A Feasibility Study of Employer`s Civil Liability Based upon Strict Liability in Iranian and Common Law

Abstract

Despite the predominance of the principle of personal responsibility, social necessities and demands of today’s societies have caused the legal systems in some cases to protect the rights of injured ones and those who commit damage while being unable to compensate for it, by considering other persons under whose protection and supervision the perpetrator has been liable. The clear example of this liability known as vicarious liability in Common law, is the employer’s civil liability for the actions of his employees, and the determination of genuine foundation of liability is an essential challenge in scope of civil liability and will be considered in this article. The different legislation of Article 12 of the Civil Liability Code has created several interpretations about the foundation of civil liability in Iranian law such as theories of assumed fault, the guarantee of right and the risk. Therefore, this article intends to identify initially the employer’s strict liability as a basis of governing to Common law referring to the policies such as attributability, economic analysis of civil liability, and loss-spreading and then, to introduce the strict or liability without fault as the foundation of governing to the employer`s civil liability in Iranian law through juridical bases arranged in the Civil Code and Islamic Penal Code such as theory of conventional invocation of damages and ambiguity resolution about Article 12 of the Civil Liability Code.

Keywords

• vicarious liability
• compensation
• attributability
• injured