Negligence for a certifying officer generally means failing to exercise the level of care that a reasonably prudent certifying officer would use under similar circumstances, leading to an illegal, improper, or incorrect payment.

Core idea of negligence

  • Negligence is a failure to use reasonable care, i.e., the care a reasonably prudent person would use in the same situation.
  • Applied to a certifying officer, it focuses on whether the officer reasonably reviewed records and information before certifying a payment.

How it applies to certifying officers

  • Certifying officials are personally liable (pecuniarily liable) when an illegal, improper, or incorrect payment occurs because they were negligent or failed to follow required checks.
  • Negligence can include not verifying that a payment is legal, proper, correct, and charged to the right appropriation when a reasonable review would have revealed problems.

What is not negligence

  • If the officer relied on official records, exercised reasonable diligence, had no reason to know of an issue, and could not have discovered it with reasonable inquiry, that generally is not negligence and may support relief from liability.
  • Mere honest error without a lack of reasonable care (for example, where the error was not discoverable through normal review) is typically treated differently from negligence.

Typical “true” statement in question form

If you are looking at multiple-choice options, the statement that is usually true is the one closest to:

“Negligence, as it applies to a certifying officer, is the failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent certifying officer would exercise in verifying that a payment is legal, proper, and correct before certification, which can result in personal (pecuniary) liability for any resulting improper payment.”

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.