Management-side lawyers are predicting a further drying up of reference-giving in response to a New Jersey appellate court’s ruling “appl[ying] the tort of negligent misrepresentation to a situation where an employer allegedly gave false information in an employment reference.” Marsha Singer said she was fired after a manager called her previous employer and was given an incorrect job title for the post she had held there; a court dismissed her claims for defamation and wrongful interference but allowed the negligent misrepresentation claim to go forward. Richard J. Reibstein of the New York office of Philadelphia’s Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen called the ruling a “dramatic shift in the law of post-employment references everywhere” and said it would influence employers outside the Garden State. (Dee McAree, “Ruling Could Lead to Restrictions on References”, National Law Journal, Aug. 5). For more on the chill on reference-giving, see Aug. 7, 2003; as it happens, New Jersey is a state that figured prominently in the widely noted case of alleged killer nurse Charles Cullen (Dec. 18, 2003; Jan. 29, Mar. 3 and Mar. 30, 2004), in which litigation-shy hospitals did not give each other frank warnings of their doubts about Cullen.
N.J. court chills job references
Management-side lawyers are predicting a further drying up of reference-giving in response to a New Jersey appellate court’s ruling “appl[ying] the tort of negligent misrepresentation to a situation where an employer allegedly gave false information in an employment reference.” Marsha Singer said she was fired after a manager called her previous employer and was given […]
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