AND 3400
VICARIOUS CORPORATE CIVIL
LIABILITY
Reinier H. Kraakman
Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Copyright 1999 Reinier H. Kraakman
Abstract
Vicarious liability is the strict liability of a principal for the misconduct of her
agent. This chapter reviews six areas of commentary on vicarious and corporate
civil liability. It begins by formulating the standard case for vicarious liability
based on the likely insolvency of the firms culpable agents in the face of
massive liability for business torts. Next, it addresses cost considerations that
militate against imposing vicarious liability on the corporation in some
circumstances, and the relationship between corporate liability the structure of
liability imposed on corporate agents. Two additional sections of the article
review alternatives to traditional vicarious liability regimes, including
alternative liability rules for corporate principals (notably a negligence rule)
and alternative targets for liability besides the firm (notably top corporate
managers). Finally, the chapter reviews recent literature on the distinction
between corporate civil and criminal liability. It concludes that the case made
out thus for distinguishing between these too forms of corporate liability is
weak.
JEL classification: K13, K22, K42
Keywords: Vicarious Liability, Corporate Liability, Principal, Agent,
Gatekeeper
1. Introduction
Vicarious liability is the absolute liability of one party - generally the legal
principal - for misconduct of another party - her agent - the actor whose
activities she directs. As such, traditional vicarious liability is a form of strict
secondary liability, in contrast to secondary liability imposed on principals or
other parties under a duty-based standard such as negligence. In the common
law, the legal doctrine of respondent superior is the principal vehicle for
holding principals liable for the torts and other delicts of their agents. Under
this doctrine, principals are jointly and severally liable for the wrongs
committed within the scope of employment by agents whose behavior they
have the legal right to control (servants) (Restatement (Second) of Agency,
1958, 2, 219, 220, 229).
Most corporate liability for torts, and in the United States for crimes as well,
is vicarious liability imposed under respondent superior or a similar doctrine.
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To be sure, corporate liability may also be direct, as when the independent
actions of several corporate agents cumulatively result in a business tort,
although no single agent is individually culpable. But even in this case, the
liability of corporate principals is best conceptualized as vicarious liability for
the failure of the firms management to supervise its employees.
An overview of the literature on vicarious and corporate civil liability must
address at least six areas of commentary: (a) the standard case for strict
vicarious liability; (b) the factors militating against vicarious liability; (c) the
interaction between vicarious liability and the structure of liability for agents;
(d) alternatives to a strict vicarious liability standard; (e) alternative targets for
vicarious liability; and (f) the choice between civil and criminal corporate
liability.
2. The Standard Case for Vicarious Liability
The initial issue raised by a regime of vicarious liability for torts is the Coasian
question: why should an allocation of liability between principals and agents
matter if these parties are able to reallocate liability among themselves by
agreement? The fundamental analysis of vicarious liability, developed with the
aid of principal-agent models by Kornhauser (1982) and Sykes (1981, 1984),
looks to the insolvency of agents and to limitations on the ability of the parties
to shift liability as the basic conditions favoring vicarious liability. As a general
matter, Kornhauser (1982), Sykes (1984) and Shavell (1987) agree that
vicarious liability for ordinary torts is more likely to increase social welfare as
the disparity between agent assets and the magnitude of prospective tort
liability increases. By contrast, where tort liability would leave both principals
and agents solvent and the costs of negotiating between principals and agents
are slight, vicarious liability is likely to have few efficiency consequences (for
example, Kornhauser, 1982, pp. 1351-1352; Sykes, 1984, p. 1241).
Given that principals can satisfy prospective tort liability but agents cannot,
vicarious liability may or may not be efficient. Consider first the considerations
that weigh in favor of vicarious liability when agents are insolvent but
corporate principals are not.
To begin, vicarious liability is increasingly likely to be efficient as
principals have greater ability to monitor or otherwise control agent risk-taking.
The analysis is straightforward. Absent vicarious liability, personal liability
gives insolvent agents insufficient incentive to take care, since they lack the
wealth to pay tort damages (Sykes, 1981, p. 168; Shavell, 1987, pp. 170-171).
Moreover, their principals have no incentive to urge greater care, since the only
liability cost faced by principals (in the absence of secondary liability) is the
wage cost of offsetting the expected liability of their agents. Thus, insolvent
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agents under a regime of purely personal liability will lead firms to take too
little care and to initiate too much risky activity or misconduct. By contrast,
principals who are vicariously liable and face the full expected cost of tort
damages will seek to control their agents to ensure optimal precautionary
measures.
The traditional doctrine of respondent superior is fully in accord with this
analysis since it appears to tie vicarious liability explicitly to the principals
costs of monitoring or otherwise controlling employee behavior (Landes and
Posner, 1987, p. 208). For example, agency law determines the principals tort
liability based not only on her capacity to monitor her agents actions but also
on her ability to contractually alter her agents incentives, as when the scope
of employment rules condition vicarious liability on whether the culpable agent
acted, at least in part, to benefit his principal (Restatement (Second) of Agency,
1958, 228(1) (c)).
Apart from inducing principals to control agent misconduct through
monitoring and preventive measures, vicarious liability can also force
principals to internalize the costs of misconduct when agents are judgmentproof. In the private sector, at least, forcing firms to internalize the costs of
misconduct that accompany their productive activity leads, other things being
equal, to an efficient scale of production by bringing the private costs of
production into line with the social costs (for example, Shavell, 1980; Kramer
and Sykes, 1987, p. 286). Thus, even if corporate principals cannot control
caretaking by agents, vicarious liability can ensure that they at least face the
full expected costs of accidents or wrongdoing, and thus do not undertake too
much risky activity - providing, of course, that their agents are also strictly
liable for the underlying harms at issue (Polinsky and Shavell, 1993).
As Shavell (1987, pp. 173-174) notes, moreover, several other
considerations favor a rule of corporate vicarious liability as well, especially
when contracting between principals and agents is constrained and there are
limitations such as solvency on the effective liability faced by agents. First,
principals may be better informed than agents about accident risks, or better
able to limit these risks by reorganizing the workplace. Second, principals - and
particularly firms - may be better able to monitor and discipline agents than the
courts. Thus, vicarious liability may be socially advantageous if principals are
less likely than courts to err in reviewing agent conduct. Third, principals may
be more attractive targets of liability as a consequence of what Kornhauser
(1982, pp. 1370-1371) terms the problem of multiple agents. That is, an
outside plaintiff may find the task of determining which of a firms many
agents has caused a tort extremely costly, even when one of the firms agents
is clearly responsible. But if the firm faces liability, it may be able to locate and
discipline the culpable agent - or, even if it cannot, it may be able to reduce tort
costs through other means such as training programs or screening measures.
Fourth, as most commentators acknowledge, shifting liability to principals
under a vicarious liability rule is likely to reduce risk bearing costs, at least in
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the paradigmatic case where agents are risk averse or insolvent, principals are
firms, and victims are risk-averse individuals (for example, Kramer and Sykes,
1987, p. 278; Chapman, 1996).
Finally, in addition to the justifications for vicarious liability resting on the
assumption of rational, utility-maximizing actors, some commentators have
proposed justifications based on limited or defective rationality, particularly on
the part of corporate agents (for example, Croley, 1996; Schwartz, 1996a). In
these accounts, defective rationality blunts the incentive effects of liability on
wayward agents, much as insolvency, or external constraints on sanctions,
limits the power of liability to deter agents in more conventional accounts of
vicarious liability.
3. Factors Militating Against Strict Vicarious Liability
Although the standard considerations favoring vicarious liability make a
persuasive case in many circumstances, they also point to several factors that
militate against vicarious liability. Agents who are well capitalized, especially
in relationship to their putative principals, are better left to bear full personal
liability for business torts on both incentive and risk bearing grounds. As
Shavell (1987, p. 174) argues, outside the conventional context of large
enterprises and their employees, there is no natural presumption about the
comparative capitalization of principals and agents - or about the ability of
principals to observe the loss avoidance behavior of agents. Imposing liability
on principals who cannot monitor their agents is unlikely to reduce accident
costs and, as Sykes (1984, p. 1249) notes, may actually decrease safety by
lowering the expected liability of agents for their own negligence. Finally, most
commentators agree that whatever the advantages of vicarious liability, it
clearly increases administrative costs by including additional defendants in tort
actions.
Even in the context of large firms, where the case for vicarious liability is
generally strongest, it is arguably inappropriate under some circumstances. One
example arises when senior managers intentionally release fraudulent
information into the capital market in order to protect their jobs or secure
personal benefits. As Arlen and Carney (1992) note, vicarious liability may
have little deterrent effect when top managers charged with supervising the
firm act on their own behalf in committing misconduct, particularly when these
managers are in an end game because the firm faces likely bankruptcy. Further,
the risk-bearing rationale for imposing liability on the firm rather than on its
agents is weak for such self-conscious misconduct because managers can avoid
risk of liability simply by refraining from making misleading statements.
Finally, the firm liable for damages inflicted by its top managers on a subset of
its own investors has perverse consequences. Absent strong evidence that such
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liability leads managers to monitor one another, its effect is simply to shift
assets (net of litigation expenses) from one class of innocent investors to
another.
Arlen (1994) also identifies a second circumstance in which holding firms
vicariously liable for the intentional wrongdoing of agents can generate
perverse incentives and increase enforcement costs. In cases where misconduct
is difficult to detect, the firm may enjoy a comparative advantage over outsiders
in monitoring for it. Yet the firm will not monitor optimally under a vicarious
liability regime - and may not monitor at all - if the information that the firm
acquires can be used to increase its own probability of incurring liability. The
reason is straightforward: increased monitoring lowers the firms expected
liability costs by raising its ability to deter or prevent misconduct, but increased
monitoring also raises the firms expected liability costs by increasing the
probability that, should misconduct occur, the firm will be held liable for it.
Although Arlen (1994) directs her analysis to corporate crimes, the potentially
perverse effect that she identifies clearly extends to vicarious civil liability for
torts that may be difficult to detect without monitoring by the principal.
A related observation, made in Arlen and Kraakman (1997, pp. 712-717),
is that a credibility problem may arise where strict vicarious liability is used to
induce firms to monitor or investigate misconduct. The nub of the problem is
that, absent a commitment device such as reputation, firms may not have an
incentive to actually monitor, or to investigate and report misconduct after it
has occurred. While credible threats to implement these measures would deter
misconduct, the measures themselves add nothing under a vicarious liability
rule except enforcement costs and enhanced liability risks for firms. The
danger, then, is that some firms may not be able to make credible enforcement
threats - even if they intend to carry them out - because wayward agents rightly
suspect that actually implementing these enforcement measures would be acting
against interest. By contrast, an element of duty-based liability such as a
negligence rule can assure the credibility of enforcement threats, just as it can
overcome the perverse effects associated with traditional vicarious liability
(Arlen and Kraakman, 1997, pp. 717-718).
Lastly, a novel set of problems associated with strict vicarious liability arises
in the context of government bodies and certain non-profits that are not subject
to ordinary market constraints. While the aims of inducing optimal caretaking,
self-policing, and efficient risk-bearing arguably support vicarious liability for
such non-market entities just as they do for business corporations, the argument
for this liability rule based on the need to regulate activity levels does not (see
Kramer and Sykes, 1987, pp. 278-283). It is simply unclear how cost
internalization affects the scale of the non-market enterprise - it might yield too
much or too little activity (Kramer and Sykes, 1987, p. 286). For this reason,
a duty-based or negligence-based liability regime might be preferred to strict
vicarious liability for non-market entities such as cities (Kramer and Sykes,
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1987, p. 294) - just as it might sometimes be preferable for rival firms where
perverse incentive and credibility problems are severe.
4. The Interaction between Principal and Agent Liability
An important question in the literature concerns the relationship between
vicarious liability and the regime under which the principals agent incurs
personal liability. Vicarious liability is a form of strict liability: the principal
is absolutely liable for the delicts of the agent as if the principal actually were
the agent. Moreover, the agent and the principal share exactly the same
liability: the principal simply steps into the shoes of the agent. Yet both of these
dimensions of the traditional vicarious liability regime are open to challenge
in many circumstances.
Consider first whether the agent and the principal should face the same
liability. In the standard case where the principal is an enterprise, the agent is
an employee, and the agents actions trigger significant liability, a rule of
vicarious liability generally makes the enterprise rather than the agent liable as
a practical matter (Kraakman, 1984a; 1984b). At most, the culpable agent faces
the loss of his job and the risk of losing limited assets in a civil lawsuit.
Chapman (1996) argues that this shift from individual to enterprise liability
protects firms from the agency problem of overcompliance that might otherwise
arise as managers sought to reduce their risk of personal liability.
As Polinsky and Shavell (1993) observe, however, the opposite problem
may also arise: the firm may not be able to administer private sanctions severe
enough to induce its employees to take optimal care where the social costs of
torts are large. Thus, it may be appropriate to not only sanction employees but
to administer criminal sanctions such as fines and imprisonment, even when
the firm remains liable for only civil damages. Polinsky and Shavell (1993)
propose criminal liability for employees, then, not because employees are
inherently blameworthy, but rather because their limited assets may insulate
them from the contractual sanctions and civil suits at the disposal of firms. Of
course, if the firms agents become criminally liable, the firm must pay wages
to compensate its employees for their greater liability costs and its own
vicarious liability should be reduced accordingly. Failure to reduce the firms
liability in this fashion would distort its activity level and undesirably
discourage consumption (Polinsky and Shavell, 1993, p. 241).
Next, consider whether firms and agents ought to face liability under
precisely the same circumstances as they currently do under a traditional
regime of vicarious liability. Polinsky and Shavell (1993, pp. 251-253) argue
that vicarious liability may often be, in effect, underinclusive, because firms
should be strictly liable for harms associated with their production processes
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while their employees ought to be liable only under a negligence standard. One
argument offered by Polinsky and Shavell (1993) is that a negligence standard
offers a stronger incentive for caretaking than strict liability does when agents
are partially insulated from liability by limited assets. Other arguments for a
negligence standard include its value in economizing on costly criminal
sanctions such as imprisonment, and its potential value in limiting the
risk-bearing costs of risk averse corporate agents.
A different issue associated with holding agents and principals liable in
precisely the same circumstances arises when principals are vicariously liable
for the negligence of agents - as distinct from facing strict liability for the
underlying misconduct (as Polinksy and Shavell, 1993, propose). Because a
negligence standard governs much of tort law, firms are often strictly liable for
employee negligence under the traditional vicarious liability regime. But
establishing the negligence of corporate employees who act deep within the
enterprise may be extremely difficult without the assistance of the corporate
principal itself. As Chu and Qian (1995) point out, this juxtaposition of
corporate liability and monitoring leads to a familiar problem: vicarious
liability gives the principal a powerful incentive to withhold from monitoring
evidence the court precisely because the principal cannot be vicariously
liable unless its agent is found negligent in the first instance. This effect
parallels Arlens (1994) analysis of possible perverse effects associated with
vicarious corporate criminal liability insofar as it turns on the difficulty of
detecting misconduct (here the agents negligence) without enlisting the
cooperation of the principal. If the corporate principal is made strictly liable for
the harm regardless of the agents negligence (as proposed by Polinsky and
Shavell, 1993), the incentive of the corporate principal to withhold information
about the negligence of its agents may be mitigated. Yet it will not be
eliminated entirely as long as monitoring by the corporate principal increases
the probability of corporate liability (Chu and Qian, 1995, p. 320).
5. Negligence and Composite Vicarious Liability Regimes
As the preceding discussion indicates, a traditional regime of strict vicarious
liability is a relatively rigid rule that, in some circumstances, may fail to satisfy
one or both of the fundamental objectives of tort law: providing for the
internalization of tort costs and for the optimal regulation of precautionary
measures. In most cases strict vicarious liability is congruent with a policy of
forcing firms to internalize tort costs. In fact, when principals cannot monitor
their agents behavior, the only justification for vicarious liability is the
internalization of tort costs and the concomitant regulation of activity levels.
It is possible, however, that principals may be in a position to prevent some
forms of misconduct that are not properly assigned to the marginal costs of
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enterprise production. In this case a negligence rule that imposes liability only
when principals fail to take reasonable steps to prevent misconduct may
dominate strict vicarious liability, precisely because such a rule does not charge
the full cost of misconduct to the firm (Sykes, 1988, pp. 577-579).
In the more conventional case where tort costs are appropriately assigned
to the enterprise, a chief drawback of traditional strict liability is the perverse
monitoring incentive analyzed by Arlen (1994) and Chu and Qian (1995): that
is, the risk that principals will not monitor their agents optimally because doing
so might increase their risk of incurring vicarious liability. Here too, as was
suggested in Section 3 above, a negligence standard imposing liability only on
principals who fail to take reasonable monitoring steps is a natural solution to
the risk of inadequate monitoring under a strict liability regime.
There are, however, important drawbacks to a regime of negligence-based
vicarious liability, as it is termed by Kramer and Sykes (1987, p. 283). For
example, a negligence standard will not regulate activity levels efficiently by
assuring that firms fully internalize the costs of their torts. In addition, a
negligence regime is arguably poorly suited for inducing firms to undertake
other kinds of measures to prevent misconduct - such as reorganizing
production processes - that do not involve monitoring or affect the principals
risk of incurring liability.
In the case of intentional torts and crimes, Arlen and Kraakman (1997)
discuss three types of mixed liability regimes that are designed to induce
corporate principals to undertake appropriate monitoring measures (and
possibly to report agent misconduct as well) while simultaneously encouraging
preventive measures and assuring that firms internalize the full costs of their
agents misconduct. The first type includes regimes that, through use immunity
or privilege doctrines, attempt to insulate corporate principals from any
increase in their probability of prosecution arising from their internal
monitoring and investigatory efforts. An example is coupling strict liability for
environmental harms with an environmental audit privilege, to ensure that
firms retain their incentives to undertake such audits. The second type is a
regime of strict liability with a variable sanction that declines to offset any
increase in the expected liability that a firm would otherwise from monitoring
for employee misconduct. Finally, the third type includes composite regimes
that combine a negligence rule to regulate corporate monitoring and
investigation of misconduct with a residual element of strict liability to ensure
that corporate principals adopt preventive measures and internalize the costs
of agent misconduct. Here an example is the liability regime created by the US
Federal Sentencing Guidelines for corporate crimes (see Arlen and Kraakman,
1997, pp. 745-752).
Arlen and Kraakman (1997) argue that the range of mixed vicarious
liability regimes - extending from evidentiary privileges through adjusted
sanction regimes to composite regimes - are increasingly costly to administer
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effectively but are also increasingly likely to satisfy the multiple enforcement
objectives of a vicarious liability regime. To be sure, some commentators
oppose any resort to a negligence standard to supplement strict liability (as is
necessary in a composite regime) on the grounds that judicial error in
administering the standard will inevitably create liability in excess of the social
cost of misconduct (Fischel and Sykes, 1996, pp. 328-329). This effect,
however, can be ameliorated by downwardly adjusting the composite liability
regimes residual liability level.
It follows that the traditional American rule of strict vicarious liability is
well-suited to the ordinary cast in which the costs of agent misconduct are
appropriately charged to the principal and misconduct is unlikely to escape
detection. Whenever one of these conditions fails, however, strict vicarious
liability may be dominated by either negligence-based vicarious liability or a
mixed regime that includes elements of both strict and negligence-based
liability.
6. Reaching Beyond the Principal: Alternative Liability Targets
Traditional vicarious liability makes the legal principal liable for her agents
torts. But other actors besides the principal may also be in a position to monitor
safety precautions or thwart third-party misconduct: for example, senior
managers within the firm who supervise lower-level employees; or the lawyers,
accountants and underwriters who facilitate fraudulent public issues of
securities. In fact, secondary liability (if not necessarily traditional strict
vicarious liability) for the torts and delicts of primary wrongdoers is a common
legal control strategy well outside the domain of principal-agent relationships.
In some cases, the secondary liability of parties other than the
organizational principal or enterprise serves as a backstop for traditional
vicarious liability. For example, Kraakman (1984a, 1984b) argues that the
personal liability of corporate managers for garden-variety torts protects against
the possible inadequacy of corporate assets to satisfy the firms liability. Thus,
in a reversal of the traditional justification for vicarious liability discussed
above in Section 1, Kraakman (1984a, pp. 869-871; 1984b) suggests that most
personal liability of managers for corporate torts should be understood as
protecting tort victims against undercapitalized firms rather than agents, since
well-capitalized firms invariably insulate their managers from liability through
insurance or indemnification contracts.
In some cases, however, the law blocks the indemnification of managers for
their own misconduct or extends liability for corporate misconduct to a broader
circle of influential actors beyond the group of top managers, such as outside
directors and accountants associated with companies. Kraakman (1984a,
1984b) describes this as a gatekeeper strategy that is designed to augment
potentially inadequate levels of liability imposed on the firm itself. Thus, just
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as vicarious corporate liability can enhance legal controls over judgment-proof
agents, so in extreme cases the personal liability of corporate managers,
directors, and even outside directors can partially offset the inadequacy of
corporate liability.
In addition, the potential uses of secondary liability, whether civil or
criminal, and the value of the gatekeeper strategy, extend well beyond the
corporate enterprise. An important research agenda turns on identifying
contexts where these liability strategies are or are not cost effective. Kraakman
(1986) examines several considerations bearing on the costs and benefits of
imposing secondary liability on a contracting party in order to deter or prevent
the misconduct of the counter-party to the contractual relationship. The chief
enforcement tool at the disposal of a private gatekeeper is the power to
withhold goods, services, or facilitation from a counter-party engaged in risky
or suspect behavior, just as the principals chief incentive device in the
traditional agency relationship is the threat to fire an agent who engages in
risky behavior. Moreover, whether gatekeeper liability is likely to prevent
misconduct depends in part on the same considerations that contribute to an
effective regime of vicarious liability, such as the assets and the expertise of the
gatekeeper relative to those of the potential tortfeasor. But especially in the case
of intentional misconduct, the efficacy of gatekeeping turns in large part on
how easily would-be wrongdoers can contract around honest gatekeepers who
withhold their services from suspect endeavors (Kraakman, 1986, pp. 66-74).
Several commentators have undertaken more particularized assessments of
the costs and benefits of gatekeeper liability for individual classes of strategic
gatekeepers. For example, Franzoni (1996) examines gatekeeper enforcement
of tax laws through imposing liability on auditors. Choi (1998) offers a
skeptical analysis of the costs and benefits of gatekeeper liability imposed on
underwriters in the securities market. Jackson (1993) and Wilkins (1993)
consider gatekeeper liability imposed on lawyers in the context of banking
regulations.
7. Corporate Civil Liability versus Criminal Liability
The vicarious liability regime that accounts for most corporate liability in the
United States makes no distinction between civil and criminal liability. It is
well-accepted that when corporate agents commit crimes within the scope of
their employment, firms can be criminally prosecuted on a theory of vicarious
liability - just as firms are vicariously liable for the civil torts of their agents.
Recent literature on vicarious liability, however, questions the value of
imposing specifically criminal liability on corporate principals, as distinct from
imposing vicarious civil liability for the criminal acts of corporate agents.
The critique of corporate criminal liability proceeds on several fronts.
Fischel and Sykes (1996, pp. 322-324) point out that the specifically criminal
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sanction of incarceration is unavailable against corporations, and that the
criminal law objective of incapacitating criminals though incarceration makes
little sense in the context of corporate liability. Equally important, Fischel and
Sykes (1996) argue, criminal sanctions are uncalibrated to the level of harm
associated with crime, which may be appropriate to penalties imposed on
individuals but is inappropriate to penalties operating on the corporate level.
Criminal penalties imposed on individuals for intentional crimes such as
murder create little risk of overdeterrence: less murder is always better. But
penalties imposed on the corporate level lack this character, precisely because
they are corporate penalties. Corporations are, in Fischel and Sykess (1996, p.
323) phrase, webs of contractual relationships consisting of individuals who
ban together for their mutual economic benefit. Corporate crimes typically
involve actions committed by some corporate agents without the knowledge and
approval of others. It follows that the primary function of penalties imposed on
the corporate level is not to deter in the conventional sense but to induce firms
to monitor their agents and prevent crimes: that is, the classic justification for
vicarious liability (see Fischel and Sykes, 1996, p. 324; Parker, 1996). The
baseline penalty imposed on the corporation, then, should be civil liability equal
to the social cost of crime discounted to reflect its probability of detection.
A second critique of corporate criminal liability does not question penalty
levels per se but asks: why prefer criminal penalties over equivalently scaled
civil liability? The feature that arguably distinguishes criminal sanctions on the
corporate level - social stigma and reputational loss - render these penalties less
predictable and more costly than parallel civil penalties (see Karpoff and Lott,
1993; Khanna, 1996, pp. 1501-1512). Moreover, in most cases, the
administration costs of criminal prosecution are likely to be larger than the
costs of civil lawsuits by government agencies (Khanna, 1996, pp. 1512-1531).
In light of these multiple critiques of corporate criminal liability, the
justification for vicarious criminal liability for corporate principals - or
principals more generally - remains an important topic for future research. If
no plausible justification can be found, the implications for law reform are
clear: vicarious corporate liability should be decriminalized.
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