Is the owner of a business responsible if one of their employees steals money from a customers wallet?

This is what happened. This past weekend I was in Vegas with three other people. We all decided to get tattoos and went to a tatto shop at around midnight. The shop locked the doors to close after we came in. There were 3 employees and the 4 of us. After we got our tattoos we left. The employees then locked the door behind us. When we were in the cab, my sister realized she left her wallet on the tattoo artist desk. She immediately called the shop to tell them she left it there. The tattoo artist said he would look for it. He called back and said he found it in a dumpster after the cleaning guy came in (he hired the cleaning guy off the street and paid him 5 bucks to do the floor). The wallet was of course empty. She had $630.00 in the wallet. The owner would not even talk to us and said it was not his responsibility. Is there anything we can do?

This is a strict liability issue. If you can prove the business owner knew of the propensity of the cleaning person to steal and hired him/her anyway (negligent hiring) and if you can prove that your friend exercised due care, then you MIGHT have a case against the shop owner.

However, from the facts presented, I would advise your friend to mark it up as experience because the cost of bringing such a suit on the basis of your facts would be prohibitive in relation to the possible outcome.

The shop owner, other than what I have outlined here, does not create a 'bailment' simply because your friend left her wallet in his/her store. There is no intrinsic responsibility on a shop owner for other than ordinary care when no bailment exists.

A business owner is responsible for an employee's actions if the employee was acting within the scope of his employment. Committing theft is not within the scope of employment so no.

consult a laywer. It depends if they are "not responsible for lost or stolen articles"

But I am sure if you can prove the employee did it, then someone will pay.