What is third-party liability, also known as “secondary liability”?
The concept of third party liability refers, as the name implies, to situations in which responsibility for harm can be placed on a party in addition to the one that actually caused the injury. The most common example comes from tort law: a customer in a grocery store drops a bottle of wine and another customer slips on the puddle and injures himself; he may bring an action for negligence against the customer who dropped the bottle and against the owner of the grocery store. Under the common law doctrine of third-party liability, a plaintiff must show not only that an injury actually occurred, but also (in most cases) that some sort of connection existed between the third party and the person who actually caused the injury. As such the concept of third-party liability is often divided into two different types: contributory infringement and vicarious liability. Typically, contributory infringement exists when the third party either assists in the commission of the act which causes the i
