vicarious liability is a type of strict liability [ = liability for damages regardless of whether they were negligent or acted intentionally]. For example, strict liability applies to speeding. Even if a driver didn’t intend to speed or actually know they were speeding, if they are over the limit while driving, then they are responsible for doing so.
Vicarious liability is a type of strict liability.
Vicarious liability, or imputed liability, holds a person[managers] or company responsible for actions committed by, say, employees, that harm others.
egs: company , even if not negligent, can be liable if an employee injures someone while on the job…If a nurse in a hospital causes harm by giving the wrong medication to a patient while on the clock, this would be a clear example of a situation where her employer could be vicariously liable.
eg: When people form a partnership, if one commits a negligent or wrongful act and harms a third party, the partnership can be held liable. For example, if two people start a taxi service and one of them causes an accident , the partnership can be vicariously liable for injuries resulting from the crash.
eg: parents can be held responsible if their children injure others.For example, if a child vandalizes a school, the parent could be held responsible for the damages.
eg. A corporation can be held liable for any torts committed by officers or by directors while they are acting for the corporation.
eg. if you give permission to your child or to a friend to use your car, you can be held responsible for accidents they cause while using your car.
eg. in some cases, police departments have been vicariously liable for crimes committed with duty weapons that were unsecured during off-duty periods.
Defenses to Vicarious Liability: the frolic and detour defense: If employees are acting outside of the scope of their employment when they cause harm…eg: a pizza company could be vicariously liable if their delivery person delivered a pizza to an office building and hit someone in the face with a door when using the building’s restroom. This “detour” is reasonable as is foreseeable that the employee could use a restroom while performing their job….However, if the delivery driver stopped to pick his child up from school while en route to deliver a pizza and caused an accident, this is a “frolic” and is not foreseeable as part of the driver’s job. The pizza company would not be liable.
Making Political Parties Liable for Corruption
When corrupt politicians are caught and convicted, they may suffer fines and incarceration, and the government might also seize proceeds of the wrongdoing. But punishing the corrupt politicians is never enough to deter wrongdoing or to compensate for the harm…..so we need to find vicarous liabilities:
Politicians’ decisions are affected by norms within a political party— for example, by expectations (sometimes unstated) that politicians will bring in a certain amount of money for campaign funds…thus, pps— in addition to the individual politicians— should be held liable for corrupt acts committed by their members in the course of their political activities or official duties. And such liability should attach even if the political parties’ leaders did not specifically know about or overtly endorse the corrupt acts in question
<<>> COCOO V PPS+ GOV !!!!!!
EG. suing a hospital for the malpractice of one of its physicians or holding the government financially liable for wrongful conduct by law enforcement officers.
EG a corporation may be held vicariously liable (not only civilly, but also criminally) for acts committed by corporate employees—even if corporate management did not condone or even know about the criminal acts. These vicarious liability doctrines are important because a single employee frequently does not have the resources to redress the wrongs committed, and also because the employer often bears some responsibility for whatever the employee did, due to company culture, training, and incentive schemes.
but vicarious liab, has not yet been extended to hold political parties responsible for the corrupt acts of their members. Such an extension may seem radical, and in a sense it is, but it would be justified.
- First, though politicians are not “employees” of their political party, they are “agents” of the party. This is most clearly the case in closed-list proportional representation systems (used, for example, in Argentina, Italy, Spain, Russia, and South Africa), where voters cast their ballots for a party rather than for an individual candidate, and the parties fill the seats they win according to a predetermined list that the party has created. Effectively, voters hire a party, and the party hires the legislators. Even in countries that use winner-take-all or open-list proportional representation systems, the politicians are still agents of the parties in most relevant respects, at least where parties exert considerable control over their members.
- Second, although not all criminal acts committed by politicians are as politicians or party members, many acts of corruption are committed in the context of political or official governmental activity, not substantially different in kind from torts or criminal acts committed by company employees in the scope of their employment. For example, making public expenditures and overseeing procurement are well within the normal scope of a politician’s employment, and this is often when corruption occurs,
- Third, traditionally for vicarious liability to attach, the individual agent’s unlawful conduct must have been for the benefit of her principal (that his, her employer or organization). In the context of politicians and political parties, while many acts of corruption are solely for personal enrichment, many are for the benefit of the party. Indeed, in many countries, it is implicitly or explicitly understood that politicians will divert some share of public funds or bribe proceeds to finance campaigns to stay in power.
-Thus, in common law jurisdictions, precedents already exist that may make it possible for prosecutors to bring such cases to court.
-In civil law jurisdictions, parties would be found at fault if they acted negligently—that is, if the party failed to establish appropriate norms and controls to prevent corruption. parties found liable, must compensate the public for the stolen funds [wpi], if the guilty politician is unable to do so, and to compensate the public for the inefficiencies [eg anticomps] introduced into the economy as a result of the distorted incentives corruption causes.
<> COCOO SPECIALISES IN CLP, ALP, ELP, ILP BREACHES CAUSED BY CORRUPTED PPS/POLITICIANS/GOVS/NATIONS
Y pueden ser responsables por los delitos expresamente contemplados en el CP español y por la comisión de un delito por parte de sus representantes legales o personas autorizadas para tomar decisiones en su nombre o que ostenten facultades de organización/control, o por las personas sometidas a la autoridad de esas personas físicas, por haberse incumplido gravemente por aquéllas los deberes de supervisión, vigilancia y control
¿Es obligatorio que los partidos políticos tengan modelos de organización y gestión?
El CP artículos 31 bis y siguientes regulan la responsabilidad penal de las personas jurídicas, y especialmente se refiere a los requisitos que deben cumplir los modelos de organización y gestión en el citado artículo 31 bis, apartado 5….. a diferencia de las personas jurídicas, que no están obligadas a establecer dichos modelos de organización y gestión
LO nº 6/2002 artículo 9 bis: Los partidos políticos deberán adoptar en sus normas internas un sistema de prevención de conductas contrarias al ordenamiento jurídico y de supervisión, a los efectos previstos en el artículo 31 bis del CP.
PUEDE IMPONERSE A UN PP, las penas que recoge el artículo 33.7 del CP español, incluida la pena de disolucion??….. NO: IT WOULD VIOLATE THE SEPARATION OF POWERS
CASO:
PP DE AZNAR SE QUERELLO, PERO RECIBIO COUNTERCLAIM.
COD.PENAL (CP) ART.31BIS: PERS.JCAS Y PPS, PUEDEN HACER Y RECIBIR QUERELLAS, PERO SOLO POR HECHO PROPIO, Y POR LOS TIPOS DELICTIVOS PREVISTOS EN EL LIBRO II DEL CP [ARTS 138-616]. ….THUS, PPS/PJCAS ARE SHIELDED FROM MANY POSSIBLE CLAIMS/COUNTERCLAIMS…..
ONLY THE PHYSICAL PERSON THAT ISSUED THE CLAIM [ON BEHALF OF THE PP], IF FOUND, CAN BE CLAIMED/COUNTERCLAIMED AGAINS , FOR ANY POSSIBLE CRIME
el sistema español de responsabilidad penal de persona jurídica es una responsabilidad por hecho propio ( STS 154/2016, de 29 de febrero y 221/2016, de 16 de marzo); acumulativa o dual; directa y restringido, pues únicamente puede exigirse responsabilidad penal a una persona jurídica respecto de aquellos delitos en que expresamente así se haya previsto en las disposiciones del Libro II del Código Penal, estándose ante un sistema de númerus clausus.
La responsabilidad penal directa del artículo 31 bis CP puede exigirse aunque el autor material persona física concreta responsable no haya sido individualizada o no haya sido posible dirigir el procedimiento contra ella (artículo 31 ter CP).
VOX se ha querellado contra la representante electoral de VOX en Tenerife, por los delitos de administración desleal, contemplado en el artículo 252 CP; delito electoral, artículo 139.1 de la LOREG; y delito con ocasión de impedir el ejercicio de derecho cívicos reconocidos por la Constitución y las leyes del artículo 542 del Código Penal.
esta mujer oculto que cuatro candidatos habían renunciado a ir en listas, por acta notarial. De hecho, no se comunicó a la Junta Electoral hasta media hora antes de que acabara el plazo legal. Es por ello que la formación a la que Rodríguez representaba no tuvo tiempo de reaccionar.
Si bien VOX envió los argumentos necesarios a la Junta Electoral, así como una candidatura alternativa, que no fue aceptada; y la Fiscalía ha reconocido que Rodríguez se extralimitó en sus funciones y vulneró con fraude el derecho de participación de VoX, el TC decidió, una vez más, desentenderse del asunto; en un nuevo destrozo a la Justicia, porque la acción de Rodríguez ha causado un perjuicio a un candidato y a la formación, que se concreta en no poder concurrir al proceso electoral con vulneración de derechos fundamentales de ambos, y del derecho a la participación política. Y es que sin la participación de la representante electoral, no hubiera sido posible conseguir el objetivo: boicotear la candidatura de VOX
Probably the most famous case in recent years has been the Spanish Gürtel case. You can find a (very long) summary here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/01/spain-watergate-corruption-scandal-politics-gurtel-case If you read Spanish the judgment can be found here http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4501074-Sentencia-G%C3%BCrtel.html
the Audiencia Nacional, the Spain-wide tribunal where the big corruption cases are prosecuted, the anticorruption prosecutor, held that the Spanish Conservative Party (Popular Party or PP) was one of the beneficiaries of the corrupt plot, and that if the managers of the party did not know (the court believe they did) they should have known. Hence, it considered the PP “partícipe a título lucrativo” and imposed a penalty of 245,000 euros on the party, which, as The Guardian put it “The reputational damage was far worse than the actual punishment.
Spain, have made illegal party financing a crime, irrespectively of the origin of the funds. In that sense, if the case was tried today, the sentencing would have been harsher and the tools for the judges to act specifically against the party more incisive.
that judgment triggered a motion to dismiss the government:
https://globalanticorruptionblog.com/2019/06/06/guest-post-how-a-social-movement-changed-spanish-attitudes-toward-corruption/