PRRN Announces Public Record Researcher Agreement Document

On Monday April 26th, the Public Record Retriever Network (PRRN, www.prrn.us) announced the release of a model template of a Public Record Researcher Agreement to be used by public record researchers and Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRAs). The Agreement represents a best efforts work to provide a starting point for a written agreement that is fair to both parties and not one-sided in nature.

Designing the Agreement as a flexible template gives both parties the ability to modify text to properly reflect their business practices and services, as well as recognize the fact that different jurisdictions have different demands on public record research.

Some of the issues addressed in the Agreement include: defining default search criteria; defining the centralized court index and the predominantly used index; which party provides E & O insurance coverage; disclosure of working with sub-contractors; disclosure of pre-screened searches; charges or non-charges for searching AKA’s aliases and hyphenated names; and disclosure if background checks are performed on employees of the researcher.

In addition, the Agreement is designed to comply with Clauses 4.1 and 4.3 of the NAPBS Accreditation Rules Document.

The people who gave their time and expertise towards the creation of this document include researchers and CRAs as well as members of the NAPBS Provider Committee. People who actively participated include Timothy Baxter, Wendy Davis, Larry Henry, Rod Hughes, Ann Lane, Ernest McConnell, Ben Peacock, Michael Sankey, and Cliff Williams. While it certainly was a group effort, it must be noted that the majority of the text was written and provided by Attorney Larry Henry. Mr. Henry also reviewed all revisions.

This Model Agreement is the property of PRRN and is provided to PRRN members to use as a member benefit. It will hopefully find its way into circulation.