Litigation Value: $0

It’s week 2 of our review of The Office webisodes. This time, we watched “Kevin’s Loan.” In this particularly hilarious webisode, it is revealed that Kevin has a gambling debt. He devises a scheme to pay off his debt by getting a loan to open up a mobile ice cream business. Unfortunately, there are some problems with his plan, although not with the name of one of his flavors — Fudge the Magic Dragon. Kevin enlists the help of Darryl from the warehouse, and hilarity ensues.

From a liability perspective, the main problem I see is that Kevin walks the line of committing fraud. Of course, since Dunder Mifflin isn’t in on the act with him, the company is in pretty good shape. One issue that is worth examining is: What should Oscar and Darryl have done when they became aware of what Kevin was doing on company time?

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Litigation Value: $0

With “The Office” on hiatus for a few weeks, we thought we’d take a look at the webisodes to get our fix. In the most recent webisode, “The Outburst,” Oscar flips out on an unknown victim on his cell phone while sitting at his desk. Naturally, everyone within earshot becomes quite curious about the situation. They ask Oscar, but he’s not telling.  He claims it’s a private matter. Unfortunately, the others in the office don’t agree, and they do everything they can to pry into Oscar’s life and figure out who he was yelling at.

I won’t spoil the big finish –- that’s what she said –- but I will tell you that Oscar may or may not have a claim for invasion of privacy. If your company has a well written policy, they can peak around employees’ desks without much of a problem. Still, employees do have a right to be free from highly offensive invasions into private matters.

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Litigation Value: $1,000,000

The folks at Dunder Mifflin must have felt like giving because they were essentially writing checks on the “Moroccan Christmas” episode of The Office. As always, there was plenty of inappropriate conduct going on this week, but rarely does it rise to this level.

Michael served excessive amounts of alcohol to Meredith, causing her to get drunk and light herself on fire ($); then, he led an intervention about her alcoholism — at work ($$); and then, he basically kidnapped her and physically assaulted her as he tried to falsely imprison her at the rehabilitation center ($$$).

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For the second year in a row, we’ve been selected as one of the ABA Journal’s Blawg 100, a list of the 100 best blogs for lawyers as chosen by the editors of the ABA Journal, the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association.

They’re running a contest to determine which blawgs are the most popular. In the spirit of the Dundies, we’re asking for your support. Maybe it’s not as glamorous or prestigious as the “Longest Engagement Award,” won by Pam, but then again, what is? Plus, we pledge that, unlike Stanley, we will not throw out our award if we win.

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Litigation value: $0

While everyone at Dunder Mifflin seemed a little more animated than usual on “The Surplus” episode of The Office, fortunately there was nothing that I saw that anyone did to create liability for the company in terms of a lawsuit. Obviously, I don’t recommend secretly marrying a coworker against her will, but that isn’t going to lead to a verdict against Dunder Mifflin.

Despite this, there were still things that we can learn from “The Surplus.” The thing that stuck out to me the most was Pam’s kissing up to Michael when she was trying to get him to choose new chairs over a new copier. She dolled herself up and made several flattering comments about how nice Michael’s back side looked in those $9 pants.

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