This one pertains to Canadian Law:
Can one have a case in which an employee for a company performed an act in malice that caused injury to a party.
Then that party puts forward a criminal case against the employee (for jail time), but ALSO put forward another case as civil lawsuit to the company (aiming for monetary damages), for it's lack of oversight & encouraging the employee's attitude.
Is the party going about this the right way?
Can one have a case in which an employee for a company performed an act in malice that caused injury to a party.
Then that party puts forward a criminal case against the employee (for jail time), but ALSO put forward another case as civil lawsuit to the company (aiming for monetary damages), for it's lack of oversight & encouraging the employee's attitude.
The Crown (i.e. the government) prosecutes and controls a criminal case. A civil case is commenced and litigated by a private party. Generally speaking, in this situation, a private party can't initiate or control the litigation of the criminal case.
A private party can ask that the government bring a criminal case, but the government doesn't have to cooperate, and the private party still has no say in how the criminal case in managed.
Often, civil cases are stayed while a related criminal case is pending, but that is a discretionary determination made on a case by case basis by a judge in the civil case. Criminal cases are almost never stayed due to a pending civil case.
It isn't improper to bring a civil case regarding circumstances that are also the subject of a criminal case, however.
If the criminal case results in a conviction, any determinations that were necessary to that conviction are considered proved as a matter of law without any further presentation of evidence or room for appeal, in the civil case, due to a doctrine historically called "collateral estoppel." This simplification of the civil case if there is a conviction is one of the reasons that the civil case is often stayed pending an outcome for the criminal case.
An employer is vicariously liable for the actions of an employee unless they are on a frolic of their own. Engaging in criminal behaviour that the employer neither authorised nor condoned is pretty much in frolic territory. If the win the criminal case, they sink the civil one.
