October 5, 2025
WM Morrisons v Various Claimants [2020] UKSC 12
A disgruntled employee deliberately leaked colleagues' personal data. The Supreme Court held that the employer, Morrisons, was not vicariously liable because the employee's act was a personal vendetta, not an act done a in the course of his employment. Facts An employee of Morrisons, Mr Andrew Skelton, a senior IT internal auditor, developed a grievance against the company following disciplinary proceedings. Tasked with transmitting payroll data for the entire workforce to an external auditor, Skelton illicitly copied the data, which included names, addresses, bank account details, and salaries of nearly 100,000 employees. He subsequently uploaded this data to a publicly
