Employee assaults stranger while on duty — is it HR's fault?

If one of your employees attacks a stranger while on duty, does that make the company liable? That’s what an assault victim claimed in this recent case.
While driving a company vehicle, an employee started a confrontation with a pedestrian. The incident culminated in the driver leaving the truck, following the pedestrian into a restaurant and punching him in the face.
The victim notified the company about the assault and the employee was fired. But that apparently wasn’t enough — the victim sued the employer, claiming the company was at fault for hiring and retaining the attacker.
His argument: The company hired the employee despite being aware of his criminal record — which contained a conviction for illegal drug possession from five years prior, as well as speeding citations.
The company countered that nothing in the employee’s background indicated he would violently attack a stranger while on duty. Likewise, during his job tenure, he’d never done anything to indicate he was a threat (his personnel file was clean, except for some attendance issues).
Who won the case?
The court ruled in favor of the company. The incident was unfortunate, but the company couldn’t have foreseen it. The employee’s background check contained nothing that was related to the assault incident.
The lesson: Negligent hiring cases can hurt companies when background checks are sloppily conducted, or the results are ignored. But in this case, the company performed the check properly and, like most reasonable employers would have, saw no reason to think the employee was a threat.
Cite: Cartlidge v. Verizon New Jersey, Inc.