In the realm of law what is caprice?

"Caprice" is not a legal term although attorneys use it on occasion. The Word means doing something on a whim or without any logical basis. An attorney might write a brief in which he calls a decision that a judge made as being made on a caprice. That would be a polite way of saying that the judge apparently ignored the law and decided something based on how he felt that day. Sometimes the Word is used when an attorney is making an argument in a personal injury case. An attorney for a company might say that an employee's action injured someone, but that the employee was acting on a whim and a caprice, therefore the employer should not be held liable. Suppose a deliveryman is supposed to be off the clock each day for one hour when he eats lunch. During his lunch hour he injures someone with his delivery van in the restaurant parking lot. The employer would probably be liable because the employee was doing as he was told to do in the course of his work. However, if the deliveryman decided to skip out of work early and drive his van to the ball park to watch his child play soccer, and then he injures someone with his van, the lawyer would argue that the employee was acting on whim and caprice, and he should be held personally liable.