WYOMING ASSAULT LAWYER
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Evidence to Consider
Police Report. I encourage you to make a report. You may be in a situation where you don’t feel comfortable doing that right away. If so, let’s talk. I can give you a sense of how an investigation would play out. Generally, law enforcement will listen to you and take steps to minimize the impact of their investigation on your life. However, they also have a job to do. The prosecutor is not “your” attorney. Most of the time, when I talk to someone about their concerns, we clear up misunderstandings. Also, there may be a victim’s advocate in your jurisdiction. They are a good resource for you.
Security Camera Footage. If you think that anything that happened is on some sort of closed circuit camera, consider having your attorney request that the company put a “litigation hold” on the footage. Often, the company has a retention policy and deletes footage after a period of time. If your attorney contacts them and requests that they keep the footage, there is a good chance the company will keep it. If they destroy it anyway, then a judge may instruct a jury that the footage was probably damming. How and when you do this is something an attorney helps with.
TYPES OF PERSONAL INJURY
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Ways to Hold Your Employer or the Person Accountable
NEGLIGENT HIRING
An employer has a duty to exercise reasonable care and caution in hiring an employee. If the employer fails to exercise reasonable care while hiring, and they hire the wrong person, then the employer may be responsible for the wrong person’s actions.
Here is an example. Imagine a hotel hiring for a housekeeping supervisor. The supervisor’s job is to check the housekeeper’s work. That means the supervisor is frequently following the housekeeper into unoccupied rooms.
A responsible employer would run a criminal background check on that person before putting them in that position. They should know whether that person has ever been charged with an assault. If they fail to do that, and the person had a criminal history, then they may be responsible for that decision.
Consider another example. Imagine a school bus driver or summer camp counselor. The employer should check the school bus driver’s record to find out if they’re a good driver. If they hire a bus driver with a lot of speeding tickets or a suspended license, then they’re responsible if he causes a wreck. Similarly, a summer camp should check the references of their counselors.
NEGLIGENT RETENTION
This is a variation of negligent hiring. Negligent retention is failing to fire someone when you should fire them. Consider a variation on our examples above. Imagine that the hotel has received complaints about the housekeeping supervisor.
They’ve heard that he groped an employee or was caught doing something inappropriate. At a minimum, the hotel management should either admonish and correct the behavior (it all depends on the severity of the allegations and the proof). If they fail to fire him, when they know that he is a risk, then they’re responsible for the injuries he causes.
You can imagine a similar situation for the bus driver or camp counselor. What if the school district learns that the bus driver is speeding and does nothing? What if the camp counselor gets a complaint about the counselor in the first session, but does nothing before the second session?
This situation often occurs where the management has hired a relative. An uncle refuses to believe the worst about the nephew.
NEGLIGENT SUPERVISION & TRAINING
In a negligent supervision or training case, the employer fails to do a responsible job supervising or training his employees.
In our hotel example above, imagine the hotel owner telling the housekeeping supervisor that “You need to keep those cleaners in line! Make sure they’re not stealing. I don’t care how you do it.” What if the supervisor interprets his orders as authorizing violence?
What if there are no rules and regulations about friends at work? What if the supervisor allows his sex-offender buddy to hang out at the hotel, and that offender commits the assault? What if there is no training on how to report harassment, and the harassment goes unreported?
There are other theories against an employer when the assault occurs in a workplace. Each case is different. It’s your lawyer’s job to use their experience to know which claims to bring for you.
More Resources
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