O’REGAN J [41] The respondent relied heavily on the United States case of Primeaux v United States51 which it said was the only foreign case to be directly comparable on the facts to the case under consideration here. In that case, decided by the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, an off-duty police officer returning from a work seminar in his government vehicle in the early hours of one morning encountered a woman walking along the road. She had abandoned her car because it was stuck in a snow-drift. He offered her a lift and then drove to a side road where he raped her. The question of the vicarious liability of the employer is governed in the US by the provisions of the Federal Tort Claims Act52 in terms of which the government is liable if the employee was acting within the scope of his office or employment. A majority of the Court held, treating the question of whether the police officer was acting within the course and scope of his duty as a mixed question of fact and law, that ─ “. . . recent cases from other jurisdictions have concluded it is sufficiently foreseeable to a government employer that on-duty police officers will occasionally misuse their authority to sexually assault detainees. But this case is far different. The connection between Officer Scott’s government employment and his sexual assault of Primeaux was simply too remote and tenuous to be foreseeable to his employer.”53 In reaching this conclusion, the Court emphasised that the officer was “unarmed, out of uniform, and off duty, insofar as his law enforcement responsibilities were concerned.”54 51 181 F 3d 876 (8th Cir 1999). 52 28 USC §§ 1346(b)(1), 2671 et seq. 53 Above n 51 at 882. 54 Id 30