Let’s say some one at a company is negligent and causes damage. Is the person protected since they work for a company? Do you sue both them and the company under the legal theory of sue everyone and let the judge sort it out or do you sue the person and not the company since they’re the one that screwed up?
Company is generally responsible for negligence of their employees. More to the point, the worker usually is not worth using because the do not have that kind of money. This is known as vicarious liability.
I have seen the individual concerned being named as a party at times, along with the company.
It really depends. One thing that’s often come up in my case is service animal access. My wife has a service animal. Once in awhile, an employee goes above and beyond to make her experience difficult. Florida law treats this as a misdimeanor punishable by a small fine of about $300 I believe. So this is a case where taking legal action against a particularly hostile employee might actually be better than bothering the company.
However, we’ve never actually done that. Usually what happens is I send an email to the main customer service address and they send a memo reminding store managers of the service animal policy and like magic the same employee handles it professionally the next time around.
Depends on the issue. If it’s a criminal negligence issue, many times the employee and the company will be indicted. Then the prosecutor will attempt to negotiate with the employee to testify against the company in exchange for reduced charges.
Another vote for ‘it depends’. If the company has done their due diligence - trained the employee, provided adequate supervision, provided the right tools to do the job - then it could fall to the employee eventually, through the courts. But I would assume most lawyers would cast a wide net and sue both the employee and the company, and see what falls out of it.
People are mixing criminal and civil (US) law here.
If I as an employee of a company, through the normal course of performing my job (or failing to perform my job) cause some sort of damage, then the company would get sued. That is civil law. I’m simply acting as an agent of the company. Goes back to the whole corporate “personhood” thing.
If I commit a crime on behalf of my company, I would be subject to criminal laws as if I did it on my own. “By boss told me to” is not an acceptable defense. Those involved at the company could also be charged with conspiracy and other charges. Also the company would be subject to civil lawsuits as well.
Doesn’t it also depend on whether the employee’s negligent actions are part of the job? Let’s say a pizza delivery guy negligently causes an accident while on a delivery run. I’d expect the employer to be liable in that case. If the same employee causes an accident while out on a lunch break, I’d expect the employee to be liable.
It’s not part of the employee’s job (hopefully) to negligently cause accidents.
Two parties cannot agree to take away a third party’s rights without the consent of the third party. If a pizza delivery driver runs over you (accidentally) he does not get off the hook for his actions by saying “Hey, too bad, I was on the job. If I had run over you 15 minutes later you might have been able to sue me.” If a pizza delivery driver negligently causes an accident while on the job, you can sue the pizza shop as well as the driver.
Consider this scenario: The driver has a fat insurance policy that covers his pizza driving. The owner of the pizza business is flat broke and might not be able to make next week’s payroll and hasn’t paid his insurance premiums. Under your theory, if the pizza driver hits somebody negligently while off the job, the victim hits the jackpot, but if he does it while working, the victim is SOL.
Some random pedestrian that you ran over on the street does not lose his rights to recover from you for your negligent actions just because you were working at the time.
Depends again. If the pizza company paid for the delivery guy to take a defensive driving class, and had policies about driving the speed limit, turns, etc. which the employee acknowledged and signed off on, but the driver blatantly disregarded all of those instructions, then the company could have defenses against the suit.
I couldn’t help but think of the recent case in the news about the porn actor who has been held criminally and civilly liable for potentially exposing his scene partner to an STD. The suit against the “employer” is up next. Though I guess that case involves negligent acts toward a co-worker and not a customer/general public.
Depending on what it is, both employee and employer could be sued and held liable.
I own a small business and because negligence and people screwing up happens, I have liability insurance. If a client’s property is damaged, it gets fixed and made whole. Luckily this has happened rarely and I’ve never been sued in 35 years, but I consider “shit happens” incidents as my responsibility, even if the shit was caused by an employee.
It seems to mainly be in the personal injury realm of things where indivduals and groups get sued “jointly and severally”, meaning they’re sued individually and as a group.
I haven’t ever heard of someone just screwing up on the job and being held personally liable by the legal system for that mistake. It usually has to do with some sort of negligence or personal injury.
For example, let’s say one company has subcontracted out a second to perform some service, and an employee of the second company is just cruddy at his job, and causes the service to be shoddy, and the first company loses a customer and some amount of revenue.
In that case, it’s likely that the first company will sue the second for not living up to their part of the contract, but even if they did know who the cruddy employee is, it’s unlikely they’d sue that guy because he wasn’t personally contractually obligated to do anything for the first company.
Interesting case today where a Border Patrol officer killed a kid standing across the border (because the kid threw rocks at him). The Border Patrol cannot be sued because of sovereign immunity. But the court decided the officer can be sued.
Could you share where you’re getting that from?
The nitty gritty will depend on the state (and if it happens at sea it’s likely federal) but most, if not all states, have adopted a form of the respondeat superior doctrine which basically says that the employer is responsible for the negligence (among other things) of its employees that occurred during the course of the employee’s duties.
So if a pizza delivery guy hits a dude while driving negligently to deliver pizza, it is likely the pizza joint can be sued.
Pizza guy off-duty hits a dude: not so much.
Broad strokes, IANAL (yet), etc.
From my own companies compliance and legal policies.
Also: Vicarious liability - Wikipedia
If the employer can demonstrate that the employee did not have the authority to drive recklessly on behalf of the company, the employee had in fact been trained to not drive in this manner, and therefore if the employee did drive in that manner it was outside of the scope of his employment. To further demonstrate this, it would be helpful to the employer’s defense if they have a record of dismissing violators of the “safe driving” policies, even when no accident occurred.
In my experience, most people who deliver pizzas don’t think to inform their insurance company that they’ve made this little change to their driving pattern. I have no idea whether or not an insurance company can refuse to pay for an accident that happened during undisclosed driving for pay time. But even if they come through like champs, it’s unlikely to be a fat policy. When you make minimum wage you’re most likely to have minimum insurance.
The company itself could also be subject to criminal proceedings.
There is a “Legal Fiction” that holds that a negligent employee of a sovereign government can be sue “personally”. The employing agency, however, would still be responsible for paying the verdict/settlement cost.
But let’s be clear here.
The doctrine of respondeat superior does not absolve the employee of responsibility or liability for his own actions. It creates additional liability on the part of the employer.
From your link: