“Based on what you know about this case, does it meet the “frolic and detour” standard?”
I don’t know more than the average person about this case, but the concept would apply if, in essence, the “bad actor” was acting fully outside of the scope of his duties and his agency.
Think of it this way, in a master-agent scenario. An employer is the master, and provides direction to his agents in the course of their employment. If the agent, within the arguable scope of that direction, harms a third party, then the master is responsible to the third party, and the master might also be seen to have a duty to indemnify the agent, if the agent is also required to pay damages for an act.
But there has to be a limit to that principle. If the agent acts totally outside the scope of his direction, and commits actions in total violation of his employer’s direction, then the employer’s culpability should be extinguished at some point and the agent should bear the responsibility for his action.
One valid question to ask is: was the master negligent in managing the agent, under all the facts, such that the master should have known about the danger and could have prevented it? I don’t know all the facts here but I would tend to think the answer is NO, the FBI wasn’t negligent.
The judge rejected the government's contention that Connolly was a rogue agent, who had pocketed $200,000 in payoffs from Bulger and Flemmi over two decades and wasn't acting in the scope of his duty as an FBI agent when he leaked information that led to McIntyre's murder.The FBI was dirty, Connolly had a reasonable expectaion they would overlook his "bonuses", if he followed the mission.Lindsay found that Connolly's superiors ``up the chain of command" approved using Bulger and Flemmi as informants, even when they were suspects in several investigations by the FBI and other agencies.
``For decades preceding the McIntyre murder, agents of the FBI protected Bulger and Flemmi as informants by shielding them from prosecution for crimes they had committed," Lindsay wrote.
Connolly was motivated by greed, friendship with Bulger and Flemmi, and a desire to promote the FBI goal of taking down La Cosa Nostra by getting information from Bulger and Flemmi about local Mafia leaders, Lindsay found.