Careless Hiring and Retention

Under a different legal theory, someone who is injured by your employee can sue you for failing to take reasonable care in hiring your workers ("negligent hiring") or in keeping them on after learning the worker poses a potential danger ("negligent retention"). This rule applies even to what your workers do outside the scope of employment -- in fact, it is often used to hold an employer responsible for a worker's violent criminal acts while working, such as rape, murder, or robbery.

Here are a few situations in which employers have had to pay up:

• A pizza company hired a delivery driver without looking into his criminal past -- which included a sexual assault conviction and an arrest for stalking a women he met while delivering pizza for another company. After he raped a customer, the pizza franchise was liable to his victim for negligent hiring.
  
  
• A car rental company hired a man who later raped a coworker. Had the company verified his resume claims, it would have discovered that he was in prison for robbery during the years he claimed to be in high school and college. The company was liable to the coworker.
  
  
• A furniture company hired a delivery man without requiring him to fill out an application or performing a background check. The employee assaulted a female customer in her home with a knife. The company was liable to the customer for negligent hiring.