Vicarious liability

Vicarious liability is a legal regime by which a person answers for the damage caused by another placed under their authority or control, even though they themselves committed no fault. The classic illustration is the liability of the employer for the damage caused by their employee in the exercise of their duties. The basis of this regime is twofold, namely to make the risk of an activity borne by the one who profits from it and who has the means to indemnify, and to offer the victim a solvent debtor. This long-standing regime is enjoying a spectacular revival of relevance with the rise of autonomous artificial intelligence agents. When a company deploys an AI agent that acts, contracts or decides in its name, and that agent causes harm, can one reason by analogy with an employer's liability for an employee, treating the agent as an auxiliary for whom the company answers? Or must new categories be forged? The debate is open and largely unresolved, and it is central for insurance, because the characterization adopted determines who is liable, on what basis and therefore which policy is intended to respond when the action of an artificial intelligence deployed by an organization harms a third party.

An AI agent deployed by a company autonomously enters into a commitment harmful to a third party. The victim seeks to hold the company liable by analogy with an employer's liability for an employee, raising a still-unprecedented legal question.

responsabilité du fait d'autrui, vicarious liability, responsabilité du commettant