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Can the Wrong Employee Bring You Legal Grief?

Protecting Yourself from Lawsuits

Posted by Clint Greenleaf
Just in case you haven’t heard, most lawyers are a pain in the ass and all lawsuits suck. If this is news to you, get down on your knees and thank God that you haven’t yet learned this lesson.

One of the toughest truths in business is that you’ll be involved in litigation. It’s going to happen, no matter how cautious you are. I speak from experience. While we’ve only been involved in a few lawsuits, and it took seven years for our first, they’ve been difficult experiences for me. What I can tell you is that if you work in business, they will happen, and with each one, they get easier and easier to stomach.

The sooner you understand that it’s going to happen at some point, the easier it will be to deal with it when it does happen. Don’t get me wrong — when it does happen, you’ll be shocked, angry and scared, but you will get through it. What follows are six steps you need to take to protect yourself and keep the angst at a minimum.

1) Get, and keep, a good lawyer.

For the entire article go to Inc.com

Corra knows your worst nightmare can be the idiot employee who either snaps out in the work place, sexually harasses someone, or otherwise creates a situation where you are liable. Let’s not leave out of the mix the employee who steals sensitive data from either your business or your client and tries to peddle it elsewhere.

Do such idiots exist? You had better believe it. More importantly, you should protect yourself against this type of liability the best you can. Corra may sound self-serving, but, honestly, you have to be really foolish not to run pre-employment background checks on your job candidates.

The criminal search is a must, and the DMV Driving Report and Credit Report will tell you much about your candidate’s behavior patterns. The three together best reveal certain patterns that help ease your decision making as to whether to hire or send the candidate in another direction.

So be smart and be cost effective. Liability and the lawsuits that go with it can cost a lot of money. And then you have the guilt and embarrassment and possible news headlines when something goes terribly wrong in your work place.

Check them out before you hire.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.