Certainly. No one is arguing about internal personal actions.

There in lies the rub. They may feel that have been treat differently but feel it is not worth bringing up; until you say something to a potential employer and they decide to sue. While we agree on a number of thinks we clearly have differing viewpoints on the risks involved with giving a reference beyond verifying employment. My POV comes from having been involved, with two separate employers, HR situations similar to this with employees who we let go; even though I didn't give a reference nor was asked to give one it still was a pain to document and justify every single action I took and spending time with lawyers who said "that could be construed as X. How did you justify it was Y." In one case a person turned in inaccurate time cards and I spent an inordinate amount of time having to prove my guidance was clear on work expectations and proving the reasons he gave for his time reporting were invalid. I quickly learned how something I though was clear and a factual statement could be construed otherwise; at least I got paid to learn that bit of employment law.

Again, I think it would be a long shot but the general tack might be to force you to define what the culture is and then look for people with similar profiles that were not fired. For example, if he was late and your employee records show other who were late were not disciplined. INAL but would also hazard a guess if your are too vaque you could wind up with a discrimination complaint depending on the circumstances; even if you truly did not discriminate. In the end, even if you win you wind up paying to defend yourself.

Unless you let other employees do at some of the things, at some time, you allege this person did that "didn't fit in the corporate culture." For example, let's say you said they did A,B, and C when asked to define what cultural norms they failed to meet. Now, if other employees did the same things then the fired employee was really acting within the norms of the culture. In the end, you are free to decide to say what you want and the fired employee is free to sue for whatever reason they want. The more you say the easier you make it for them, which is why most companies simply limit what is said to verifiable true statements.

Actually, they wouldn't have prove anything about the dismissal; they would have to prove your statement was not true and you should have known it was false. They don't need to show there was not the reason; although if they could that could show what you said was false in that they were not fired for not fitting in with the corporate culture. I'm not saying it would be easy; just that most companies chose to avoid the issue by merely verifying employment since that is factual and not negative or positive.

We're probably a lot closer in viewpoint than our posts seem to indicate. Sure, verifying employment tells you nothing assuming the candidate didn't lie on the resume. However, and this is where we seem to differ, first and last day are easily verified facts. Giving that information doesn't say anything one way or the other about an employee's performance and I suspect a lawsuit alleging defamation because "only giving employment dates may be taken as I was a bad employee" would get laughed out of court.

Finally, the examples you give are subjective and could lead to a more reasonable basis for suing; even if they wouldn't win.Take "not fitting in with corporate culture." While they may hold that viewpoint saying that about an employee is making a statement, purported to be factual, about the employee; a statement whose accuracy could be reasonably questioned. Maybe the person giving the reference was just a bad boss who didn't fit in and drove employees out.

Even the example where you claim to have hard numbers, such as time late may be questionable. Maybe they took sick leave and you didn't realize it. You may have talked to them about it and they gave valid reasons that you didn't accept. Or, maybe you let others come in late and didn't do anything about it because you had it in for this employee.

Sure, anyone can sue over anything, but the examples you gave could easily be construed as not factual and this potentially defamatory.

In the end, we may just have to agree to disagree.

Credit cards don't claim to be currency either, nor does the company accepting it have to worry they'll be able to turn the receivables into cash. Bitcoin, however,is not s liquid so if Dell accepted Bitcoin they could be stuck with a large stash that is not easy to turn into cash. Credit cards also let you make large purchases, depending on your credit limit. A million dollar Bitcoin buy may be much more difficult since the processor is assuming all the risk while giving out cash with no assurance stye Bitcoins will be worth what they paid for them.

However, just because someone infers something from what was not said is in no way a defamatory statement by another since nothing was said. Just because the potential employer may imply that saying nothing is bad that does not mean the person who said nothing intended for them to so do, so arguing that somehow they defamed the former employer by saying nothing would be ridiculous and such a suit would probably be thrown out before right away.

Sure. You can simply say "Our policy is to only verify employment" or " Our policy is to refer all such requests to HR..." which is what many companies do already. Answering the question asked, however, is a very different thing and opens up the potential of a lawsuit.

certainly large companies have more excess employees, after all the are larger and if only 10% of a company's employees are excess then, using your example, one has 45k and the other 5 excess employees. I suspect the percentage is larger at large companies because it is easy to hide employees and hire, rathe than layoff, staff.

What is the right number of employees? It depends; largely on their revenue generating ability.I've worked at companies where if an employee was billable 65% of the time everyone was happy. I've worked projects where I did 20 hours of work and 40 of free time and that was fine because we still had huge margins. Not having the staff to put on projects costs more than keeping them around so they can work high margin jobs. I've worked at big companies and small ones and in defense of big ones is when you need resources to throw at project they have them; whereas small ones often don't.

However, how often are black boxes not recovered? Sure, it would be useful in a few rare cases but does the cost justify it? There is already a load of data that gets transmitted during flight to data centers; and in the case of the missing Malaysia flight that data stopped after a while anyway so how can you be sure in those cases where you don't recover a lack box you'd still have useful data. I have no doubt more and more data will be streamed in the future, but you need to weigh the costs of retrofitting with the benefits.

Uh, Delta has been offering pay as you go internet via wifi for a while now on their US flights. It works just fine. Other airlines probably do the same but I only fly Delta so I can't say for sure.

Several points

1. Signing a poor performance review doesn't necessarily mean the person agrees with it; it is merely acknowledgement of receiving it.

2. Even if the signature is taken to mean agreement that doesn't mean a court could view it the same way. An employee could argue that they were afraid to lose their job and thus signed under duress.

3. Even if you think it isn't subjective that doesn't mean a jury wouldn't. You may believe what you said is factual; however they may not have been always true and thus not a true statement but a subjective one that could be construed as defamatory. You get into the "yes but he/she usually was a poor performer..." and then have to explain why you said they were a poor performer when it wasn't true since they did well sometimes. The follow on is "Maybe you gave them jobs they couldn't do to get rid of them. Is that the case?" What if at some point they got an award? How do you explain that?

My point is not that the employee would win; but that what you say and think is a fact may not be taken that way and thus references can be a real minefield and therefore many company's policy is to simply verify employment.

Those, however, could be open to interpretation. How do you verify they were late? What was your policy and how was it enforced? What is repeatedly? Were your instructions clear? How did you let them know they we not doing what you wanted? Your standards clear and how did yoyo measure them? All of that is subjective to an extent, and thus may or not be considered the truth.

Sure, anyone can file a lawsuit; but if you all you provide is factual information, such as dates of employment, there can be no defamation. When you go beyond that and start saying things that are open to interpretation then you get into trouble; so not saying anything about performance is the safe course.

I never said I would say "We can only say positive things about the employee. I will therefore remain silent." Those are your words. II only indicated I would follow my employer's guidelines, which would be to refer them to HR for verification of employment. In cases where it was somebody who was a good employee and left for a better opportunity, when asked for a reference I've worked out an agreement on what would be said and ask they use my personal, not work, contact information.

Even if the prospective employer said it was a reference check that cost them a job that does not prove it was your statement that caused it and even if it was since ethe information provided, dates of employment, was factual it's not defamatory.