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Review of the Article 'How to Avoid the Repercussions of Negligent Hiring'

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Summary How to avoid the repercussions of negligent hiring (Anonymous, October 2006) mainly tries to help employers avoid successful lawsuits by avoiding hiring the wrong person in the first place. In the article, the "wrong person" is defined as a violent person or a person whose criminal background can affect his/her work, particularly if the person does not reveal that criminal background. If the wrong person is hired, the employer could be sued by the employee or by other people who have to deal with that employee, and litigation for negligent hiring of the wrong person is an area of employment litigation that is growing fast. If an employer is sued for negligence, win or lose, the employer will have to go through litigation, pay attorney's fees and risk negative publicity; consequently, the ideal is to avoid the suit completely. In order to avoid those negligence suits or win them when they are brought, employers must use "due diligence" in hiring. The author first talks about due diligence by defining its opposite: "An organization can be sued for negligence if it hires someone it knew, or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have known was dangerous, unfit, or unqualified for the job" (Anonymous, October 2006, p. 4). The author says that juries tend to think that "If you could have known, you should have known" (Anonymous, October 2006, p. 4). Also, the author says that due diligence by public employers is defined by statute but due diligence for

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