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British Appeals Court Says Teaching Order Not Vicariously Liable For Abuse of Students

By Howard M. Friedman

In Various Claimants v. Catholic Child Welfare Society, (Eng. and Wales Ct. App., Oct. 26, 2010), England's Court of Appeal held that the Institute of the Brothers of Christian Schools, a lay community of teachers dedicated primarily to educating the poor, is not vicariously liable for physical and sexual abuse of students who attended St. William's, a school where the Headmaster and some of the teachers were supplied by the Brothers. The court concluded that the Institute did not control the school or the manner in which the teachers carried out their work-- prerequisites to vicarious liability.  The court said:

It is certainly true that the Institute's power to regulate the deployment of its members gave it the power to decide who was to be offered to St William's and when anyone currently teaching there should be recalled, and thus required to resign.... But the power to ordain the deployment of the brothers did not give the Institute the power to insist that any particular person should be accepted and employed by the managers. That decision was for them, even if they may often have chosen simply to accept what the Institute proposed....

Brother Reginald, headmaster for 11 years, gave evidence that he pretty well ran the school and that the managers largely let him get on with it. He said that they often did not really know what he was doing. But that could be said of his Board of Governors by a great many strong-willed headmasters, certainly in the 1960s. It shows independence of mind in Brother Reginald, but it comes nowhere near demonstrating that the Institute ran the school through him.... 

Yesterday's London Guardian reports on the decision.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on October 28, 2010 (boomark / email).