Criminal background checks have been widely used component in the method of hiring employees. The case of Blair v. Defender Services Inc. a student of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Virginia Tech State University was allowed to make claims after being attacked by a janitor on campus in a classroom. Her claims were held by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and were of retention and hiring negligence.

When accused of such claims it is usually the liability of the employer to have hired or kept an employee that might have violent tendencies or tendencies that might cause a threat to the environment in which he or she has been placed. The claim also includes the idea that a course of action to be taken by an employer to disclose these violent tendencies should have been taken; after which proper action might have been taken to withhold the hiring of this person.

Background checks were supposed to be performed by Defender Services Inc., a company for janitorial services. However, the company had failed to do so; even though the accused attacker had been working previously for the same company at the same University at three different points in his career. If a proper background check would have taken place they would have found that the students' attacker, James Lee Harris, had a criminal background of assaulting another woman.