When am I responsible for the acts of another? As a general rule, never: I arn not responsible for the deeds of others and deeds that are not my own. Even though these others may be intimates rather than strangers members of my family, club, union, or community -the common law will not ascribe responsibility for their actions to me. The law constructs an atomistic conception of social relations, delimiting our legal responsibilities to our own acts and omissions, absolving us from blame for our brother's wrongs. This principle of personal responsibility sometimes appears to admit exceptions. Ownership or control of land may expand my responsibilities to include actions of others on my land, even trespassers and God.' Sometimes the common law imposes a duty to control others, such as a teacher's duty to keep a toddler out of the road or a prison authority's duty to keep the prisoners incarcerated, and failure to perform this duty with care renders teacher and warder liable for the damage caused.2 And then again, I can be responsible for the actions of my chattels: my cows eating the neighbour's corn. Yet these do not count as proper exceptions to the principle of personal responsibility in the homocentric eyes of lawyers. My responsibility remains personal; my liability arises from an omission to act in breach of a personal duty, from a failure to control trespassers, to restrain the child, to douse the fire staxted by a celestial thunderbolt; only the measure of my liability depends upon the acts of others. And as for my cows, why, not even Puss counts as a person in (modern) law, so the issue of responsibility for the acts of others does not arise. But this simple picture described by the principle of personal responsibility must be coloured by one significant exception, which we may call the principle of group responsibility. Here we enter the realm of the firm: the organisation of productive relations. A group of individuals work together to produce commodities and services for sale in the market. Under the division of labour, each person's actions contribute towards a common goal. The team acts as one, though like any team, there are captains exercising authority and squabbles about the distribution of rewards. But in these circumstances of collaboration and economic integration, to hold each person responsible for only his own actions, as the principle of personal responsibility requires, makes little sense. The defective product is the product of the team, and though the defect may spring from one individual7s carelessness, either in design or execution, it should be the responsibility of the group to establish an organisation which prevents such defects. Accordingly, in the context of economic relations involving a division of labour and vertical integration of production, the common law frames legal responsibility in terms of the group. If e workers are business partners, en e law holds each partner responsible for the acts and omissions of the others. Similarly, one person, the owner of the means of production, often in a corporate form, will be identified as an employer and held responsible under the principles of vicarious liability for the actions of other workers, the employees, which cause harm to others. Instead of purely personal responsibility, the legal principle in the context of productive relations becomes one of the responsibility of the group, the capital unit, the business, or the firrn.