Question

Vicarious liability transfers the actus reus and the mens rea of one person to another person—or from one or more persons to an enterprise—because of their relationship. Explain what it means to transfer actus reus and mens rea. Discuss the most common cases involving vicarious liability and provide an example.​

Answer 1

Explain what it means to transfer actus reus and mens rea

In the criminal law, this is referred to as transferred intent or transferred malice. Transferred intent is the case in which when a person wants to harm one individual and in place of it, they end up harming another individual. In the criminal law system, even if the harm is onto the second person, because of the Intent to harm the first person, the perpetrator would be liable. Actus reus is identified as a crime element where an action would cause harm to another person. Mens rea is the element of the mind in which the intention of the person to commit a crime is identified l

The intention to commit crime is one of the necessary elements when considering a person criminal. Unless a person has the intent, the crime will nit be considered culpable. This could be explained saying if a person A is shooting at a person named B and wants to kill B, but instead he would miss and kill C, there would be a transfer of mens rea. He would still be charged, even though his intention was not to kill C.

An example case could be the Scott vs Shepherd case, where the liability was found to be of the defendant, in which, he had thrown a lighted squib which was in turn thrown on by two other people in the house before hitting the the plaintiff. It hit the plaintiff straight on faced and ultimately exploded. It was found that this transferred intent was the main reason of the trespassing .