Question

Explain when an employer can be held liable for the wrongful acts of an employee.

Answer 1

Ans- An employer can be held liable for the wrongful acts of an employee if the employee caused any kind of harm to anyone while he/she was on duty. For e.g, if an employee does an accident in the road while driving a company's car for business purpose then the employer will be liable for injuries caused to the respective person or any kind of damages which the car caused. An employer can also be held liable if the employee hired a wrong candidate without checking his past records and then that candidate caused some harm. For e.g., a candidate was hired for the role of a cashier in the company and the employee who hired him took the hiring process casually even though that candidate was not suitable for the role and did not check about that candidate's past records in which it can be seen he was a thief and after some months the newly hired candidate did robbery in one of the banks with whom the company had their accounts and fled away. So, in this case, too the employer will be liable for the loss incurred because of the negligent or careless hiring by that particular employee.

Any kind of workplace harassment which has been reported to the management by a particular employee but the management did not take any serious action and the harassment continued day by day by their co-worker and it became so serious that the victim could not come to the office or was mentally disturbed and if the victim complains to the higher authority outside the company then the employer will be liable for the harassment caused to that employee in the workplace.