Employee Background
Checks
Texas Supreme Court Finds The
Kirby Company
Negligent For Not Checking Salesman's Background
The Texas Supreme Court has sided with a woman
who sued The Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Company because she said she was raped by a
door-to-door salesman for the company.
The divided court ruled that the Kirby Co. should
have required its distributor to do a background check before hiring salesman
Mickey Carter, which would have revealed previous complaints of sexual
misconduct. "I hope this decision will cause Kirby to change it's ways to make
sure that criminals are not sent into people's homes to sell Kirby vacuum
cleaners," the rape victim said in a statement. "I also hope that it will
prevent another woman from having to go through what my family and I have been
through."
Justice Raul Gonzalez said Kirby's way of doing
business - selling its products in customer's homes - poses a potential danger.
"Kirby dealers, required to do in-home demonstrations, gain access to homes by
virtue of the Kirby name. A person of ordinary intelligence should anticipate
that an unsuitable dealer would pose a risk of harm," he wrote. The victim told
authorities that Carter raped her in her Seguin, Texas home as her children
slept in the next room.
Clark Aspy, Kirby's lawyer, said he had not read
the decision but "was disappointed in the outcome." He declined to comment
further. Kirby argued that the distributor that hired Carter as an independent
contractor was negligent for failing to check the criminal records of its sales
staff. The company said that it must hire competent distributors but that it
is the distributor's duty to hire competent salespeople.
The Court upheld $160,000 in actual damages but
agreed with the 3rd District Court of Appeals which threw out $800,000 in
punitive damages levied against Kirby.
*Courtesy:
Associated Press 01/02/99
See Next Example
of Negligent Hiring
Click Here
to request more information or Call 1-800-211-6995
Some of our other
assessment tools include the:
Career |
Step One |
Sales |
Performance
|
360 |
Team
|
Customer Service
Third party services
|
