Jon Coppelman of Worker's Comp Insider discusses a recent case in which the surviving family of Christa Worthington, a woman murdered in her secluded Cape Cod home in a widely publicized case, is suing the trash-hauling company that employed her alleged murderer. For what set of job vacancies should employers be obliged to carry out criminal background checks? The answer cannot reasonably be "all of them", yet all employees are potential committers of crimes, and some bounds must inevitably be drawn around the obligation. And of course there is the question whether it is socially desirable or even legally permissible for employers to exclude ex-offenders from lowly jobs; for a particularly horrifying example of the latter problem, see Overlawyered, Sept. 24, 1999.