Risks of Negligent Hiring

You can be held legally responsible for negligent hiring if you fail to check references, criminal records, or general background and, as a result, hire someone who harms another employee, a customer or some other business contact. An injured person can sue, and possibly recover damages from you, for your failure to take reasonable steps to discover a person's unfitness for a position, or your subsequent failure to take corrective action, such as training, reassignment, or discharge.

You have a duty to make a reasonable investigation of an applicant's fitness before hiring. The extent of the duty varies with the circumstances. You can be liable for damages if you don't do a background check or if you hire a person you should have known (through proper checking) was incompetent or unfit.

If you're served with a negligent hiring lawsuit, immediately call your lawyer. If you don't have a lawyer, 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. Basically, you're at serious risk if your employee was at least partly at fault for the incident.

Negligent retention. A closely related concept to negligent hiring is negligent retention of an employee. In this situation, someone will attempt to hold you liable for the conduct of an employee that you should have terminated. If you become aware that an employee is unfit, but you let the employee continue to work, you're opening yourself up to charges of negligent retention of an employee. Your best defense is to take immediate corrective or remedial action upon discovering that a particular employee presents a problem.