in Newswire Published on October 1, 2020

Georgia Truck Driver Claims She Lost Job Opportunities Due to Inaccurate HireRight Background Report

Smith v. HireRight, LLC

Filed: September 24, 2020 ◆§ 1:20-cv-03956

A class action claims HireRight failed to utilize reasonable procedures to ensure the maximum possible accuracy of the consumer background reports it furnishes.

Defendant(s)

HireRight, LLC

Law(s)

Fair Credit Reporting Act

State(s)

Georgia

HireRight, LLC faces a proposed class action that claims the company has failed to utilize reasonable procedures to ensure the maximum possible accuracy of the consumer background reports it furnishes for employment purposes.

The 11-page Fair Credit Reporting Act suit alleges more specifically that HireRight has “ignor[ed] obvious discrepancies” that prove the information contained in certain background checks does not belong to the subject of the report. The Georgia resident who filed the case claims she lost out on job opportunities after HireRight misreported on multiple occasions a driving record that “did not belong to Plaintiff on her report.”

The suit argues that although HireRight has the practical capability and legal obligation to report accurate information about consumers, the agency has willfully ignored both in favor of a cheaper alternative:

“Instead, however, Defendant places its business interests above the rights of consumers and unlawfully reports such information because it is cheaper for Defendant to produce reports containing information that is not accurate than it is for Defendant to exert proper quality control over its reports prior to their being provided to Defendant’s customers.”

The plaintiff, a commercial truck driver who maintains a Class A commercial driver’s license (CDL) in Georgia, says the defendant produced erroneous consumer reports about her on three separate occasions.

Per the suit, the plaintiff’s prospective employers procured her consumer report from HireRight, once in September 2018 and twice in March 2019, for the purpose of verifying her CDL status. Each background check, commonly referred to as a Motor Vehicle Report, correctly indicated that the plaintiff held a Class A CDL in Georgia yet falsely noted she held a Class B license in California, according to the suit.

“This reporting was incorrect,” the suit scathes. “Plaintiff does not have, and has never had, a California license, nor has she ever resided in California.”

The California license HireRight included in its report belonged to a woman with a completely different first and middle name, date of birth and state of residence than the plaintiff, the case says. The only detail in common between the plaintiff and California driver is their “exceedingly common last name,” Smith, the lawsuit relays.

The case alleges that if HireRight had examined its own reporting before delivering it to the plaintiff’s prospective employers, “it would have been obvious” that the California license “had nothing to do” with the plaintiff.

Per the complaint, the defendant’s erroneous reporting, which indicated inaccurately that the plaintiff “MAY NOT DRIVE IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE,” has cost the plaintiff several job opportunities and lost wages given drivers cannot hold a license in more than one state simultaneously.

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