Sex discrimination: How to avoid vicarious liability for unlawful discrimination

In Canniffe v East Riding of Yorkshire Council [2000] IRLR 555, the EAT holds that the proper approach to the employer's statutory defence to vicarious liability for unlawful discrimination is, first, to identify whether or not the employer took any steps at all to prevent the employee, for whom it is vicariously liable, from doing the act or acts complained of in the course of his or her employment; and secondly, having identified what steps, if any, the employer took, to consider whether or not there were any further steps, that it could have taken, which were reasonably practicable.

Ms Canniffe was employed by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council ("the council").