Scope of employment is the legal consideration of the various activities which may occur in the performance of a person's job, especially those acts which are reasonable relative to the job description and foreseeable by the employer.
Key examples of this consideration under US law can include tort liability of the employer due to a duty to supervise or control the employee. If a security guard harms a customer in a retail store, a court may consider if the employee's harmful acts were foreseeable by the employer to the point that the employer should have instituted reasonable precautions to prevent the resulting harm. Extreme examples would likely find the employer is liable for the employee using a gun which was permitted on the job, but perhaps not if strict instructions against carrying guns on the job had been given to the employee who ignored them.
Famous quotes containing the words scope of, scope and/or employment:
“The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old “laissez faire” school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)