To establish negligent hiring a plaintiff must show:
1. A standard of conduct or duty to others existed with respect to taking reasonable steps to avoid hiring unfit employees. The extent of any such duty is based on:
a. Foreseeability of harm to others if an unfit person is hired for a particular job.
b. Knowledge of unfitness that the employer had or should have had if proper hiring procedures were used.
c. Public policy.
2. The employer failed to exercise the proper degree of care and hired an unfit employee.
3. A coworker or another third party was harmed by the unfit employee.
4. The employer’s failure to exercise the proper degree of care in hiring was the proximate cause of the harm or injury that occurred (Walsh, 2014).
The significance of negligent hiring is that it extends the liability of an employee’s actions outside the scope of their employment to the employer if carless hiring of an unfit employee was part of the harm. Employers need to thoroughly vet all potential employees and check all references to avoid a negligent hiring suit.
In Jordon v. Western Distributing Company, Jordon filed a negligence claim due to an incident that happened with two of their employees on a public road, during working hours, and…show more content… The employees were allowed to carry weapons as part of the scope of their employment, but they were not authorized to use said weapons recklessly or without justification. The argument of negligence falls short as their use of the weapons wasn’t in their scope of duty. Jordan attempted to argue that Western had a reasonable assumption that the employees were in fact dangerous and would deviate from their assigned duties, which made them unfit. The Court found that the employer could not have known that the employees would be under the influence and become violent. There was no proximate cause or negligence hiring in this case. The case was ultimately decided in the favor of the
