Federal Trade Commission Penalizes Hire Right Solutions $2.6 Million


HireRight Solutions is an employment screening firm that is most well known in the trucking world
for providing "DAC Reports." The case against HireRight Solutions, Inc. represents the first time the
FTC has charged an employment background screening firm with violating the Fair Credit Reporting
Act (FCRA), and is the second-largest civil penalty that the FTC has obtained under the Act.


The FTC charged that HireRight violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by failing to use reasonable
procedures to assure the maximum possible accuracy of information it provided, failing to give
consumers copies of their reports, and failing to reinvestigate consumer disputes, as required by law.


Employment Screening firms are classified as "consumer reporting agencies" which are governed
by the FCRA. The Fair Credit Reporting Act would be more accurately named "The Fair Credit
and Employment Reporting Act. HireRight Solutions provides background reports that contain
information about prospective and current employees to help thousands of employers make decisions
about hiring and other employment-related issues. Under the FCRA, the company's reports qualify
as "consumer reports." They contain public-record information, including the individuals' criminal
history.


The FCRA imposes front-end and back-end obligations on consumer reporting agencies.


On the front end, agencies must take reasonable steps to ensure that the information in their reports
have maximum possible accuracy and are current and reflect updates. According to the FTC's
complaint, HireRight Solutions failed to follow reasonable procedures to prevent the same criminal
offense information from being included in a consumer report multiple times, failed to follow
reasonable procedures to prevent obviously inaccurate consumer report information from being
provided to employers, and in numerous cases even included the records of the wrong person. The
FTC alleged that these failures led to consumers being denied employment or other employment-
related benefits


On the back-end, agencies must allow consumers to access their own information and dispute
any inaccuracies. To do this, the consumer reporting agency must clearly and adequately disclose
information in their file to a consumer who requests it. Next, within 30 days of being notified that
a consumer wants to dispute the information in his or her report, the consumer reporting agency
must conduct a reasonable investigation to determine whether the information is inaccurate, record
the status of the information, or delete it from the file. Finally, the consumer reporting agency must
notify consumers in writing of the results of this reinvestigation of their file within five days of when
it's completed.


The FTC charged HireRight with inadequacies in front and back obligations. Next month's column
will detail the finding of the FTC. In the meantime , it makes sense to know and correct your
information-and not just from HireRight/DAC-to protect your driving career.


Written By: Derek Hinton