it’s hard enough to get a new job these days, and it’s even harder to get one when your prospective employer thinks you’re a convicted criminal even though you’re not.

And if you have a name like David Smith, the odds increase that you’ll be mistaken of being a convicted criminal because there’s so many people named David Smith out there. Exacerbating the situation is when background check giants like LexisNexis Screening Solutions claims it should be forgiven for bungling a background check because it was following “industry standards.” And the industry standard, LexisNexis says, means it doesn’t always have to run a middle name through the system—even when there are some 125,000 people with the name “David Smith” in the United States.

That was, in part, LexisNexis’ defense to a lawsuit brought by a man named David Alan Smith, who claimed LexisNexis’ conduct for erroneously fingering him as a convict was willful and negligent, and violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act.