Charles Pigott reports on the ongoing quest for precision in vicarious liability cases post-Mohamud v Morrison Supermarkets
- The Court of Appeal has ruled that an employer was vicariously liable for an assault on a colleague by its managing director.
- It is one of several recent decisions to apply the 2016 Supreme Court’s guidance in Mohamud v Morrison Supermarkets.
Bellman v Northampton Recruitment Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 2214, [2018] All ER (D) 54 (Oct) is about whether an employer should be vicariously liable for a serious assault which took place after the defendant employer’s Christmas party.
The facts
The assault was committed by John Major, the managing director of Northampton Recruitment Limited, a company with 11 employees. All the staff and their partners attended its 2011 Christmas party at a golf club. Then, around half of them went on to drinks at a nearby hotel, for which the employer footed most of the bill.
At around 2am the conversation turned to work, and Mr Major became increasingly heated about what he saw as a challenge to his authority by his
