A month on from WM Morrison Supermarkets v Various Claimants being published, Nicholas Dobson reflects on where things went awry on the long & winding road to the final appeal court
In brief
- Morrisons had no vicarious liability when its employee posted sensitive employee data online since he was pursuing a personal vendetta rather than furthering his employer’s business.
- DPA does not exclude vicarious liability.
Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist said if the law supposed his wife acts under his direction ‘the law is a ass—a idiot.’ He therefore wished the eye of the law to ‘be opened by experience’. Many lawyers may have felt something similar about the conclusions of the High Court and Court of Appeal in the Morrisons vicarious liability case, where the famous Joel v Morison ‘frolic of his own’ ((1834) 6 C & P 501) seemed to be dead currency. Faith was, however, restored by the Supreme Court on 1 April 2020 which found no vicarious liability when a Morrisons internal auditor, for his own vengeful purposes, went firmly off-piste, posting personal
