Background Check Lawyer — When a Screening Error Costs You the Job

A background check error is not an inconvenience. It is a job offer withdrawn, an apartment refused, a professional license held up — over a record that belongs to somebody else, a case that was dismissed, or a conviction that was expunged years ago. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you a claim against the company that reported it. This page explains what that claim looks like, who is liable, and what to send us.

Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.

What a background check lawyer does

Two different problems get called the same thing, and only one of them is this.

If you have a criminal record and want it cleared, that is expungement, and it is handled by a criminal defense lawyer in the state where the case sits. If a screening company reported something about you that is not true — or true about someone else — that is a Fair Credit Reporting Act matter, and that is what this page is about.

The work is: read the report and the adverse action notice, identify what was reported wrongly and by whom, put the dispute in properly so the investigation duty is triggered, and where the company gets it wrong again, bring the claim in federal court.

The errors that become claims

Someone else’s record	A common-name match, or a match on name and date of birth alone, attaching another person’s conviction to your file
A dismissed or withdrawn case reported as a conviction	The charge appears; the disposition does not
An expunged or sealed record still reporting	The court cleared it and the screening company’s database did not refresh
One offence reported several times	The same case pulled from county, state and federal sources and listed as three
Records older than the reporting limits	Non-conviction information beyond the periods the statute allows
Wrong employment or education history	Dates, titles or degrees reported as unverified when they are documented

What these have in common is that none of them is your fault and all of them are fixable. What turns one into a claim is what the company does after it is told.

Who is liable — the screening company, the employer, or both

Usually the screening company. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act a consumer reporting agency must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information it reports, and must reinvestigate when you dispute. A company that matches on name and date of birth alone, or that reports a charge without its disposition, is where most of these cases begin.

The employer or landlord can also be liable, on different ground. Before taking adverse action on a report they must give you a copy of it and a summary of your rights, and wait a reasonable period before acting — so that you have a chance to correct an error before it costs you the position. Employers skip that step often, and skipping it is its own violation, separate from whether the report was accurate.

If you were told you did not get the job and were never sent the report, that fact matters on its own. Keep the email or letter that told you.

The step that creates the claim

Being wrong is not by itself a violation. What creates the claim is what happens after the company is told.

Dispute it with the screening company in writing, in terms — name the entry, say what is wrong, and attach the proof: the certified disposition, the expungement order, the court docket showing the case belonged to someone else. Send it so you can prove it arrived. The company then has a statutory window to reinvestigate, and if it verifies the entry as accurate when it is not, that response is usually the most important document in the file.

Where the error came from a furnisher rather than the screening company’s own research, the same principle applies as on the credit reporting side: the duty to investigate is triggered by a dispute filed through the reporting agency, at 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b).

What the statute provides

For a negligent violation, the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows recovery of actual damages together with costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, at 15 U.S.C. § 1681o.

For a willful violation, it allows actual damages or statutory damages of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000, punitive damages as the court may allow, and costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, at 15 U.S.C. § 1681n.

Actual damages in these cases are not limited to lost wages. The statute permits recovery for harm that follows from the error, and the record of what the denial cost you — the offer, the apartment, the license, the time spent trying to fix it — is what that part of the case is built from. No two cases are alike and nothing here is a prediction about yours.

Where we can act

Fair Credit Reporting Act claims are federal claims, brought in federal court.

Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.

In practice most of this work is done before anything is filed — reading the report, putting the dispute in properly, and dealing with the screening company in writing. Where a case does have to be filed, the forum is the federal district court, and admission there is handled as part of the matter.

The screening companies these cases involve

The same names recur: Checkr, HireRight, Sterling, First Advantage, Accurate Background, GoodHire, Cisive, Asurint, Infomart, IntelliCorp, ClearStar and others, along with the tenant screening side — RealPage LeasingDesk, SafeRent, CoreLogic, RentGrow and TransUnion SmartMove. We keep a page on each, listed under background check companies and tenant screening companies.

If you do not know which company produced your report, the adverse action notice has to tell you. That notice is the single most useful piece of paper you can send us.

What it costs

Reviewing a report, an adverse action notice or a dispute response costs nothing, and you pay nothing unless we win. The statute provides for costs and reasonable attorney’s fees against a company that violates it, which is how this work is paid for in most cases that succeed.

What to send us

Four documents carry most of the weight, and you may already have all four:

The report	The background check itself, as the employer or landlord received it
The adverse action notice	The letter or email telling you the decision, and naming the screening company
Your dispute	What you sent the company, and proof of when it arrived
Their response	The reinvestigation result — particularly if it says the entry was verified

If you are missing some of them, send what you have. For the mechanics of disputing, see how to dispute a background check and our page on background check errors. For errors on the credit bureaus rather than a screening report, see credit report errors, and for the statute generally our FCRA lawyer page. Where a report has been merged with another person’s, see mixed credit report.

Send it over

If a background check cost you a job, an apartment or a license and you believe the report was wrong, send us the report and the notice and we will tell you whether there is a claim in it.