CASUALTY TERMS & CONCEPTS · 6 MIN READ

Premises, Vicarious, and Employer Liability

Premises liability traditionally grades the possessor's duty by the entrant's status. Invitees — those present for the possessor's business or as members of the public on open premises — are owed reasonable care including inspection for hidden dangers. Licensees, such as social guests, are owed warnings of known dangers. Trespassers are owed only the duty not to willfully injure — except children. The attractive-nuisance doctrine makes a possessor liable for artificial conditions when child trespass is foreseeable, the condition poses a risk of death or serious harm the possessor knows about, the child's youth prevents appreciating the danger, the burden of fixing it is slight compared to the risk, and the possessor fails to use reasonable care; swimming pools and construction equipment are the classic triggers, and no invitation or admission fee is required. In slip-and-fall cases without actual notice, the plaintiff proves constructive notice — the condition existed long enough that reasonable care would have found and fixed it — or relies on the mode-of-operation rule for self-service stores. The open-and-obvious doctrine, the firefighter's rule (barring professional rescuers from suing over the negligence that occasioned their response), and the rescue doctrine (protecting lay rescuers, since danger invites rescue) refine the field, and nuisance law separately protects use and enjoyment of land — private nuisance for particular neighbors, public nuisance for rights common to the public. Vicarious liability makes one person answer for another's tort. Respondeat superior holds employers liable for employee torts within the scope of employment; a minor deviation (detour) stays within scope, while a major personal departure (frolic) does not. Employers are generally not liable for independent contractors' torts — but exceptions swallow much of the rule: non-delegable duties, peculiar-risk activities, and apparent agency. The borrowed-servant doctrine shifts liability to the employer controlling the work, and a joint enterprise imputes liability among members when there is an agreement, common purpose, community of pecuniary interest, and an equal right of control — capital contributions are not required. Distinct from all of these is the employer's own direct negligence: negligent hiring, retention, supervision, or entrustment, resting on special relationships that create duties to control another's dangerous conduct. Employment law adds its own liability layer. Employment is at-will, but the public-policy exception supports wrongful-discharge claims for refusing to break the law, exercising statutory rights, or whistleblowing. Title VII harassment liability follows Harris v. Forklift Systems — conduct severe or pervasive enough that a reasonable person would find the environment hostile, and the victim subjectively did — and the Ellerth/Faragher framework, which makes employers vicariously liable for supervisor harassment subject to an affirmative defense when no tangible employment action occurred. The workers compensation exclusive-remedy bar closes most employee tort suits against employers, subject to exceptions such as dual capacity. Suits against government actors travel special routes: 42 USC §1983 for constitutional violations under color of state law, and the FTCA for federal employees.