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Employment Files in Question
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Employment Files in Question
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What should a company do if an employee sees their personnel file and finds slanderous comments about them in there? Realizing that these comments should not have been there in the first place? Advice
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Employment Files in Question

posted at 8/11/1999 12:22 AM EDT
Posts: 29
First: 7/27/1999
Last: 5/6/2001
What should a company do if an employee sees their personnel file and finds slanderous comments about them in there? Realizing that these comments should not have been there in the first place? Advice?
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Employment Files in Question

posted at 8/11/1999 5:29 PM EDT
Posts: 833
First: 6/11/1999
Last: 8/23/2001
Take them out and hope for the best, I guess. Being in a file may constitute "publishing" the statement, in the eyes of a court, if it gets that far, so the longer it stays in there, the bigger your chances that others may read it, and the bigger the liability.

Don't destroy it. Remove it and archive it somewhere. Then share it with your lawyer, along with the situation, and describe the access to the files, so he/she gets an idea of how many people potentially could have read the document. And be prepared to show that there were no employment decisions based on the document (hopefully).


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Employment Files in Question

posted at 8/12/1999 3:26 AM EDT
Posts: 2217
First: 6/16/1999
Last: 12/13/2001
Defamation is an issue of state law. Typically, persons seeking to sue for defamation must establish, at a minimum, (i) a false and defamatory statement of fact, (ii) made by the person they are suing about them, (iii) published to a thrid party, and (iv) injury. Here, Jim has focused on the "publication" (who has seen the comments) and "injury" (whether the company has acted on these comments) elements, which is probably right if the comments were defamatory and made by a person whose comments may impose liability on the company.
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