A cornucopia of random employment law issues for your long weekend.

Lessons for employers from the Natalie Wood investigation. (OK, I admit this is a shameless tie-in designed to get you to read a legal blog over a holiday weekend.) But the reopening of the Natalie Wood drowning investigation after 30 years does contain a good lesson for employers -- to wit, that no matter how much time has passed, it's a good idea to go ahead and conduct whatever investigation is warranted, and even to re-investigate if appropriate. For example, suppose you learn about some workplace harassment but the accuser or the alleged "perp" is no longer with the company. Frequently the employer's reaction is, "What's the point? She's not even here any more." Contrary to this gut reaction, it is always a good idea to investigate allegations of wrongdoing even if one or both of the parties are no longer employed, and even if a lot of time has passed. For one thing, there may be other victims who are still working for you. It's also a good idea to reopen an investigation if you find that the original one was sloppy or otherwise flawed in some important way. At the very least, investigating the allegations whenever you learn of them will show your employees, plaintiff's lawyers, the EEOC, and the courts that you take allegations of misconduct seriously.