Negligent Tort Liability

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School

University Of Arizona *

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624

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Law

Date

May 15, 2024

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docx

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7

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Negligent Tort Liability Matthew Liehr The University of Arizona Global Campus BUS624: Law & Ethics in the Business Environment Dr. Terry Long April 22, 2024
As companies look to expand and add new employees, each company must ensure that candidates align with the company requirements for a position. The hiring process of onboarding new employees takes considerable effort to ensure that any employment will be mutually beneficial. Conducting various checks such as background checks, criminal history, driving records, and drug screenings helps companies predict the amount of possible liability an employee may bring. A company may be held liable for an employee's actions through negligent hiring or respondeat superior if the company fails to document or omits checks that would have prevented an individual's employment. Negligent hiring is applied to companies hiring practices and holds companies responsible and possibly liable for actions of the employees that cause harm or damage to a third party. As such companies use many tools to mitigate the possibility of liability caused by employees. “The elements of a negligence claim are that (1) the defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff, (2) the defendant committed a breach of this duty, and (3) this breach was the actual and proximate cause of injury experienced by the plaintiff” (Prenkert, 2021). Duty of care is defined as care owed to the defendant from the plaintiff to ensure no harm or damages result from an employee. Duty of care must fall within the “reasonable” to the average person standard. This means that the average individual or company would have acted in the same manner as others in similar situations. In the case of Carson v. Superior Electrical, the examination of background, driving record, and other checks would fall within duty of care and help identify a possible liability to the company from an employee. Next is the Breach of this duty. Breach of duty of care is the violation of reasonable care owed to a plaintiff by a defendant. This must be examined to establish if a duty of care was owed to the plaintiff. For a breach of care to occur, there must first be an understanding of who is
within the foreseeable risk of harm resulting from the actions of an employee. To establish if a breach occurred the “reasonable person” test may be applied. This test has two parts, first is to compare the defendatnts action against a hypothetical company in similar situations and how it acted. The second is focused on the behavior of the defendant. Again a comparison of a “reasonable person” and how similar actions and outcomes are resolved. If a plaintiff does not fall within the foreseeable risk of harm, then the plaintiff would not be owed a duty of care. The following breach of duty addresses whether or not the injury resulted from this breach. Having confirmed that a plaintiff is owed a duty of care, examining the causation of injury will occur. Here plaintiffs must prove that a breach of duty by a defendant resulted in a direct injury or damage. In the case Carson v Superior Electrical many aspects must be analyzed to determine whether or not Superior Electrical would be liable for the actions of their employee Cory Jones. Firstly the Carson’s owed a duty of care from Superior Electrical will be looked at. Superior Electrical has some employees who use company vehicles during the work day and for transportation to and from work. Jones was operating a company vehicle at the time of a motor vehicle accident involving the Carsons. Superior Electrical requires all employees to maintain a valid driver's license as the use of company vehicles may be a possibility of employment. Cory Jones’ application stated that he possessed a valid driver's license and had no traffic violations. Admittedly Superior Electrical did not verify this information as Cory Jones was hired as an apprentice and would not be assigned a company vehicle. Cory Jones in fact at the time of application possessed a suspended license due to numerous traffic violations including careless driving and driving without a license.
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