Court case[1976] 1 WLR 141

Plenty was employed by a dairy company as a milk roundsman. The company had put up notices expressly forbidding roundsmen to carry children on their milk floats or to employ them to help in delivering milk. In breach of these orders Plenty engaged the plaintiff, a boy of thirteen, to help him deliver milk and collect payment, and carried him on the float. While the boy was riding on the float, Plenty drove negligently, the boy's leg was caught between the float and the kerb and he was injured. The boy sued Plenty and the dairy company.

The Court of Appeal, by a majority (Lord Denning MR and Scarman LJ; Lawton LJ dissenting), held the employers liable. The prohibition did not limit the sphere of the roundsman's employment, which was to deliver milk and collect money; it only regulated the way in which he did it. The boy was carried on the float, contrary to orders, for the very purpose of the employers' business - to help with the deliveries - and the roundsman was therefore acting in the course of his employment, though in a prohibited manner. The case was distinguished from Twine v. Bean's Express (1946), where a lift given to a hitch-hiker served no purpose of the employer at all.