Waffle House Rejected Job Applicant Seeks Class Certification

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A former Waffle House employee who was denied further employment after a background check is asking a federal court to certify his proposed plaintiff Class.

Plaintiff William Jones filed this Waffle House class action lawsuit in October 2015. Despite having worked for Waffle House “without issue” for more than 20 years, he claims the company denied him a job that he reapplied for based on the results of a background check that showed he had a criminal history.

Jones says Waffle House never notified him that it intended to deny his job application and never provided him with a copy of the background check.

The plaintiff alleges that Waffle House similarly denied applicants for employment based on background checks the company acquired from The Source for Public Data LP, also named as a defendant in the class action lawsuit.

Jones argues that Public Data is a “consumer reporting agency” within that term’s meaning under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and therefore subject to that Act’s requirements.

According to Jones’s Waffle House class action lawsuit, Public Data claims it is not a consumer reporting agency but instead just an aggregator of public records. As such, Jones says, the company places the burden on those subject to its reports to correct any errant data at the source.

Public Data does not recognize any duty under the FCRA to correct the data itself, Jones says.

By pretending Public Data was not a consumer reporting agency, Jones argues Waffle House dodged its own responsibilities under the FCRA. Jones says that in discovery, Waffle House presented a form rejection notice that arguably fails to properly notify applicants how to contest inaccurate information in their Public Data report. He says the form instructs the rejected applicant to take such disputes directly to the public entity that was the source of the information, rather than taking it up with Public Data itself.

According to evidence produced during discovery, Waffle House is a Georgia-based chain of restaurants with about 1,500 locations across the U.S., with several hundred other locations operating on a franchise basis.

In 2005, Waffle House began running background checks on applicants for management positions. Later, due to high turnover and a large volume of applicants, it began contracting with Texas-based Public Data, which Jones says provided a “fast and cheap alternative” to other, more standard reporting agencies.

Jones seeks certification for a nationwide Class consisting of Waffle House job applicants who were denied jobs between October 2010 and March 2015. His motion for class certification seeks to divide the Class into five subgroups: two groups that did not receive the FCRA-required notice regarding their background checks, either before or after the decision was made not to hire them; two other groups that received inadequate notice of their rights to dispute inaccurate information in their background report; and a catch-all group consisting of all remaining Class Members.

Jones and the proposed Class are represented by Justin Kachadoorian, Alexandria Kachadoorian, and Anthony J. Orshansky of CounselOne PC; and by Michael J. Pascucci and Joshua H. Eggnatz of Eggnatz, Lopatin & Pascucci LLP.

The Waffle House FCRA Class Action Lawsuit is William G. Jones v. Waffle House Inc., et al., Case No. 6:15-cv-01637, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division.

UPDATE: On Nov. 8, 2017,  former Waffle House job applicants combined forces to allege the company violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act with its use of background checks. The new complaint consolidates claims brought by 23 plaintiffs in two Waffle House class action lawsuits filed earlier this year.