Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: job refrence

There are reference checking services you can hire that will call former employers posing as prospective employers, and they will give you a complete report.

Whether the remarks might be legally actionable depend, of course, on exactly what was said.

Re: job refrence

The truth, and their opinion that is not provably false.

Re: job refrence

Ordinarily it is defamation to say or print untrue and injurious things about someone that are heard or read by others. It's slander if spoken, and libel if set down in writing or some other permanent medium.

In some cases, untrue and injurious statements are "privileged," meaning that the person making them has a privilege to do so under some law or policy, and cannot successfully be sued for slander or libel. The privilege to make otherwise defamatory statements can be either absolute or qualified.

An example of "absolute" privilege is a lawsuit. If I'm suing the bishop, I can call him a scoundrel and infidel in my suit, whether it's true or not, and I can't be sued back because I have absolute privilege under a policy of the legislature, set forth in Civil Code section 47, the so-called "litigation privilege."

There is also a qualified privilege for former employers giving reference-type information to an inquiring prospective employer. This privilege is considered qualified because it is not an absolute protection. The ex-employer can freely express its opinion, so long as it does so in good faith and without malice.

For example, the ex-employer can probably say, "We think Joe was sipping Wild Turkey on his coffee breaks" if a couple co-employees said so, and whether it were true or not, without being liable to Joe. On the other hand, the qualified privilege is exceeded if the ex-employer says, "Joe is a lush" when in fact there is no evidence that Joe ever touched a drop of booze, and says this because it doesn't like Joe.

Re: job refrence

What are they "allowed" to say? Your question implies that the law might allow some types of statements and forbid others, but that's not how it works. The First Amendment would forbid such a law.

The old employer and/or the individual manager who spoke to the new employer might be liable to your husband depending upon the circumstances, but without knowing what the circumstances are there's nothing more I can tell you.