the insurance industry developed, employers could transfer the risk for an ever smaller premium payment and ignore the threat to capital.
- even without the insurance industry, the employer passes on the cost of compensation to the customers and clients. This is a distribution of loss or "risk spreading" justification and assumes that, when there are many customers, the price increases will be minimal. The assumption may not actually be justified if there are few customers or the business is close to insolvency.
An independent contractor is a person or business which provides goods or services to another entity under terms specified in a contract. ...
The term Insolvency describes a financial condition experienced by a person or business entity when his (or its) assets no longer exceed his liabilities or when the person or entity can no longer meet its debt obligations when they come due. ...
Modern vicarious liability The general rule in the criminal law is that there is no vicarious liability. This reflects the general principle that a crime is composed of both an actus reus (the Latin tag for "guilty act") and a mens rea (the Latin tag for "guilty act") and that a person should only be convicted if he, she or it is directly responsible for causing both elements to occur at the same time (see concurrence). Thus, the practice of holding one person liable for the actions of another is the exception and not the rule in criminal law. Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of law that punishes criminals for committing offences against the state. ...
Actus reus is the action (or inaction, in the case of criminal negligence and similar crimes which are sometimes called acts of omission) which, in combination with the mens rea (guilty mind), produces criminal liability in common law based criminal law jurisdictions such as the United States, United Kingdom. ...
Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...
The mens rea is the Latin term for guilty mind used in the criminal law. ...
Concurrence or Simultaneity is a legal term, from Western jurisprudence, referring to the simultaneous occurrence of actus reus (bad action) and mens rea (bad mind), which must be present for a crime to have occurred; except in crimes of strict liability. ...
Vicarious liability in English law The primary exception arises through statutory interpretation where the verb used to define the action in the actus reus is both the physical action of the employee and the legal action of the employer. For example, the activity of "driving" is purely a physical activity performed by the person behind the wheel. But when a cashier takes money as payment for goods, this is only the physical activity of selling. For goods to be sold, the owner of the goods must pass legal title to those goods. In default, the customer would commit the actus reus of theft. So the owner sells the goods at the same time that the employee takes the money. Similarly, only the holder of rights can grant a licence to another or permit another to do something that would otherwise have been unlawful. The verbs "possess", "control" and use may also have dual relevance depending on the context. Many of these are strict liability or regulatory offences, but the principle has been used to impose liability on a wide range of activities undertaken in a business or commercial environment. English law is the law of England and Wales, rather than Scotland and Northern Ireland. ...
Statutory interpretation is the process of reading and applying statutory law. ...
Everyday instance of theft: the bike which fits on this wheel has disappeared Theft (also known as stealing) is in general, the wrongful taking of someone elses property without that persons willful consent. ...
Strict liability is a legal doctrine in tort law that makes a person responsible for the damages caused by their actions regardless of culpability (fault) or mens rea. ...
Regulatory offences are a class of crime in which the standard for proving culpability has been lowered so as not to require any fault elements. ...
Vicarious liability in the United States This is generally applied to crimes that affect the public welfare but which do not require the imposition of a prison term. The principle is that in such cases, the public interest is more important than private interest, and so vicarious liability is imposed to deter or to create incentives for employers to impose stricter rules and supervise more closely. In Commonwealth v. Koczwara, 155 A.2d 825 (1959) the defendant was the licensed operator of a tavern which was found to have supplied minors with alcohol. The offence became one of strict or absolute liability when applied vicariously because of the need to protect weak and vulnerable members of society, and the omission of words such as "knowingly", "willfully" or "intentionally" in some of the offences indicated a legislative intent to permit this eventuality. Staples v United States 511 US 600 (1994), the defendant was convicted of being in possession of an unregistered machinegun. It was a rifle that had been modified for rapid fire, thereby putting it in violation of the National Firearms Act. The court said it was irrelevant that he did not know about the modification because statutes regulating dangerous weapons are public welfare statutes and can be interpreted to exclude the mens rea requirement of knowledge. Hence, as long as defendants knows that they are dealing with a dangerous product or device that places them in a responsible relationship to the pubic, they should recognise that strict regulations are more likely and assume that Congress would intend to place the burden on the defendant to ascertain at his peril whether his conduct comes within the inhibition of the statute. A congress is a gathering of people, especially a gathering for a political purpose. ...
The courts generally convict employers for the illegal conduct of their employees even though the employers had no knowledge and so were not at fault. But in State v. Guminga 395 NW2d 344 (Minn. 1986) 337 where a waitress served alcohol to a minor, the court found that the conviction of her employer violated the Due Process Clause and so was not constitutional under Minnesota law. Consequently, the defendant should only be given civil not criminal penalties. It is noted that this prohibition had been in force since 1905 which had given the legislature many years in which to reform the law. The majority rejected the argument of implied legislative intent. The issue of constitutionality in the form of a substantive due process clause requires a balancing of public interests and personal liberty. Although a statute making employers vicariously liable for their employee’s actions may serve the public interest by providing deterrence, the private interests affected (i.e. liberty, damaged reputation, etc) outweigh the public interests, especially when there are alternative means to reach the same end of deterrence, say by civil fines or license suspension. Due process of law is a legal concept that ensures the government will respect all of a persons legal rights instead of just some or most of those legal rights, when the government deprives a person of life, liberty, or property. ...
Deterrence ALOHA!! is a means of controlling a persons behavior through negative motivational influences, namely fear of punishment. ...
References - Greif, Avner. (1993). Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: The Maghribi Traders' Coalition, American Economic Review, 83:3, pp.525-48.
- Greif, Avner. (1994). Cultural Beliefs and the Organization of Society: A Historical and Theoretical Reflection on Collectivist and Individualist Societies. Journal of Political Economy, 102:5, pp. 912-50.
- Greif, Avner. (2003). Institutions and Impersonal Exchange: The European Experience. Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No. 03-29.[[1]]
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