O’REGAN J fundamental rights and freedoms and to take reasonable and appropriate measures to prevent the violation of those rights. The police is one of the primary agencies of the State responsible for the protection of the public in general and women and children in particular against the invasion of their fundamental rights by perpetrators of violent crime.”18 (footnotes omitted) [19] These comments are of equal importance in the present case. I am prepared to accept for the purposes of the discussion at hand that the Supreme Court of Appeal was correct in reasoning that the issue of wrongfulness in delict is not at issue in this case as it was in Carmichele.19 The fact that the Court is concerned with a different aspect of the law of delict, the one pertaining to vicarious liability, does not mean that questions of constitutional rights cannot arise. The obligations imposed upon courts by sections 8(1) and 39(2) of the Constitution are not applicable only to the criterion of wrongfulness in the law of delict. In considering the common-law principles of vicarious liability, and the question of whether that law needs to be developed in that area, the normative influence of the Constitution must be considered. [20] One last thing needs be mentioned here concerning Phoebus Apollo. The respondent sought to argue that this Court has no jurisdiction to consider the application of the principles of vicarious liability in this case. It based that argument on the dictum of Kriegler J in Phoebus Apollo that the application of the principles of vicarious liability to a particular situation had always been considered to be a matter of fact. The argument overstates the reasoning in Phoebus Apollo which, first, records 18 Carmichele above n 12 at para 62. 19 Above n 3 at para 8. 14