...........the employer is legally responsible for the actions of its employees.
Tony
Except in the case where the employee is on ' a frolic of his own'; I think that's the relevant phrase. If it was a weekend private job, it would have been 'a frolic of his own'.
http://ld.practicallaw.com/ldProfile/jsp/article.jsp?item=:27886804[/QUOTE]
These are the fuller details of that case:-
Vicarious Liability and the Police
By Aidan Ellis
This article appeared in the Law Journal, January, 2007. Case references can be found there.
An off-duty policeman was sitting in his personal car outside the Sunrise Club. He was wearing a black jacket with his police uniform visible underneath. His warrant card was on show. A first aider came out of the club. He was having difficulties with the Claimant who was drunk. The first aider spotted the policeman and spoke to him. The policeman told the Claimant “I am the police”. He showed her his warrant card. He told the first aider that he would take the Claimant “to the police station”. Instead he took her to his home, where he raped and indecently assaulted her. On these facts, the High Court was asked to determine in N v Chief Constable of Merseyside whether the Chief Constable was vicariously liable for this assault.
The Law
The test for whether an employer is vicariously liable is: “was the employee’s tort so closely connected with his employment that it would be fair and just to hold his employer vicariously liable”. As a result, the courts have tended to resolve borderline cases by analysing the list of factors linking the tort with the employment. The weakness of this approach is that it hinges entirely on the detailed facts of a particular case: it is very difficult to offer useful general guidance. It also breeds uncertainty: there is scope for judges to disagree over whether the test is satisfied.
In this case the facts were determined to be a frolick of his own because he took her home and raped her.
Thats a totally different situation from the likely facts of this boiler installation.
The OP knows the firms name and it seems the employees may have implied that they were working for that firm and presumably came in that firm's van as well. They were doing the firm's normal type of work and not having sex with the OP.
In that case I would expect the OP would succeed in a case against the employer. Merely letting the employee use the firm's van would imply a significant degree of trust by the employer. Had the van been locked up in a yard for the weekend a different conclusion could be reached. The employer could easily be blamed because he made an error of judgement in letting the employees use the van at weekends in the full knowledge that they may purport to be doing the company's boiler work.
