A truck driver applied for a job at J.B. Hunt. The background check came back with a felony conviction. According to his lawsuit, the conviction belonged to someone else, and he never got the chance to say so: the company acted on the report without first sending him a copy of it or a summary of his rights.
He sued in 2022 on behalf of other applicants and employees. In 2025, J.B. Hunt agreed to a $5 million settlement covering about 14,900 people. The company denied wrongdoing and agreed to review its notice procedures.
The report was wrong. The process gave nobody a chance to catch it.
What the lawsuit claimed
The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires an employer that plans to act on a background check to send the person a pre-adverse action notice first, with a copy of the report and the FCRA Summary of Rights. The person then has time to review the report and dispute anything that is wrong before the decision becomes final.
The lawsuit claimed J.B. Hunt took adverse action against applicants and employees from June 2020 to September 2024 without that step. More than 5,600 people in the class, according to the settlement, had no record of any pre-adverse notice at all.
From the application to the settlement
- Class period begins
Applicants and employees subject to adverse action based on a background check.
- Lawsuit filed
A driver applicant says a felony on his report belonged to someone else and he never received the report first.
- Class period ends
About 14,915 people in the class, 5,681 with no record of any pre-adverse notice.
- Settlement approved
Preliminary approval of a $5 million settlement. J.B. Hunt denies wrongdoing and agrees to review its notice procedures.
- Final approval
Payments of about $100 per person, and about $400 for those with no notice on record.
$5Msettlement over notices that should have gone out before each decision
Three lessons for employers
1. The notice is not paperwork. It is the error check
Background reports can attach a record to the wrong person, especially with common names. The pre-adverse notice is how the candidate finds out and fixes it before you lose a good hire and gain a lawsuit.
2. Every adverse decision needs the same steps
The class covered more than four years. A process that works for most hires but skips the notice when a recruiter is busy creates a class of people who never got it.
3. Small statutory damages add up
For willful violations, the FCRA allows statutory damages per person, without proof of actual harm. Multiplied across thousands of applicants, a missing letter becomes a seven-figure settlement.
