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Positive_Debate7048 t1_izfyxmv wrote

Reply to comment by QuickAnything in Thieves walk out of Downtown Jersey City Best Buy with $20K in Apple products by imaluckyduckie

The wages of the staff are irrelevant. Stores can be held liable if their employees detain or injure thieves.

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Unspec7 t1_izk2blx wrote

Depends on the instructions the company gives the employees. Employers are strictly liable (under respondeat superior doctrine) for any torts committed by employees so long as employees are operating within the scope of their employment - if their job specifically says "do not confront thieves", and they still do, they're not operating within the scope of their employment anymore and are personally liable.

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Positive_Debate7048 t1_izl1rza wrote

If you’re in uniform on the clock, and on the premises, a court is basically always gonna find that the employee was acting within scope of employment.

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Unspec7 t1_izl2v4k wrote

If an employer has specifically instructed its employees to not confront a thief, confronting a thief would most likely no longer be serving the purposes of your employer, regardless of how much goodwill you're trying to show the big man. As such, it would be outside their scope of employment, regardless of uniform or premise.

This is speaking specifically of intentional torts, since injuring a thief likely involved battery.

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Positive_Debate7048 t1_izlnexz wrote

I don’t care to debate this but courts have disagreed in the past. There’s plenty of case law on this.

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Unspec7 t1_izlntse wrote

Would you mind citing some cases? You're basically saying that case law is stating a bright line rule and contradicting a base principle of torts, which is that scope of employment has no bright line rules. I'd be interested to see the cases and their opinion.

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