Two questions, not one
When the person who committed a sexual assault was working for someone, two legal questions follow, and they are answered separately. The first is whether the act itself is attributed to the organization because it was part of the person’s work. The second is whether the organization was careless in its own conduct: in hiring the person, in supervising and keeping them, in training them, or in entrusting them with a role, a place, or a tool that gave them access to the person harmed. Employment alone answers neither question. It is the reason the questions are asked.
Being harmed by an organization’s worker is also different from being an organization’s worker who was harmed. The claims discussed here concern a customer, patient, resident, passenger, guest, or other member of the public harmed by someone acting for a business, a care provider, a contractor, a driver service, or another organization. An employee harmed at work by a co-worker or supervisor is addressed below, because a different framework applies first.
Whether the act is attributed to the organization
Texas law holds an employer responsible for an employee’s conduct when the act was within the general scope of the employee’s authority, in furtherance of the employer’s business, and for the accomplishment of the purpose for which the employee was hired. An assault generally fails that test, because the person acts for their own purposes rather than the employer’s. A Texas court of appeals has applied that reasoning even where the interaction that gave the person access was itself authorized, as when a health-care worker examining a patient turned the examination into an assault. Being on duty, in uniform, or in a place the job put the person is not enough.
The contrast is force used to do the job. A security worker who uses force to remove a patron is performing an authorized function, and courts have treated that force differently from an assault committed for personal reasons. Whether the worker was an employee or an independent contractor matters here too: an organization is generally not responsible for a contractor’s violent act unless it controlled how the specific task was performed, and a general instruction is not that control. None of this means the organization is out of the case. It means the second question is where the analysis goes next.
The organization’s own conduct
Texas courts recognize claims that an organization was careless in hiring, supervising, retaining, or training a person, or in entrusting that person with a role or access, and they apply strict requirements to them. Two wrongs must be shown, the organization’s carelessness and the worker’s later wrongful act, and both must have caused the harm. The risk that made the organization’s conduct careless must be the same risk that produced the injury: a hiring failure that concerned driving does not support a claim about an assault. A careless screening practice that never led to a harmful act supports no claim at all. The Supreme Court of Texas has applied these rules while noting that it has not yet recognized negligent training or supervision as independent theories of liability, so the claim is framed carefully rather than assumed.
Within those limits, the facts that matter are concrete. What did the organization know about the person before hiring, and what would a background check required or customary for that work have shown? What complaints or incidents were reported afterward, to whom, and what was done? What did the role give the person: a key, a schedule alone with clients, entry into homes, care of children or patients, authority over a passenger or resident?
The Supreme Court of Texas has held that a company which required its sales to be made inside customers’ homes owed a duty to use reasonable care in choosing whom it sent there, even though it called those workers independent contractors, because it controlled that detail and the risk of sending a dangerous person into a home was foreseeable. It has also held that an organization which did not employ a person but recommended him for a position with access to children owed a narrower duty not to make that recommendation carelessly. And it has limited the duty to supervise: not every complaint or conflict creates one, and an organization is not required to investigate every friction between people.
Where Texas already sets a hiring standard
For some work, Texas law itself says what a careful organization must do before hiring. Nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, and home health agencies may not employ a person whose criminal-history check shows a conviction for listed offenses, including sexual assault. Child-care facilities and agencies must submit their directors, employees, prospective employees, and contracted caregivers for state and federal background checks. Licensed security companies and commissioned security officers undergo state and federal criminal-history checks, and a person required to register as a sex offender cannot be licensed. A transportation network company must, before allowing a driver to log in, run a criminal background check that includes the national and Texas sex-offender registries, may not permit a registered person to drive, and must recheck annually.
Those requirements show what the law already expects for that kind of work, and the organization’s compliance records are evidence in a claim. Compliance does not by itself defeat a claim, and a violation does not by itself prove one; Texas has also given some organizations that provide care or child-welfare services under state contracts a defense tied to documented compliance with those checks, which counsel reviews when it applies. A person harmed by a worker in one of these fields should expect the review to begin with the check the law required.
The records an organization holds, and how they are obtained
The evidence in these claims sits mostly inside the organization: the application and hiring file, the background check that was or was not run, prior complaints and the record of how each was handled, schedules and supervision records, access logs for keys, badges, and vehicles, internal investigation files, policies and training materials, communications among managers, and video. Those records are obtained through the legal process, by discovery requests and subpoenas that a court enforces, and the firm asks in writing that they be preserved at the outset.
They are not obtained by the person harmed. Accessing an organization’s systems, or another person’s accounts or devices, without permission is a crime under Texas law, and material obtained that way damages a claim. What belongs to you is worth keeping: your own messages and call records, the names and dates you know, any report you made to the organization or to police and any response you received, and any agreement you signed with the organization.
An employee harmed at work is a different case
When the person harmed was an employee of the same organization, Texas and federal employment law provide specific remedies and procedures for workplace sexual harassment, with their own agencies and deadlines. Texas courts have held that where the substance of an employee’s claim is harassment covered by that statute, it displaces common-law negligence claims built on the same facts, and courts have drawn distinctions between a pattern of harassment and a single violent assault. Which framework applies is a question of the facts and is decided before anything is filed. The claim against the individual who committed the assault is a sexual assault civil claim, whether the person harmed was an employee or a member of the public.
Public entities, charities, and religious organizations
Texas permits claims against a governmental body, such as a school district, a city, or a hospital district, only where a statute waives its immunity, and the general waiver does not reach claims arising out of assault or other intentional torts. A claim against a public entity for its worker’s assault therefore faces that barrier, and whether the entity’s own conduct can be reached is a separate analysis with its own limits, including any applicable school-employee protection. A claim against an individual requires its own review of the defendant, capacity, conduct, scope of employment, applicable immunity, and procedural or election-of-remedies rules. An obstacle to the entity claim neither automatically defeats nor preserves the individual claim; sexual assault is not automatically within employment scope, and not every government employee is immune. Charitable organizations and their volunteers have statutory protection for ordinary negligence that does not extend to intentional, willfully negligent, or reckless conduct, and Texas has enacted narrow exceptions for particular organizations and roles that counsel reviews when they apply. None of these rules is a reason not to ask the question; each is a reason the answer requires a lawyer’s review of the specific entity.
Agreements, deaths, and the next conversation
Whether an arbitration or confidentiality term affects a claim depends on the agreement, the dates, and current federal and Texas law. A federal law allows a person alleging a sexual assault dispute to elect out of an arbitration agreement or class waiver signed before the dispute, and a court rather than an arbitrator decides whether it applies; another makes confidentiality clauses signed before a dispute unenforceable as to such disputes. Both have date limits and neither reaches every agreement. A stranger’s crime on a property that failed to guard against it is a negligent security claim, with different questions about the organization’s responsibility, and a resident harmed by staff in a nursing facility raises nursing home negligence questions. A death becomes a wrongful death claim. A consultation begins with who the person worked for, what role they held, and what you know about how they came to be there.