Criminal Law

• Sex Crimes
  This is not a trifling thing. In 1984, the Texas Court of Appeals ruled that a personnel consulting firm failed to verify or uncover factual information after a candidate deliberately misrepresented his academic background and held the firm legally and financially responsible for damages. The Arkansas state Supreme Court found, in Keck vs American Employment Agency Inc., that a personnel firm failed to investigate a client’s background and business activity. The firm, in addition, had not informed the candidate of these failures and their negligence in this regard allowed a client with no real place of business to kidnap and rape a candidate. Another case — Gutzan vs Altair Airlines and Romac and Associates, heard by a U.S. Circuit Court — found a search firm liable for damages caused by a candidate who lied about a mark on his military record, even though the damages occurred some time after the firm placed the candidate. On a lighter, yet still damaging note, we’ve all read flaps lately concerning false claims of degrees or military service that went undiscovered until some journalist, Internet scribe, or employee dug up the truth.

Employment Law

• Employment Discrimination
  Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids any search consultant to refer candidates strictly based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, marital status or handicap. Other important laws focus on specific areas: The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 covers age discrimination-which, by the way, only applies to people between the ages of 40 and 70. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 says an employer may not discriminate based on pregnancy. And The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1992 protects disabled workers.
• Employment Litigation
  One of the many employment issues present in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack was the apparent inability of some hard-hit companies to effectively communicate benefit allowances to grieving families.

Finance Law

• Bankruptcy
  It's no surprise that the execs who are least inclined to hire new workers these days are those in the battered telecom industry, which has been rocked almost weekly by disappointing news or scandals. Only 5% of the telecommunications execs who were surveyed expect to boost hiring. Meanwhile, 14% foresee a decrease in hiring, and 81% predict no change. The survey was conducted before the news hit of WorldCom's financial shenanigans and its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
• Tax Law
  Despite public perception – and exceptions that have grabbed headlines in recent months – extras such as corporate jets, chauffeur-driven luxury cars and memberships at exclusive country clubs have fallen by the wayside with changes in tax law during the 1980s and 1990s, said Steve Cross, practice leader at the Houston office of Mercer Human Resource Consulting.