The Case Fo the Singaporean Rogue and the Corrupt Civil Servant

It is a well established principle of tort law that an employer can be held vicariously liable for a tort which is committed by an employee during the course of his employment. Many vicarious liability cases have addressed the issue of whether the employee was, or was not, acting in the course of his employment when the tort was committed; rather fewer have needed to focus specifically on whether or not the act complained of was in fact tortious. In a recent vicarious liability case, however, the House of Lords had to consider the subtle question of whether an employer could be held liable for acts which, although performed during the course of an employee's employment, were not, under the existing law, technically in themselves sufficient to constitute a completed tort, but arguably became so only when linked with the fraudulent acts of a non-employee.