Vicarious liability for knife attack

Mattis v Pollock (t/a Flamingos Nightclub) CA TLR 16 July

The defendant’s doorman was involved in a fight in the club. He was pursued outside. He went to his flat about 500 yards away and returned with a knife. The claimant was stabbed in the back about 100 yards from the club. His spinal chord was severed and he was now a paraplegic. In his claim against the club based on its vicarious liability the critical feature was to concentrate attention on the closeness of the connection between the act of the employee and the duties he was engaged to perform. He was encouraged and expected to perform his duties in an aggressive and intimidatory manner, which included manhandling customers. He was not a properly registered doorman and the defendant should not have been employing him at all, and certainly should not have been encouraging him to perform his duties as he did. There was little doubt that the doorman would have been as violent within the premises as he was outside them. His return to the club was motivated by a need to avenge the physical injuries and public humiliation he had sustained inside the club. The words he used when he stabbed the claimant showed that his actions were directly linked to the earlier incident. The whole event certainly developed in stages, at each of which it might have petered out. But, even allowing that the doorman’s behaviour included an important element of personal revenge, approaching the matter broadly, the moment the claimant was stabbed, the defendant’s responsibility for the actions of his aggressive doorman was not extinguished. Vicarious liability was therefore established.