[cj]

Fun fact: You can almost always score at least $10-20k if you're fired from a job if you try hard enough.

I've been on the employer side of this... you fire someone who's performing badly, and then they come back 4 months later and sue the company for [insert made up thing here].

In our case, an ex-employee is suing us for not accommodating an anxiety and migraine disability, which they never disclosed and never requested accommodations for. So now we face a discrimination lawsuit (from a non-minority) based completely on falsehoods and things that never happened.

The reason people do this is because it works! Employers will almost always settle before it goes in front of a judge in order to avoid the hassle and cost of defending the claim.

[ty6853]

It works, but court cases are public record. Good luck getting anyone to touch you with a ten foot pole afterwards, not like the candidate can prove why they weren't selected.

[everybodyknows]

So HR pays to check this for every candidate? No wonder it's hard to get hired.

[ty6853]

Lol in my state I can see every (unsealed) civil case with a simple online query. My landlords have pretty much all done it, I don't know if the background checks show it but it's an extra 15 seconds to hedge a 10k+ potential liability.

[cubefox]

Though this problem seems to be mostly restricted to the US American legal system.