Common employment

Common employment was an historical defence in English tort law that said workers implicitly undertook the risks of being injured by their co-workers, with whom they were in "common employment". The US labor law terminology was the "fellow servant rule".

Development

The operation of the doctrine was seen first in Priestly v Fowler in the United Kingdom. In the United States the doctrine was seen in Farwell v. Boston & Worcester R.R. Corp.[1][2]

Bunker Hill Mining Company operated by the fellow servant doctrine. According to Katherine Aiken, "persons engaged in the same common pursuit for the same employer were fellow servants and companies were not liable for injuries where a fellow servant was at fault. Thus, either the miner himself or his coworker was ultimately responsible for accidents." Between March 1893 and Feb. 1894, 15 fatalities occurred at the mine.[3]

It was abolished altogether by the Law Reform (Personal Injuries) Act 1948 in the United Kingdom.

The doctrine has been superseded in the United States by worker's compensation laws, by which a worker can file for a quasi-tort, regardless of their co-worker's fault.

gollark: So you won't mind if I deploy lethal cognitohazards‽
gollark: DKIM just has mail servers sign your mail I think.
gollark: ++remind 3y Additionally, fear the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.
gollark: ++remind 3y By the way: did we finally get consumer AR glasses, working self-driving cars, PHONES WITH KEYBOARDS ÆÆÆ, etc?
gollark: ++remind 3y Otherwise I will dispatch bees proactively. I don't even need retroactive deployment, since this is the past.

See also

Notes
  1. 45 Mass. 49 (1842)
  2. freedictionary.com's article.
  3. Aiken, Katherine (December 2007). Idaho's Bunker Hill: the rise and fall of a great mining company, 1885-1981. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. p. 19. ISBN 9780806138985.

References
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