My husband's debit card was stolen by a worker in my home, can I sue the company?
Recently my husband's debit card was stolen by a carpet installer in our home. He went on a spending spree, and nearly cleaned out our bank account. Luckily, a red flag came up on our account and stopped the spending.
Anyway, we have identified him from the security footage of two different stores. We are waiting to hear back from the police about if charges will be filed against him. Our bank put the money back into our account yesterday, but we don't really feel like that makes everything better.
We are not sue happy types of people, but it just seems like we should get something from the carpet company for hiring people like this that we trust to come into home. To top it all off, when this first happened, the company was really rude to me and acted like I was lying, and their carpet installers would never steal anything.
So my question is this- can I sue the carpet company? I just really want a partial or full refund for services...and an apology would be nice too!
Answers:
I think because of the cost involved and the unlikelihood that you would prevail, instead of suing, I would contact the Better Business Bureau and issue a complaint about their employee and their handling of the matter. This will allow you to be proactive and do something to let other people know so they can think twice before using this company. Also the BBB will contact them and if they see you are serious enough to file a BBB complaint, they may offer to give you back part or all of your money to try to smooth over the complaint and that apology that you are looking for (and rightly so!).
I think you can for a bunch of things. I can't quote exactly what the civil laws are though. Talk to a lawyer, you do have a strong case to sue the company and the employee after he does time for theft, larceny, fraud, Identity theft, and other various crimes.
So my question is this- can I sue the carpet company?
Of course you can. But on what grounds?
Do you have about $5,000 to spend on an investigation into wrongful hiring case law and practices?
If not, then you have no basis in law to sue the company since you cannot prove they knew or had a duty to know the tendencies of their employee.
Of course, if you do choose to investigate and you find out the employee was a two-time convicted felon with charges of larceny then you MIGHT have a case.
Doubtful you can sue the company. In most cases, the bank will prosecute the thief. I had this happen in Florida and the bank replaced the money in my account and took the crook to court.
Anyone can sue anyone for anything. Whether you will prevail is another question entirely. You say you want a partial refund and an apology; have you asked them for it? They might just be willing to do so now that the perpetrator appears to have been caught and identified as their employee.
A lawsuit will not prevail if the problem is just one of ACCIDENT. There must be negligence or reasonable foresight into an increased likelihood of an event happening if a certain action is taken or not. If the company does background checks on employees and takes reasonable precautions to prevent hiring known offenders, there is little more they can be expected to do to try to screen out bad eggs.
Sorry, but you can't sue people because they piss you off. It was kind of rude for them to not believe you, but there was proof of the crime and you got the police on it, and it wasn't the fault of the company. Get an apology from the jerk who actually stole from you when the cops nab him.
Plus, you got your money back, so you officially have no damages to sue for. When you sue someone, you actually have to have lost something and need them to make you whole again -- and you've already been made whole by getting the money back. You didn't lose anything, and now you know to check with companies that you hire and make sure they run background checks on the employees that they send to your house.
You also can't sue for a refund of services if they had nothing to do with the theft. It would be a good idea to file a complaint with the BBB or something, so that the cleaning company will start to insure or run background checks on their employees.
The answers post by the user, for information only, FreeLawAnswer.com does not guarantee the right.
Answer question:
More Law Questions and Answers: