Leonard's Law

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.