Question

Discuss the principal’s liability in each of the following situations:

1.Bob’s bar and Grill hires Joe as a security guard. During a disturbance joe punches a customer, injuring the customer.

2. Stuff Mart hires Joe as a greeter. Instead of greeting one customer, Joe assaults them.

Answer 1

Liability of the Principal or Principal’s Liability refers to responsibility that the principal has to bear for any action that his subjects perform on any consumer or any third person. Let us discuss Principal’s liability with the help of the two scenarios presented to us:

1. In the first case, Bob’s bar and Grill had hired Joe as a security guard. During a disturbance joe punches a customer thereby injuring the customer. Now, here the customer has arrived at Bob’s bar and grill keeping the reputation of Bob’s Bar and Grill in the view. If the customer has enjoyed at the Bar and Grill due to any particular food or drink, the customer will not praise the particular food or drink, rather praise the complete Bar and Grill. Similarly, If the customer has an untoward experience within the premises of the Bar and Grill, it could be due to any other customer or due to any other isolated incident and he not happy due to it, the customer will not blame the particular incident or person for the bad experience, instead blame the complete Bar and Grill. Therefore, in the case of Joe’s injury to the customer due to a disturbance in the Bar and Grill will not go down well with Bob’s reputation. The customer(s) will not blame Joe for the issue here, but the complete responsibility of whatever happened within the premises pf the Bar and Grill will lie with Bob, Bob being the owner or Principal of the premise.
2. Similarly, when Joe was hired by Stuff Mart as a greeter, Joe in turn assaulted one of the customers, is a similar case as that with Bob’s Bar and Grill. Here he customer(s) will blame Stuff Mart for the assault that was undertaken by Joe on one of the customers. Stuff may be liable to be punishable under law whereby he may be sentenced to prison for a particular period of time or a very handsome amount of penalty may be levied upon Stuff. He may also loose the license to his commercial establishment.