Help Wanted: Are you Practicing Due Dilegence in Hiring Your Farm Employees?

Horse-Journal By Susan Quinn, Esq. October 15, 2014

Hiring a new employee at your barn can mean playing with fire. Literally. Case in point: the arson committed by 20 year-old farmhand Michael James Holstein. Holstein had been hired by Evergreen Farm in South Charleston, W. Va., to clean stalls and cut weeds for the farm. However, on July 8, 2003, his self-admitted “fascination with fire” led this arsonist turned farm worker to set a barn and indoor riding arena ablaze and take the lives of 15 horses.

As the owners of Evergreen Farm found out, hiring the wrong employee for your farm can have disastrous financial and personal consequences. As with any business, a horse farm is not immune to problem employees. It could be the farm hand or riding instructor who is a sex offender like the one who molested four young girls in a 1994 case in Trabuco Canyon, Calif., or the farm employee you put behind the wheel of your horse trailer not knowing that he has several convictions for DUI. It could be person you hired to manage the finances of your farm but who unbeknownst to you has a criminal record that included embezzlement and financial theft, or it could be the worker who has had multiple convictions for violent assaults. Not knowing the individuals who are working for you can leave your equine business wide open to liability.

Furthermore, it isn’t only the employee who will find themselves in legal trouble. You, as the employer can land in hot water as well. Under the legal theory of respondeat superior, an employer is liable for the acts of their employees when the employee is acting within the scope of their employment or in furtherance of the employer’s business. The law further holds that under the theory of vicarious liability, an employer is liable for the wrongdoing of an employee even if the employer did nothing wrong. The acts of the agent of a company are assumed by law to be the acts of the business itself as long as those acts were committed within the course of employment.

For an employer, a negligent hiring lawsuit is a likely consequence of someone who has been injured by your unfit or incompetent employee. A negligent hiring claim asserts that an employer knew or should have known about the employee’s background that indicated a dangerous or untrustworthy character. Half of the states in the United States legally recognize that an employer is responsible and can be held accountable for not checking the background and references of any job applicant before placing that applicant in a position of public contact. Not only are the odds of an employer losing one of these lawsuits very high but also these lawsuits are often very costly. A 2001 Public Personnel Management study reported that employers lost in 79% of negligent hiring lawsuits. Research by Human Resources Management revealed that the average settlement of a negligent hiring lawsuit is nearly $1 million. So, yes, a bad employee can cost you, and due diligence in hiring your employees should be exercised no matter how small your horse business is.

The Horse-Journal is an amazing resource check them out at www.Horse-Journal.com

Comments are closed.