As reported on  law.com, Edward Harrington Heyburn worked at the firm of Levinson Axelrod until he was fired in 2004. Let’s start by saying the parting was not amicable.

Heyburn started a Web site — http://levinsonaxelrod.net — dedicated to trashing his former employer. The site contains detailed stories of underhanded dealings by the firm and:

• calls  senior partner Richard Levinson “The Hypocrite Behind the Curtain”
• refers to another partner, David Wheaton, as a “used-car salesman with a law degree”
• describes firm bigwig Adam Rothenberg as “a man without friends”

The firm has hired another lawyer, Thomas Cafferty, to take legal action against Heyburn.

More of Heyburn’s allegations about Levinson Axelrod:

• Demands by the firm that Heyburn and others place the good of the firm ahead of family obligations, “including the birth of my son,” Heyburn wrote
• A refusal to close the firm’s New Jersey offices on on Sep. 11, 2001,  to allow employees to check on their loved ones and friends and cope with the day’s events

It goes on from there, including criticism of the firm’s lawyers who lost big cases.

So, what we have here is a legal firm hiring a lawyer to sue a lawyer who hates lawyers . Maybe that means they’ll leave the rest of us alone for a while.

The practice of “friending” on social-networking sites can be a legally dangerous one when it involves a supervisor and a subordinate. Plus, a lot of subordinates think it’s creepy.

The seemingly innocent practice of  sending friend requests to staff via Facebook, Twitter and other sites can trigger a slew of legal claims, including harassment, discrimination or wrongful termination, as well as touch off complaints of favoritism if the boss friends only a select person or persons.

That’s the warning from attorney Michael Schmidt on law.com.

Here’s the source of the problem: Social-networking sites typically are packed with personal information. So, what happens if a friending boss learns TMI — too much info — about a subordinate? That opens the door for an employee complaint that the boss made work decisions, such as promotions, based on the personal information.

The example given by Schmidt:

• Suppose an employee is a member of a gay-rights group.
• Then suppose the friending boss fires the employee because of performance issues.
• The employee then could argue that the boss used the personal information as a basis for the termination.

That’s just one example of many: religious affiliation, age,  political affiliation, health problems. All could serve as a basis for a lawsuit should the supervisor take an adverse action against the employee.

If that’s not enough, consider that in a survey by staffing firm Office Team, 47% of respondents said they don’t want to be friended by their bosses.

The message to supervisors: Don’t do it.

Dean Klein worked for J.P. Morgan Chase from 1980 until 2005. He was fired after being caught allegedly taking empty toner cartridges home, selling them to a recycling service and pocketing the money.

But Klein, who was a manager at the time he was fired, claims the company was acting on a false tip from another employee who was trying to clear the way for her own advancement.

He says Morgan Chase fired him without conducting a thorough investigation, never gave him a chance to defend himself and refused to give him a copy of the employee handbook that might spell out what he rule he broke.

He’s suing his ex-employer for wrongful termination and breach of contract.

How significant is the finacnial sum involved in this dispute? Staples, for example, offers $3 in store credit per cartridge, so over a long enough period of time, it can add up.

Of course, there’s no “good” way to fire an employee, but managers — especially newer managers — should be aware that work psychologists note that some ways are better than others:

• Be clear — in your own mind — about the reasons. You don’t need to go into exact detail with the person being terminated, but you should be rock-solid on the reasons in case there’s ever a legal challenge. Fuzzy reasons tend to create doubts in the minds of a judge or jury. And doubts are never good when someone’s challenging the firing on the basis of discrimination.
• Get to the point quickly and clearly and concisely. Discussing last night’s football game as an icebreaker for a termination meeting just doesn’t work, and only makes matters worse.
• It’s OK to rehearse, but don’t use a script. Imagine yourself on the other side of the table, and the person doing the firing is checking off boxes on a sheet of paper while going through the process of rearranging your life. Not cool. You should be adequately prepared, but don’t make it seem like you’re counting widgets.
• Stay calm and listen to the reaction. It might be sorrow, or it might be rage. Whatever it is, be ready to listen but not necessarily react.
• If laying off large numbers, take time to regroup between meetings. To the person being fired, the situation is unique and should be treated that way. Assembly-line firing is unfair to that person. So take a little time between each meeting and ready yourself to treat the person individually and appropriately. If the layoff is connected to cost-cutting, consider highlighting the employee’s strengths and contributions.

A local resident notified the Altoona, IA, police department after he discovered cop Abigail Keller’s MySpace page containing inappropriate photos of her at a bar. In one shot, she was mooning the camera, while in others she performed simulated sex acts, Associated Content reports.

Keller’s response: The pictures were posted a few years ago, before she was hired — and she (mistakenly) believed her profile was blocked from public view.

The department fired her. Was that the legal thing to do?

Yes. When Keller took the city to court, a judge ruled the firing was justified, since a police force must maintain a good reputation in the public’s eye.

However, the court did grant Keller unemployment pay, because she did not “intentionally disregard” the department’s interests.

When IT finds someone’s been browsing offensive Web sites on a work computer, you’d normally fire the employee. But what happens when it’s a computer several employees share?

That’s what happened in this recent case:

All employees in one department of a hospital shared a computer. Employees each had their own username and password, and company policy required them to log in under their own name and log out when they were finished.

But in practice, the first employee to use the computer would normally stay logged in all day, with all employees working under that name.

During one shift, an employee noticed pornographic sites in the computer’s Web browsing history. She complained to HR, who brought the matter to IT for an investigation.

It turned out that the only male employee in the department was logged in to the computer at the time the porn sites were visited. He denied going to the sites, citing the common practice of all employees sharing one login ID.

A further investigation showed the man was the only department employee scheduled to work on a day when some some of the sites were browsed. He was fired.

Still, he said he didn’t do it — and he sued the hospital for gender discrimination, claiming they assumed he viewed the pornography because he was the only male employee.

The company asked a judge to toss the case, arguing it conducted a thorough investigation before the employee was fired.

The court agreed. First, since the man was logged in to the computer at the time, it was reasonable to start the investigation with him. And the list of possible perpetrators was narrowed down even further by comparing employees’ schedules with the times the sites were accessed, giving the company good cause to fire the employee.

Lesson: When multiple employees share one computer, it’s smart to create a policy requiring individuals to log in and out. But to track activity, the company still has to enforce the policy. If the hospital had done that in this case, it may have avoided the lawsuit altogether.

Cite: Farr v. St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers

The controversy started when AA CEO Dov Charney issued an e-mail — leaked to the Web site gawker.com — demanding that store managers take photos of all employees and forward the pix to him for evaluation.

Charney apparently was reacting to a dip in sales by insisting that the problem was that the company didn’t have enough beautiful people working the stores’ counters.

According the the store manager who reportedly leaked the e-mail, Charney “is tightening the AA ‘aesthetic,’ and anyone that he deems not good-looking enough to work there, is encouraged to be fired.”

Further, the manager claimed average-looking people (according to Charney’s standards) would be put on a sort of probation, and fired if their performance and numbers weren’t near the top.

Not his first rodeo
Charney, by the way, is no stranger to controversy or the courtroom. He got sued by Woody Allen for using the actor/director’s image on a billboard. Charney and AA settled with Allen for $5 million.

He’s also been sued by former female employees claiming he:

• used crude language and gestures
• conducting job interviews in his underwear
• ordered the hiring of women in whom he had a sexual interest, and
• gave one of the plaintiffs a vibrator

Charney denied all the charges.

Now, here’s the question: Can a fired employee win a lawsuit claiming ugliness discrimination? Probably not, most legal observers say. There’s nothing in the law that protects job rights of the less beautiful.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what Charney himself looks like, take a peek here. Would you hire this man?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission just came out with a document that some are calling “How to Sue Your Employer.” Rather than cursing (and hiding) the document, employers might be better served by using its contents to avoid a lawsuit.

The document, issued this month,  is officially titled “Understanding Waivers of Discrimination Claims in Employee Severance Agreements.” It’s intended to provide guidance to employees who may receive such an agreement — and who need guidance on whether they have valid grounds for a lawsuit against an employer.

EEOC issued the document after noting an increase in age discrimination charges filed with the Commission, and what the EEOC characterized as “recent controversial Supreme Court decisions on enforcement of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).”

In summary, the document provides:

• guidance to terminated employees who are offered severance pay in exchange for a waiver of discrimination claims
• explains the purpose of severance agreements and releases, as well as the legal requirements for such agreements to be valid, including requirements for a valid release of age discrimination claims under the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act
• advises employees that even if they have signed a waiver releasing their employer from claims, they can still file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC without first returning their severance pay

The document even contains an “Employee Checklist,” advising employees of factors to consider when they are offered a severance agreement.

How to use it to your advantage
Rather than hiding the document, HR can consider it  a useful resource for when drawing up a severance agreement. For instance, you can find in the document a sample waiver that’s just about bulletproof against lawsuits.

Further, you can use the document to draw up a list of “don’ts” when drafting a severance agreement — what not to put in the agreement.

And consider the document a heads-up that EEOC is giving all such agreements a closer look.

Go here to see the full document.

If it came out that a top exec at your firm was married to someone in a controversial profession, how do you think the company would react?

If you worked for this Florida town, the answer would be: Issue an immediate termination.

Scott Janke was appointed as the town manager of Fort Myers Beach in March 2008. He performed that job until last week, when Mayor Larry Kiker learned Janke is married to an adult film star. Hours after hearing the news, Kiker called an emergency meeting with town council, which voted 5-0 in favor of the firing.

In October, Janke married Anabela Mota Janke, whom the editor of a Web site covering the porn industry recognized and identified after seeing a photo of the couple in a local newspaper. Word eventually spread to people in the town’s government.

Kiker acknowledged that Janke performed his job well and broke no laws or regulations. But he, along with the town’s council members, felt his wife’s profession shed a bad light on Fort Myers Beach, the Associated Press reports.

As severance, Janke will receive six months’ salary plus health benefits. The couple wouldn’t comment on the possibility of legal action against the company. A clause in Janke’s contract allowed his termination with a majority vote from council.

What do you think? Was it OK to fire Janke to protect the town’s reputation? What would have happened if an exec at your company was in a similar situation?

Let us know in the comments section below.

In a desperate attempt to avoid being laid off, a Spanish man is believed to have hired a contract killer to murder his boss, Spanish newspaper El Pais reports.

The head of audiovisual services at the Barcelona International Convention Center allegedly paid a team of six Columbians to shoot and kill the convention center director, who had planned to lay off the arrested man.

Other recent extreme actions by fearful employees include an indebted builder who kidnapped his bank manager at gunpoint and the head of a construction firm who threatened to set himself on fire unless he was paid the debts he was owed.

You probably don’t have any examples that extreme, but what strange things have you seen anxious employees do?