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John W. Meyer Explores the Employer Enigma of Expunged Records and Negligent Hiring in the New Jersey Law Journal

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John W. Meyer Explores the Employer Enigma of Expunged Records and Negligent Hiring in the New Jersey Law Journal

January 24, 2022

Picture a scenario in which an employer, prior to the hiring process, acquires previously expunged records of a potential employee. What are they to do? Does that constitute potential knowledge and liability under a negligent hiring analysis?

John W. Meyer, an associate in Goldberg Segalla’s Cybersecurity and Data Privacy practice who focuses on the transportation industry, delves into the purpose of the expungement statute and how potential employers may handle this specific scenario in an article for the New Jersey Law Journal.

“…Possession and knowledge of the records could constitute knowledge under a negligent hiring analysis, but what about the underlying purposes of the expungement statute?” wrote John. “I would argue that the solution, while resulting in a legal fiction, for public policy and statutory adherence purposes is to treat the records for factual and legal purposes as if they do not exist.”

Read the full article:

Employers, Background Checks, and Negligent Hiring: A Right to Legal Erasure,” New Jersey Law Journal, January 20, 2022 (subscription required)

More about Goldberg Segalla’s John W. Meyer:

John W. Meyer focuses his practice on a variety of complex civil litigation matters with a focus on the trucking and transportation industry. Prior to entering private practice, John served as a law clerk to the Hon. Greta Gooden-Brown in the New Jersey Superior Court in the Appellate Division. As a law student, he gained experience as a legal intern in the office of the senior vice president and general counsel of Rutgers University, where he drafted briefs concerning employment and labor matters.