What is the difference between a civil litigation check and criminal check?
Civil suits generally involve claims between private individuals for money damages or property rights. Cases are most often brought by private individuals, but may be brought by the government. Standards of proof are lower (typically a claim is proved by a preponderance of the evidence). Criminal cases may only be brought by the government, and can involve prison time, parole, probation, loss of other individual rights, or fines. Civil litigation records are searched by name only, and rarely include other information to identify the individual litigants. Criminal case records often do include additional identifying information, most commonly a persons date of birth. As a result, it may be very difficult to determine the relevance of a given civil court record if your job applicant has a common name (for instance, Jane Smith). Our counselors will typically recommend against searching civil court records where the name being searched is common because far too many records will be returne
