Senate Bill No. 51
(By Senators Buckalew, Dugan, Bowman and McKenzie)
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[Introduced February 14, 1997; referred to the Committee
on the Judiciary.]
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A BILL to amend article twenty-nine, chapter thirty of the code
of West Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one, as
amended, by adding thereto a new section, designated section
ten, relating to providing employer immunity for disclosure
of information regarding former law-enforcement officers and
providing that information provided is presumed to be in
good faith.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That article twenty-nine, chapter thirty of the code of West
Virginia, one thousand nine hundred thirty-one, as amended, be
amended by adding thereto a new section, designated section ten,
to read as follows:
ARTICLE 29. LAW-ENFORCEMENT TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION.
§30-29-10. Employer immunity from liability; disclosure of
information regarding former law-enforcement officers.
Any sheriff, chief of police, the director or chief
executive of any agency or department employing law-enforcement
officers as defined in section one of this article and the
executive director of the governor's committee on crime,
delinquency and correction or his or her designee who discloses
information about a former law-enforcement officer's job
performance to a prospective law-enforcement employer of the
former appointee or employee is presumed to be acting in good
faith and, unless lack of good faith is shown by clear and
convincing evidence, is immune from civil liability for the
disclosure or its consequences. For the purpose of this section,
the presumption of good faith is rebutted upon a showing that the
information disclosed by the former employer was knowingly false
or deliberately misleading, and was rendered with malicious
purpose of the former employee or appointee.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to provide employer
immunity from civil liability for information disclosed regarding
former law-enforcement employees.
This section is new; therefore, strike-throughs and
underscoring have been omitted.