Welcome to the Employment Law Blog Carnival: Hollywood Villains Edition

Welcome everyone to the Employment Law Blog Carnival. What you’ll find after the jump is the best, recent posts from around the employment-law blogosphere all organized around a common theme.

So, yeah, we need a theme.

[Lousy blog rules]

Two years ago, we spun some tunes with the “Employment Law Blog Carnival: Jukebox Edition.” That featured such hits like “If You Love HIPAA, Let Me See You Twerk It” and a Sex Pistols B-side hidden track about social media policies.

Last year, I went with the “Employment Law Blog Carnival: Hollywood Casting Call Edition.” To the casual internet user, my writing in that post may have seemed, oh, what’s the word, “deranged”? Here is an actual quote:

Stuart Rudner blogs “When trust has been destroyed: Just cause for dismissal.” The Canadian adaptation, “Haste Makes Waste,” is set for release next year and stars Dustin Diamond as Wayne Gretzky. No, not that Wayne Gretzky. Just some guy who plays a total screw-up and happens to have the same name as the “Great One,” which, in turn, helps him to keep his job.

But, to you, my fans, you recognize it as something more than the product of some bad salmon I ingested just before a marathon two-finger typing session. It’s gold!

So, mainly since my brain is fried from churning out this drivel — free drivel — every weekday, let’s stick with the Hollywood theme. How about the Employment Law Blog Carnival: Hollywood Villains Edition? Hannibal Lechter would approve, I’m sure. You may even see him after the jump.

So grab some liver, fava beans and nice chianti and click through to read the carnival offerings…

Name: Darth Vader
Movie: Star Wars
Enemy of: Luke Skywalker
Best known for: That dark mask and James Earl Jones voice. (Forgive me, I didn’t really watch the movie that closely).
Employment Law Pet Peeve: Employers who don’t comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act. “I’m a big fan of the fluctuating workweek for my non-exempt stormtroopers,” Vader told The Employer Handbook. “To stay on top of my game, I use the FLSA Cheat Sheet at The Employment Blawg. And Janette Levey Frisch’s article ‘(The Ghost of?) Misclassified Workers May Be Scarier Than You Think!!!‘ really piqued my interest. And oooh! Oooh! [Who is this, Darth Horseshack?], also check out ‘iPhone, iPad, iPod . . . iWantCompensated: Must Employees Be Paid Simply for Waiting in Line?‘ at Steptoe and Johnson’s Employment Essentials.

 

Name: Annie Wilkes
Movie: Misery
Enemy of: Paul Sheldon
Best known for: Uh, have you seen the .gif?
Employment Law Pet Peeve: Stagnant workplace. “I’m all about change in the workplace and how to manage it,” Wilkes told The Employer Handbook. “I really liked ‘The Four Phases of Managing Change in the Workplace‘ from CPEhr. Now, someone fetch me my sledgehammer.

 

 

Name: Hans Gruber
Movie: Die Hard
Enemy of: John McClane
Best known for: Seizing the Nakatomi Plaza and nearly escaping with $640 million in bearer bonds.
Employment Law Pet Peeve: Non-competition agreements. “California law makes it easy for me to hire terrorists,” Gruber told The Employer Handbook. “When I recruited my crew for the Nakatomi job, I checked out Heather Bussing’s post and disregarded any non-compete agreements. But, for my other jobs in Michigan, it’s a whole different ballgame. Totes magotes. So I read John Holmquist’s post: ‘Non compete agreements: Alive and well in Michigan.‘”

 

Name: John Kreese (a/k/a the guy who ran the Cobra Kai dojo)
Movie: Karate Kid
Enemy of: Daniel Larussa and Mr. Miyagi
Best known for: Sweep the leg! (You have a problem with that?)
Employment Law Pet Peeve: “Bullying. Yeah, bullying. Truth. This whole Jonathan Martin thing really opened my eyes. And then I read Donna Ballman’s post about ‘7 Claims Jonathan Martin May Have Regarding Dolphins Bullying Under Florida Law.‘ And Daniel Schwartz writes that ‘Telling the Victim in a Harassment Case to Just Fight Back or Toughen Up Is Not a Solution.‘ Yeesh. I’m gonna buy some EPLI for the dojo.”

 

Name: Mr. Krabs
Movie: Spongebob Squarepants
Enemy of: Spongebob Squarepants
Best known for: I have no idea. I watch The Walking Dead, my wife watches The Voice, my kids watch Yo Gabba Gabba.
Employment Law Pet Peeve: Unpaid interns. Check out Jon Hyman’s post: “SpongeBob SquarePants, employment law professor.“

 

 

 

 

Name: John Doe
Movie: Se7en
Enemy of: Det. David Mills
Best known for: murders relating to the seven deadly sins (stuff I can’t show you in a .gif)
Employment Law Pet Peeve: LGBT discrimination in the workplace. “I support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and this post from Mike Haberman does a nice job addressing the issues relating to ENDA,” Doe told The Employer Handbook. “As far as sinning goes, not for nothing, but some of those Senators may want to develop eyes in the back of their heads.”

 

Name: John Milton
Movie: The Devil’s Advocate
Enemy of: Kevin Lomax
Best known for: Bad acting. Really bad acting.
Employment Law Pet Peeve: People who use the phrase “res ipsa loquitor.” “I mean, what’s up with that? But check out Phil Miles’s Case of the Week, ‘$666 Raise Spawns Devilish Claim – COTW #166‘ at Lawffice Space.”

 

 

 

Name: Hannibal Lechter
Movie: The Silence of the Lambs
Enemy of: Clarice Starling
Best known for: Being the best movie villain of all time. And eating some dude’s liver with some fava beans and a glass of chianti. (But you already knew that).
Employment Law Pet Peeve: Violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by asking for too much medical information from employee. Robin Shea will set you straight with “Employee medical exams and the law – how much do you know?“

 

 

Name: Freddy Krueger
Movie: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Enemy of: Sleeping teenagers. Especially, the ones who live on Elm Street
Best known for: Killing sleeping teenagers. Especially, the ones who live on Elm Street.
Employment Law Pet Peeve: Employers who think that the death of a plaintiff means the death of an discrimination claim. “Oh, not always so,” Krueger told The Employer Handbook. “Robert Fitzpatrick has a nice post entitled ‘When Does a Discrimination Claim Survive the Death of A Complainant.‘ You know, Eric, I’ve killed many complainants in my day. I remember with fondness the time…”

 

 

I hope y’all enjoyed the Carnival. If you did tweet it out there. If not, the hell with ya! Just kidding. But, tweet it twice. And come back next month when Robert Ottinger and The Ottinger Law Firm Blog will host the final Employment Law Blog Carnival of the year.

Image credit: GIFsoup.com