A boss who grabs an employee's breasts without her consent is indeed guilty of sexual harassment.

So, you don't want to be a sexual harasser at work? Good for you! Follow these dos and don'ts, and you should be in great shape.

According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll published this week, 48 percent of working women believed they had been victims of sexual harassment in the workplace.

My reaction was, “Only 48 percent?”

Words fail me. Let’s just say that I hope he is sincere about getting the help he needs to turn his life around.

Which, among other things, should include trying to make some form of restitution to his allegedvictims. (None of this ridiculous “atonement by fighting the NRA.”)

There are more Weinstein stories than I can link to, but here are the two original sources: The article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey in The New York Times is here, and Ronan Farrow’s excellent and very disturbing article in The New Yorker is here.

Mr. Weinstein, through a spokesperson, has denied engaging in any non-consensual sexual relations or retaliating against anyone who refused his advances. The full denial is in the video, below.

Here are my eight takes from an employment law and Human Resources perspective:

No. 1: “Quid pro quo” harassment is just a fancy word for extortion — where the prize is sex, instead of money or property. When an employer threatens to terminate (or otherwise punish) an employee for refusing sexual advances, or promises to hire (or otherwise reward) her for participating, then that is extortion. (I’m using “she” and “her” for convenience, but men can be victims, too.) In the ordinary employment context, an employer is strictly (automatically) liable if a supervisor or manager engages in this type of harassment.

Yesterday, I posted about a disability discrimination case that the employer did not really screw up. Even so, a few less-than-optimal moves resulted in an adverse jury verdict that was upheld on appeal.

In Chapter 2 of our series on "employers who didn't really screw up but still lost" is a sexual harassment case that bothers me, involving the Idaho Department of Corrections ...

LaLonnie wrote this post with Sandra Sok, who is clerking for the summer in our Denver Office. Sandra is a rising second-year student at the University of Colorado Law School. Before starting law school, she worked as a paralegal while earning her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Irvine.

A law was born.  On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon ...

Happy Valentine's Day! (almost)

Psychology Today had a great article by social psychologist and professor Theresa DiDonato about nine questions one should ask oneself before starting a workplace romance. Of course, the article was written primarily from a psychological point of view, but I think the same questions work from a legal standpoint. Here are Professor DiDonato's ...

Chanukah starts at sundown this Sunday, and Christmas is only three short weeks away. Can you throw a workplace holiday party that won't result in a lawsuit? It has been ages since we've had a quiz. Let's do it!

For more on this topic, please listen to the webinar on holiday parties that I did yesterday with Laura Kerekes and the excellent people at ThinkHR. The replay is available here.

"Too long, loved the judge, didn't believe either one of them but still think she may have been hurt, liked the firm but thought they should have done more."

A little Faruqi fix for those of you don't know what to do with yourselves now that the trial is over -- David Lat of Above the Law interviewed one of the jurors, who offered some excellent insights into why they did what they did. Definitely ...

As you may have seen, the jury in Marchuk v. Faruqi came back yesterday with a verdict for plaintiff Alexandra Marchuk, but it will not allow her to retire, nor will it even pay off her law school student loans.

Ms. Marchuk got a total of $140,000:

$70,000 in back pay

$20,000 in front pay

$5,000 in punitive damages against the law firm

and $45,000 in punitive damages against partner Juan ...