The plaintiff, John R. Pickens, was hired by the call center as a customer service representative in 2013. Prior to being hired Pickens was properly notified that the company would be running a background check on him. It was only after Pickens received several promotions – and a tip from another employee that Pickens had a criminal past – that Alorica elected to conduct a more thorough background check on him. When the background check showed that Pickens had been convicted of a felony in 1995, Alorica elected to fire him without first providing him with a copy of his consumer report – a practice did not afford him the opportunity to explain or dispute the information contained on the report.
Procuring the background check without the consent of Pickens and then taking adverse action based off of the information contained within the report before providing him with a copy are both claims that would put Alorica in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act as well as the California’s Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA).
Alorica would face the potential of paying statutory and punitive damages to the class and the cost of their attorneys’ fees if found to have willfully violated the national and state reporting acts. The proposed class size of the suit would include all employees who Alorica took adverse action against in the past five years whose background checks were not conducted in compliance with the FCRA.
Source: Law360.com, 4/23/2015
Posted: May 7, 2015