Essay Example on Your company provides a service to local Businesses

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Fact Pattern 1 Your company provides a service to local businesses wherein office supplies are delivered daily on demand to the local area Your son s friend is looking for work and you know him well and hire him on the spot to be a delivery driver A few weeks later he is in the process of making a delivery and hits a pedestrian crossing the street severely injuring him Police come and measure his blood alcohol at 15 nearly twice the legal limit Turns out that your son s friend was previously convicted of DUI approximately 6 months ago You did not conduct a background check before hiring On what basis bases would the pedestrian have the ability to file suit against the company The pedestrian could use the basis of negligent hiring as a reason to file suit against the company as the company failed to take reasonable care in the hiring of the son s friend Negligent hiring extends the liability to the employers for harm caused by their employees The company assumed that the son s friend was an upstanding citizen based on only limited knowledge of the friend and did not do any degree of background checks Another basis the citizen could use the respondeat superior doctrine that makes employees directly liable for any harm to others that occurs when employees are acting within their scope of work or what they were hired to perform 



Walsh 2013 p 133 If the law does not specify any particulars for screening public policy for delivery drivers would show that a background check is warranted to make sure that the delivery driver did not have prior driving violations that would be harmful to the public Walsh 2013 p 133 In some cases public policy does not come into play and the employer must anticipate unforeseen circumstances that may or may not happen during the course of delivering supplies such as heavy traffic road hazards accidents pedestrians and other unlawful drivers While this is a difficult task the characteristics of the job prove that a delivery driver will be on the road with a vehicle delivering supplies Anything can and will happen A background check should be more extensive for drivers due to the greater chance of doing harm to others Walsh 2013 p 141 Finally section 109 of the Equality Act 2010 identifies the liability of the employers and states anything done by a person in the course of employment must be treated as also done by the employer Mustafa 2016 Therefore the citizen would be able to use this as another basis for bringing suit against the company as it didn't matter whether the employee did the harm at the knowledge of the employer as the employer should have taken reasonable action to prevent the employee causing harm in the first place Fact Pattern 2 A company recently opened a branch office in Colorado where recreational marijuana is legal The company has a policy of drug testing every new applicant before hiring What are the potential pitfalls of this policy Are there concerns regarding policy Does this affect the potential applicant pool Colorado s initiative to legalize marijuana specifically said that workplace drug policies would not be affected Simon 2017 so a potential pitfall is that Colorado applicants can be denied employment for using marijuana as the drug remains an illegal substance in the eyes of the federal government Enos 2016 whether recreational or for medicinal purposes


Only 3 states have some protection for medical marijuana users Arizona Delaware and Minnesota Simon 2017 Another potential pitfall unfortunately includes Colorado s low unemployment rate 2 3 as of July 2017 it's becoming harder and harder to find available applicants who don t partake in the occasional marijuana use greatly diminishing the potential applicant pool With 1 in every 7 adults in Colorado using even the most conservative employers have had to rethink their testing policies Simon 2017 The lack of available applicants especially in the construction industry have some employers even advertising that applicants would not be disqualified if they tested positive for marijuana Simon 2017 Employers across the county have near total discretion whether to authorize off duty marijuana use and believe that a more relaxed public outlook about the drug means that a growing percentage of their labor pool uses marijuana at least occasionally Enos 2016 The growing concern among many employers is whether to drop THC from the testing panel in order to broaden the pool of applicants While the law is still firmly on the side of allowing employers to stay the course of strict drug free policies a growing number of employers believe that a substantial amount of their labor force is using marijuana Enos 2016 Another concern being the potential increase of lawsuits brought by employees who were fired disciplined or denied employment based on their use of marijuana If an employer permits its employees to engage in marijuana use this could potentially open the door to other possible claims of discrimination or potential third party liability claims if an accident or incident occurs Dunning 2015 The decision to test or not to test is a difficult one for employers seeking qualified candidates


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