A company that provides background checks must face claims from a man whom it allegedly incorrectly described as a sex offender, costing him work, a federal judge ruled. Harold Charles Meyer claims that National Tenant Network (NTN) sent an inaccurate consumer report to Meyer’s prospective employer and landlord, Shorewood RV Park, claiming he had “three criminal sex offense record, which were listed as ‘violent sex offender, fail to register,’ ‘sexual battery’ and ‘aggravated oral sexual battery.'” Both Harold and Phyllis Meyer, who had applied with him for the assistant resident manager position, were then denied employment and residence at Shorewood. The couple contacted the NTN for copies of Harold’s file but the defendant allegedly never responded to their requests. They blamed the inaccurate sex-offender designation on NTN having mistakenly relied on the consumer reports of several other individuals with similar names. One surviving count alleges that NTN improperly bars those whom it provides with consumer reports, like Shorewood, from disclosing the contents of those reports to the subjects, like the Meyers. However, the Meyers failed to allege that “NTN either knew or should have known that the report it furnished to Shorewood was for employment purposes,” according to the ruling.
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