§ 145.0015.Short Title

A short title, and one of the few in this code named for a particular person.

This chapter may be cited as the Sue Weaver Act.

The name records why the chapter exists. Sue Weaver was killed in 2001 by a man who had been sent to her Florida home on a duct-cleaning job arranged through a retailer, and who had a criminal record that no background check had surfaced. He returned later and murdered her.

Legislation of this kind followed in several states. Texas enacted its version in 2007.

The chapter’s design follows from that history and is worth noticing, because it is not a liability statute in the ordinary sense.

It requires a background check, and then — rather than imposing liability for failing to run one — it rewards running one with a rebuttable presumption of no negligence. The incentive is carried by the presumption, not by a penalty.

That choice has a consequence. The chapter creates no cause of action for breach of the check requirement, so a company that ignores it is left where the common law puts it: exposed to an ordinary negligent hiring claim, without the presumption to defend with.

Naming a statute after a victim is uncommon in this code, which more often uses functional titles. It appears here for the same reason it appears in the criminal statutes: the name carries the reason.