Florida (County) Litigation Records Index

Why do this search?

Perhaps the best reason to check litigation records can be found in Florida Statutes. F.S. 768.096 the Employer Presumption Against Negligent Hiring statute, creates a presumption against negligent hiring when employers take certain pre-employment screening steps. One of the steps requires that the employer have the prospective employee complete a job application form that includes asking whether the prospective employee has ever been a defendant in a civil action for intentional tort, including the nature of the intentional tort and the disposition of the action.

A tort is an act that injures someone in some way and for which the injured person may sue the wrongdoer for damages. Examples of intentional torts include battery, fraud, and defamation.

While the statute does not specifically require a search of civil litigation records, unless you are one-hundred percent certain that the applicant answered the question truthfully, prudence suggests a records check, because if it turns out there is a readily available public record documenting an intentional tort, and your employee does the same or similar thing again to a customer or co-worker, it doesn’t take too much imagination to guess what comes next.

Records are accessed on a county-by-county basis. Information returned includes: case number, nature of involvement (plaintiff or defendant), type of case, (civil theft, fraud, assault, battery, restraining orders, negligence, etc.), the name of the other party or parties involved, and where available, the disposition.

Note: This service does not include actual file records but points to where records may be located. Also please be advised that dispositional information is not always available in sources we access but will be available at the appropriate courthouse or government repository.

This search is conducted on a per county basis and does not contain information recorded in any but the individual county searched.

Due to limitations imposed in Section 605 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act the reporting of adverse civil information predating seven (7) years is prohibited.