Job recruiters owe a duty of reasonable care to job seekers to accurately represent their credentials to prospective employers, a federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled, allowing a claim to proceed against a staffing agency that falsely represented that one of its candidates had a college degree.

In a Feb. 21 opinion, a U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted in part and denied in part staffing and recruiting company Kelly Services' motion to dismiss claims filed by plaintiff Darshitkumar Patel for breach of contract, fraudulent and negligent representation, negligence, and detrimental reliance.