Employer’s liability for employee’s violence

The Court of Appeal has recently considered two conjoined cases to determine the circumstances when an employer is liable for an act of violence committed by one employee towards another. Employment Principal Lorna Townsend reports.

In order for an employer to be vicariously liable for a violent act committed by one of its employees, there must be a sufficiently close connection between what the employee is required to do and the act of violence.  In each of these cases, the violence was committed by an employee following a lawful instruction issued on behalf of the employer. 

In the first case, the employee was drunk and rode to work on his bicycle after his manager had called him at home to make a routine request that he volunteered to work on a night shift.  Once he had arrived at work the employee attacked and inflicted serious violence on the manager.  In this instance, the Court decided that this was an independent venture of the employee’s own; separate and distinct from his employment.  It held that the request made by the manager was no more than a pretext for the employee’s act of violence, which was unconnected with his work.  The employee was therefore not acting in the course of his employment and so the employer was not vicariously liable for his actions.

In the second case, the employee threw his manager onto a table after being given an instruction related to his work. The Court was satisfied that in this case, which was located in a factory environment, the violence was closely related to the employment in both time and space and was a spontaneous and almost instantaneous response to the instruction. The Court considered that frustrations which lead to a reaction involving some violence are predictable and are a risk created by the environment. This meant that the employer could be held liable for the injury.

Acts of violence committed by an employee in the workplace are usually clear cases of gross misconduct for which dismissal is an appropriate sanction.  However, this decision suggests that employers might be liable for injuries sustained by another employee as a result of the act of violence, for which compensation is payable.

Whilst acts of violence are thankfully a relatively rare occurrence, employers should consider taking steps to try and ensure they are not held vicariously liable in the event one employee sustains a serious injury inflicted by another. 

This could, for example, include reviewing internal policies to make sure these deal very clearly with the issue of violence and bringing these to the attention of staff, particularly in workplaces where there has been any history of friction between employees.

A copy of the judgment is available here.