A Magnificent Waste of Time

I'm sitting in Torts class right now, supposedly listening to a professor talk about a case for fifty minutes. The only problem is that the material could be effectively conveyed in five minutes. I'm not a math major, but it appears I'm wasting forty-five minutes.

The case is about a security guard who killed someone while patrolling a factory. The mother of the person killed sued the owners of the factory for wrongful death, using the vicarious liability theory.

Vicarious liability is a fancy term or art that simply means the employer is responsible for the acts of his employee, if the employee is acting within the scope of his employment. Thus, if a truck driver runs over an old lady, you can sue the truck company.

However, when the employee is an independent contractor, the employer is insulated from liability. In the present case, the factory owner had hired an independent company to provide security. The security company paid the security guards, provided uniforms, and managed the guards. It's clear in this case that the guards were independent contractors, so the owners should not be liable.

However, there's an exception. When the work is inherently dangerous, the duty is deemed to be nondelegable, which means that the employer can't insulate himself from liability. Basically, even if you hire a bouncer as an "independent contractor," you can't escape liability when he beats the hell out of someone. The work was inherently dangerous and certainly foreseeable.

To summarize: Employers are responsible for the acts of their employees, unless the employees are deemed to be independent contractors. But if the work is inherently dangerous, the duty is nondelegable, and the employer is liable.

Got it? Good. Because I get to sit here for twenty-five minutes and pretend I don't.