Navarrete v. Naperville: Employer Responsibility in Preventing Sexual Assault

Introduction

The Navarrete v. Naperville case demonstrates the importance of assessing and investigating the employee’s background to ensure that they follow legal, ethical, and moral obligations at a new workplace. The legal issue in this case is whether an employer or hiring specialists of Linden Oaks Hospital should be held legally responsible for the employee’s assault. The court should admit the employer’s duty to prevent sexual assault against the plaintiff.

Facts

This legal case’s facts evolve around the Extended Care Unit (ECU), where the plaintiff has resided due to her history of rape by family members, prostitution, and depression. Meanwhile, Shabazz, whose original name is Jeffrey, faked his social security number and got employed in ECU despite his criminal record with cocaine distribution (Walsh, 2018). The ECU specialists receiving news about Shabazz’s face social security number never checked his identity, allowing the criminal to interact with vulnerable patients. These facts allowed Navarette – the plaintiff – to sue against Shabazz and his employer.

Evaluation

Duty

In order to evaluate this case, four elements of a claim are discussed. The primary element, duty, acknowledges the employer’s responsibility for background checks during personnel hiring. As workers interact with vulnerable patients with psychological disorders, their importance increases to protect patients (Walsh, 2018).

Breach of Duty

The next element – breach of duty – is demonstrated when an employer fails to investigate the candidate’s background and history. Considering that even fingerprints in the database appear after two years of working, the employer undermines the importance of determining the reasons for Shabazz’s fake security number.

Causation and Damage

Further, causation, the third element, illustrated through the tight connection between the hired employee and patient, resulted in sexual assault. The final element of damage is depicted by the plaintiff’s suffering, deteriorated by her prior sexual assault experience that already brought her to the ECU, where she was harassed again.

Conclusion

To conclude, this case justifies that negligence toward background checks frequently harms agents involved in the workplace. Although prior legal convictions do not guarantee the person’s misbehavior, just like his pure reputation, they can be predictors of any deviance. When human resources specialists do not conduct background checks, as in this case, they become involved in court. Nevertheless, sentenced individuals should not be allowed to work in positions with direct contact with vulnerable populations.

Reference

Walsh, D. (2018). Employment law for human resource practice. Cengage Learning.