The High Court ruled that Northampton Recruitment is innocent of vicarious liability in a fight that left one person with permanent brain damage. The incident took place at 3 a.m. in a hotel following a Christmas party when the managing director of the firm, John Major, twice struck a sales manager, Clive Bellman.

Bellman sued the company for £1 million in compensation relying on the well-established principle that he was attending a works event so the company must be vicariously liable. However, Judge Cotter QC, ruled that the after-party at the hotel “was, or without any doubt became, an entirely independent, voluntary and discreet early-hours drinking session of a very different nature to the Christmas party and unconnected with the defendant’s business”. The judge found that, while the assault may have been prompted by a work related issue, the chain of causation was broken by the time gap and the intervening social conversation. A conversation between colleagues about work with the company paying some of their bar bill was not enough and making the company liable would leave it with such wide responsibilities as to be almost uninsurable.

Mr Major had originally been arrested and charged with assault occasioning grievous bodily harm following the incident but was acquitted after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) offered no evidence. The circumstances in which the case was dropped was the subject of a complaint which led the CPS to admit it was a mistake to abandon John’s prosecution.