K V Minister of Safety and Security and the increasingly blurred line between personal and vicarious liability

Abstract

An employer's delictual liability can be either personal or vicarious. Vicarious liability is a form of secondary liability. It is liability for the delict of an employee committed within the course and scope of her employment. Its conceptual ambit is thus limited in three ways. In considering whether an employer should be held personally liable, none of these limitations holds. All that is asked is whether the employer wrongfully and negligently caused the plaintiff's injury.