✏️ Sample Solved Problem (IRAC Method) — KSLU Jurisprudence Notes

✏️ Sample Solved Problem (IRAC Method)

Problem: A company driver, sent to deliver goods, takes a substantial personal detour to visit a friend and, on that detour, negligently injures a pedestrian. The pedestrian sues the company. Decide.

I — Issue

Is the employer vicariously liable for the driver’s negligence committed during a substantial personal deviation from his assigned route?

R — Rule

• A master is liable for the servant’s torts committed in the course of employment — acts authorised, or wrongful modes of doing authorised acts (respondeat superior).
• The deviation doctrine: a mere detour incidental to the job stays within employment, but a “frolic of his own” — a new and independent journey for the servant’s purposes — takes him outside the course of employment (Storey v. Ashton, 1869: driver going off-route on his own business; master not liable), while a slight deviation did not excuse the master in Whatman v. Pearson (1868).

A — Analysis

The decisive variable is the degree and purpose of the deviation. This driver’s detour was substantial and wholly personal — visiting a friend serves no purpose of the employer’s delivery. On the Storey v. Ashton line, at the moment of the accident he was on a frolic of his own, not performing the master’s work badly but doing his own business with the master’s van. The decoy is the vehicle’s ownership and the workday timing — ownership of the van and being “on the clock” do not by themselves put the journey in the course of employment; the test is whose purpose the journey served.

C — Conclusion

The company is not vicariously liable: the substantial personal detour was a frolic of his own, outside the course of employment. The pedestrian’s remedy lies against the driver personally — though had the deviation been minor and incidental, the company would have paid.

📄 The full bundle (₹199) contains the complete Unit V — causation, the full mens-rea section, corporate criminal liability, substantive vs procedural law, PYQ boxes and blueprints — plus the Question Bank’s model answers to every Unit V essay and problem asked since 2011. Get Notes + Question Bank — ₹199