Things
have been quite slow on the legal front lately. As a result,
I have been hanging out around the local Dairy Queen, waiting
for some people to become involved in some lawsuit-caliber
material. No luck so far. To "boost" business,
I even walk up to people who I deem to be "accident
prone" and ask them if they know anybody I can sue.
Usually they tell me that they don't, so I steal their ice
cream and beat a hasty retreat to the nearby alleyway where
I scarf down their ice cream amongst the homeless and downtrodden
members of society who have chosen to live 10 feet away
from puddles of their own urine. I consider these men to
be my brothers; we often pretend we're time-travelling pirates
who must defeat the evil Queen Victrolia in order to restore
law and order to our kingdom. Our "kingdom" is
represented by an eggcrate with the words "MANNY"
scrawled across it, and Queen Victrolia is a large, abandoned
refrigerator which hosts a family of watermelon-sized rats
inside.
Bah,
enough about my exciting adventures, let's get on to the
legal "Q&A" (that means "Question and
Answer" for all you legal simpletons who did not attend
my prestigious college of Harvard's School of Law and
Legal Matters and Oil Rig Maintenance).
From:
Candy Mendoza
Subject: Company Problems
Leonard,
I
love your column, much more than that other column that
one guy wrote about the thing. Anyway here's my problem:
recently I attended a social gathering at my boss' house.
Is there any way I can sue?
Dear
Leonard-
Whoops,
I guess I should've started out this reply with "Dear
Candy". Well, I'm new to this whole legal "Q&A"
thing, so please bear with me. As for your legal problem,
the event that you described can result in a myriad of lawsuits
you may file against your boss. Try to answer these questions
to determine which lawsuit would be best fitted to suit
your particular legal needs:
1)
Did your boss sexually harass you at the party? You were
officially the victim of sexual harassment if he made
any of the following comments to you: "hello",
"you look nice in that dress", "may I take
your coat?", "the earliest writing in Mesopotamia
was a picture writing invented by the Sumerians who wrote
on clay tablets using long reeds", and "want
to hop up and down on my man-machine all night long?"
are all lawsuit material.
2) Did he or anybody else at the party make you uncomfortable
in any way? Did somebody give you "weird", "strange",
or "normal" looks? Did you see any furniture
that looked "out of place" or "tacky"?
When somebody spoke to you, did they make the symbol for
"quotation marks" frequently? If so, you probably
have good legal grounds to sue.
3) Do you have repressed memories? If you do, you probably
won't know it. So think about it; are there any memories
you're not aware you know of? If you answered either yes
or no to this question, I think you can safely bring your
jerk boss to court.
If
there's anything I've learned in the 400+ years I've been
practicing law, it's got to be "never bring your mother's
charred corpse into court as a character witness."
I also learned that juries are very lenient on sexual harassment
cases, assuming the plaintiff is very attractive and wears
a short red skirt with no underwear. Oh yeah, and she can't
have a penis either, or you can just throw the entire suit
out the window.
