The legal principle of respondeat superior assigns liability to employers in Paterson for the negligent actions of their employees. Yet in many cases, an investigation into an employee’s background might call into question the decision to hire them in the first place. In many industries, it is expected that employers will perform a thorough background check on job candidates to see if anything from their past may call their judgment into question (at the very least, employers should get an idea as to whether or not a person is qualified during the interview process). If those expectations are not met, and an employee later causes damages, accusations of negligent hiring may be leveled at the employer.

Such is the claim being made by the family of a firefighter injured in the line of duty in Pennsylvania. The man suffered a severe brain injury that still has him hospitalized until this day when the driver of a dump truck hit him as he was directing traffic at the scene of an accident. In their lawsuit, the family claims that the company employing the driver hired him despite him not being qualified to operate the vehicle that he was driving, and that numerous incidents in the years prior to the accident should have indicated his inability to safely perform his job.

While companies are indeed expected to focus on what is best for their bottom lines, they are also tasked with ensuring the safety of others when their operations cross over into the public sphere. If it appears that interest in the former overruled concerns regarding the latter, those affected their decisions may be justified in taking legal action. Such action may be much better supported when one has the assistance of an attorney to rely on.