Avoiding Negligent Hiring
Your company can be legally liable for negligent hiring if you fail to uncover a job applicant's incompetence or unfitness by checking their references, criminal records, or general background. You can be sued for negligent hiring for failure to become aware of an employee's unfitness for a particular position, or for subsequent failure to take any corrective action, such as training, reassignment, or discharge, to remedy the problem once you find out about it.
Particularly if you have employees who have or will have significant contact with the public, customers, patients, or children, you'll want to investigate these topics:
- What is negligent hiring?
- How can you avoid negligent hiring claims?
In order for a customer, employee, or other third party to prevail in a negligent hiring suit against an employer, the following must generally be shown:
- the existence of an employment relationship between the employer and the worker
- the employee's unfitness
- the employer's actual or constructive knowledge of the employee's unfitness (failure to investigate can lead to a finding of constructive knowledge)
- the employee's act or omission causing the third party's injuries
- the employer's negligence in hiring the employee as the most likely cause of the plaintiff's injuries
If you are ever served with a negligent hiring lawsuit, the first step you should take is to call your lawyer. In fact, that's the first step you should take any time you receive legal papers. But it's especially important when you're sued to call a lawyer immediately because you have a certain number of days to file an answer to the lawsuit. The number of days that you have will vary depending upon where the suit was filed, but you could have as little as two weeks to respond.
If you are served with legal documents and you don't have a lawyer, you should find one right away. Once you have a lawyer, he or she can tell you more about your chances for winning or losing the lawsuit.
Reasonable investigation duty. You have a duty to make a reasonable investigation of an applicant's fitness before hiring. The extent of the duty may vary with the circumstances.
You can be held liable if:
- You didn't do a background check.
- You hired an employee you should have known (through proper checking) was incompetent or unfit.
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