An HR employee knew little about the law, California court says
A jury may find that a company acted recklessly when it delegated its compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to a HR employee who knew little about the law, a California court said in a recent case.
In Hebert v. Barnes & Noble, Inc., the plaintiff applied to work for Barnes & Noble in 2018. First Advantage, the company’s consumer reporting agency, emailed the plaintiff a link to a website displaying the company’s consumer report disclosure and requested her authorization to procure a consumer report. She clicked the link, viewed the disclosure, and allowed Barnes & Noble to obtain her consumer report.
In 2019, the plaintiff filed a case seeking statutory damages, punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and costs from Barnes & Noble. The suit was brought on behalf of a putative class of individuals from whom the company had gotten consumer reports within the last five years.
She claimed that the company willfully violated the FCRA’s standalone disclosure requirement by including extraneous information unrelated to the procurement of a consumer report in its consumer report disclosure.
In a motion for summary judgment, Barnes & Noble argued that the plaintiff could not show that the company’s violation of the standalone disclosure requirement was willful.
The trial court granted summary judgment in Barnes & Noble’s favor. The court held that:
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