The Dangers of Litigation in Hiring With increasing frequency, courts and juries are saying that a company is not only liable for what it new, but for what it should have known. In a few negligent hiring cases, management personnel have even been held criminally liable and prosecuted. Pre-employment screening has become mandatory for any company that intends to survive in the new millennium. A recent survey of human resource professionals found that more than one third of American companies have already experienced violence in the workplace.
Homicide is now the number two cause of death in the workplace.
The litigation danger is real and large. And the effects can be catastrophic. The company the murderer worked for had not done any pre-employment screening. The plaintiff was easily able to show that even a routine background check would have revealed the man s criminal past and that he did not have the nursing training he claimed. In a Minnesota case, the owners of an apartment complex were sued when the manager was convicted of raping a tenant.