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    So you can get away with theft, murder, etc. just by joining a work meeting from your phone while you commit the crimes? Maybe even bonus points if you turn on the camera so that there are witnesses that it is your employer's fault? Sounds like a too powerful loophole...
    – wimi
    Commented Jun 14 at 6:44
  • 1
    No, you can’t. It’s always the employee’s responsibility but can additionally be the employer’s. Interesting if the employee caused you damage, ought to pay, but has no money, and the employer has. And the murder is most likely not work related. I could just about imagine that a security guard or a bouncer could commit a work related murder, they would still go to jail for murder.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Jun 14 at 8:20
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    The first case you cite found the employer not liable because the act, although committed on company property by an employee who was required to be there, was not "authorised, in any way required by, or incidental to, his employment." It seems clear that driving is not at all within the OP's "scope of employment" - it has nothing to do with "what the employee was actually employed to do and held out as being employed to do". I don't expect the employer has to explicitly enumerate and bar all unrelated tortious activities the employee could possibly commit while working to avoid liability.
    – Nuclear Hoagie
    Commented Jun 14 at 14:04
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    The notion that "any tort you commit while [on a work call] is in the course of your employment and the employer is vicariously liable" seems very far-reaching. Seems crazy to think that if the OP decided to go hunting during an earnings call and shot someone that the employer would be liable, or that they could drive drunk or without a license and make their employer liable just by popping in an earbud. It's impossible to list all the things that aren't in an employee's scope of employment.
    – Nuclear Hoagie
    Commented Jun 14 at 14:20
  • @NuclearHoagie, in the example, the employee isn't driving "within the scope of employment", but attending a meeting. The employee needs to be driving for non-employment reasons. I suppose if you could show that an employee needed to be hunting at some time the company also scheduled a meeting... but I expect that would be difficult. The issue here is that it is problematic for the employee to defer driving until some other time, and the company "required" them to attend a meeting in the knowledge that they would be driving at the same time.
    – Matthew
    Commented Jun 17 at 0:56