Imagine you're business owner, and there is a group of people, or an individual, who you are reluctant to hire to work for your company, because you worry that they may be much more likely to do something that could end up causing a lawsuit that would cost your company a gigantic amount of money. But it's also illegal for you to discriminate against this specific group of people or person. Not hiring them could also potentially subject you to a lawsuit. This is a " damned if you do, damned if you don't " situation. In an increasing number of situations now, courts and juries are holding the business financially responsible for the misconduct committed by their employees, even if the company was not at fault. Or in some cases, they are blaming the business for hiring that person. Saying that because the employee had something in their history, the business "should have known" and should not have hired that person. related thread: Family suing Amazon for accidental death of child caused by driver Delivery company sued because employee driver committed murder The mother of a 7-year-old girl who was kidnapped and killed by FedEx driver Tanner Horner has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against them and the contracting company that hired him, Big Topspin. Filed on February 17, the 18-page lawsuit seeks "fair and reasonable" compensation for "acts and omissions" that led to Strand's murder. The child's father, Jacob Strand previously filed a lawsuit in December 2022. Strand was playing in the front yard of her father's Paradise home when Horner abducted her. He later admitted to kidnapping and killing the girl before dumping her body. The lawsuit accuses FedEx and Big Topspin of negligence in their hiring of Horner by failing to properly investigate his criminal history, mental history, and prior employment history; failing to properly train and supervise him; and failing to implement and enforce safety policies and procedures. "It is about implementing better hiring, training, and supervising practices to prevent vicious killers from arriving at our doorsteps bearing an insignia that has been cultivated to instill trust," the lawsuit states. "It is about preventing billion-dollar organizations from insulating themselves from liability by using fly-by-night contractors instead of acknowledging the responsibility they bear when we trust them to come onto our property, to our doorsteps, and even inside our homes." Horner had no prior criminal history but had been accused of rape 3 years prior. Athena Strand's mother files wrongful death lawsuit against FedEx, Big Topspin , by Annie Gimbel, CBS News Texas, February 22, 2023 Job applicant sues FedEx for not hiring them because of criminal history In November of 2020, plaintiff Henry Franklin completed an online application for a job as a FedEx package handler. Part of the application included Franklin consenting to a background check. Franklin was sent the results of his report but was never contacted to discuss the position or his application. Franklin's suit alleges that the company violated New York City's Fair Chance Act by conducting the background check and considering his criminal history prior to extending a conditional job offer. FedEx Applicant in New York Sues Company Over Background Check , March 25, 2021 This seems unfair to businesses and seems to put them in an impossible situation, with unrealistic expectations and demands put on businesses. The businesses are burdened with the responsibility of something that was never really their fault, requiring taking on a huge amount of legal financial risk. It seems many who are on the Left don't care, and are quick to lay blame on big businesses, enthusiastic at any excuse to make big businesses pay out money.
most States are fire at will States, and as far as criminal status, if one is good for 7 years after sentence served, I say it should not even be on the record, just like your credit rating exceptions would be jobs like police, teachers, child care, etc.....
This has nothing to do with the issue. And even if a company does fire a worker for a real reason, they can sometimes still be hit with a discrimination lawsuit. The things you brought up in your post do not seem like they have much to do with the issue I was trying to bring up and focusing on. It's entirely understandable that businesses would try to do everything possible to avoid a lawsuit, and would try to avoid hiring any employees they feel might put the company at hire risk. But oftentimes the decision not to hire certain employees could be illegal. The issue is that, in many cases, businesses are being hit excessively hard from both sides. Blamed for the actions of their employees, when it was illegal for them to implement policies trying to avoid hiring employees that might put them at greater risk. Or blamed for not hiring certain job applicants, when those workers would have put them at much higher risk. These lawsuits can be extremely expensive, even if it does not end up resulting in the company being ordered to pay money. Imagine if I pointed a gun at you and told you to throw a dart at a target that was shaking and wobbling around. If the dart hits too high, I tell you I'll shoot your right foot. If the dart hits too low, I'll shoot your left foot. That's almost what this is like. All these progressives are demanding things from businesses, but then want to place all the blame on that business when something goes wrong as a result of their demands. And make the business have to pay out lots of punitive damages, if the business wasn't able to arrive at the perfect decision, or even make reality conform to expectations, something that's not so realistic to be able to expect from anyone who runs a business.
That's not necessarily true, and usually the two do not really mean the same thing. "Fire at will" usually means there was something that they did on the job, or some reason why the employer does not need as many workers, that led to the employer deciding to fire that worker. It doesn't refer to an employer firing them because the employer worries they might pose a higher risk to the company based on some physical trait (like race, age, gender) or past history before the worker was hired.
nope, the fire at will states do not even need a reason to fire they actually called it "right to work", but as is typical with republican naming, it means something else
You're just being stupid. This is an equivocation fallacy. "Fire at will" doesn't mean you can literally be fired for any reason - not with the type of things we are discussing in this thread. In fact it might even be illegal for the employer to fire the worker, if it is suspected that the worker's poor performance was not actually the real or primary reason they were fired. Or if the employer was watching and looking for any excuse to be able to fire the worker as soon as possible after hiring them.
So first employers have always been legally responsible for the actions of their employees while on duty and in some circumstances when off duty. Second any hiring manager worth their paycheck can always find a defensible reason to not hire a sketchy applicant. The trick is to know what's sketchy and what's personality. Third, companies have always been sued for not hiring someone. Those suits are far more rare and far less successful than wrongful death suits.
If that were true, then employers should have every right to decide exactly who they want to hire, and be able to not hire any applicant for any reason if the employer thinks there is any reason whatsoever why that individual may create a higher risk to them of causing a lawsuit. But they don't. It seems unfair to the business. The business is told they have to be financially responsible for the employee's conduct, but the business doesn't have total freedom to pick and choose who it hires, for any reason. They could still face a discrimination lawsuit. The employer might be too afraid not to hire. There reason might not be seen as good enough, and then they'll be accused of not hiring for a legally prohibited reason. Example: a younger black male comes in, totally acting and appearing like a thug. Do you not hire? Can you justify that? Especially if the employer previously gave a clean cut appearing young white male who had no previous job experience a chance. This could easily expose the employer to risk of a discrimination lawsuit.
I was a consultant to hr for hundreds of companies for most of my career, including a lot of fortune 500 companies. I was involved in 2 unemployment cases that went to the Supreme Court. Employers can, within broad limits, hire who they please, and they should not be basing their decision on sex, skin color, etc. Anyway. Hire the best candidate for the job, in other words. As to being sued any employer in business over 5 years will tell you it is ta question of will we be sued, but when. California employers tell me not being sued for a year is a win.
It's not so simple as that. Companies can be forced to pay out huge amounts of money in lawsuits even if they never truly broke the law. That's the trouble with "discrimination" lawsuits. There's no real way to "prove" it. So instead the courts and jury are looking for other "evidence" that might help support an accusation. If a big company employer fires a worker, they better have documentation to prove there was good reason for not hiring or firing a worker, especially if that worker was in a "protected class" (black, a woman, elderly, very openly gay, etc). No. The "best candidate for the job" might be a category of persons who the corporation believes is less likely to cause them risk of a lawsuit. The employer might not be legally able to do that.
Probably true in California. But what we really need to realize is that lawsuits can carry a big expense for companies, even if they do not lose. A corporation is going to want to hire a good quality lawyer to minimize the risk that they might lose the lawsuit. The plain fact is, in many cases there IS a risk that even if the employee did not do anything illegal, they might lose the lawsuit and be ordered to pay millions of dollars. The "law" is not perfect.
So I'm not sure what your point is. Companies understand the risk if they've been in business very long at all. Part of being in business. Companies understand how to reduce their exposure and deal with the inevitable lawsuits that go with business. Just about any company will tell you the problem is too many darned lawyers and too many liberal judges. DUH. That the law is not perfect is a given. In the end though of all the court and administrative cases I saw over 40 plus years, justice prevailed in all but a handful of cases. There were times when I thought the employer settled or dropped a case that they should have fought, and times when they pushed losing cases. As a consultant, I proposed, they disposed. I learned to be happy with it. My favorite was an unemployment case where the employee was fired for fighting on the job. He instigated it, put another employee in the hospital, and we fought the unemployment claim. Won all the way to the appeals board who ruled that fighting in the parking lot was not job related. Really. The case went to the 9th circuit, (we called it the 9th circus cause they were liberal and came up with some amazing logic in their cases. The supreme court has flipped more 9th circuit cases than all the other appeals courts combined) who said nope, fighting on company property is, by definition, job related and sent the case back to the board to rewrite their decision. The board got its back up and said in effect, we're the board, we decide, the 9th circuit can go pound sand. And the employer said let it go. But here's the thing. The employee collected over $2,000 in benefits, and by the time the case had bounced back and forth between the board and the court we knew that those benefits raised the employers unemployment tax rate by 0.2%. The cost to the employer was over $100,000 in taxes in the first of three years, likely about the same or more for the next two years. I showed this to the employer and told them an appeal to the court again would certainly cause the board to write the decision themselves, we'd get the charges removed and recover/avoid a lot of taxes. They said no. Let it go. Turned out, the employee was threatening other legal action and they didn't want the fight. But darn, $300K or more? I told them I'd file the appeal myself, and I wasn't an attorney. (Yeah I know, I couldn't have, but I knew attorneys who would file the brief for $1,000). I mean, they could have given the employee the $2,000 to shut him up and still been money ahead. Anyway, justice is a human concept. God has his own version of justice that prevails in the end, every time.
My point is, it's not fair to the business. The business didn't do anything wrong. In fact the law may have given the business little choice about whether to hire certain categories of workers the business feared might be much more risky. Government is just mounting all sorts of additional burdens onto the backs of business. This is wrong, and seems to be the sort of mentality that comes from the business-hating Socialist Left. I think maybe we need to have a public discussion about exactly what sort of situations a business should be held financially liable for actions, mistakes, or crimes committed by its employees. Because I think it's a big error to assume the business should be automatically financially liable, only just because the person at fault was employed by the business. That's a stupid over-simplification of how things should work (in my view).
