Corporate Divorce Series: Do Fraudulent Credentials Annul Employment Contracts?
There are few reasons a court will treat a contract it as if it never existed at all, and those limited reasons center almost exclusively on a widely pervasive misdeed that is difficult to detect, such as resume fraud, writes Jennifer B. Rubin of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo.
“Resume fraud is not, of course, limited to educational credentials,” she adds. “Title and salary inflation abound as well as falsified job experience. Setting aside the moral discussion, the question is whether fraudulent credentials provide a basis for annulling an employment contract.”
She explains that the key to having a court grant an annulment and permitting the employer to avoid any contractual promises made to the employee based on the fabricated credentials is that the criteria at issue be material to the employer.
