2017 was a watershed moment of sorts for victims of sexual harassment in the workplace, with many women (and men) coming forward to report inappropriate behavior by their superiors that long went unacknowledged. The wave of accusations that have come out in recent months has spread to seemingly every corner of our society—the media, the entertainment industry, and even Capitol Hill. We have previously published an article outlining the various civil actions available to victims of sexual abuse, but, in this post, we will define what behavior constitutes sexual harassment and what to do about it if it happens to you.

What Behavior Constitutes Sexual Harassment?

Under federal law, there are two forms of sexual harassment: quid pro quo and hostile work environment. Quid pro quo sexual harassment requires that a person in authority demands that subordinates tolerate sexual harassment as a condition of getting or keeping a job or job benefit, including promotions and raises. Hostile work environment harassment is grounds for legal action when the conduct is unwelcome, based on sex, and severe or pervasive enough to create an abusive or offensive work environment. Courts analyze several elements in determining whether a hostile environment harassment claim is valid, including:

In the United States, we are a nation of dog lovers. There are an estimated 78 million dogs living in the United States, and approximately 44% of all households in the United States own a dog. That’s a lot of dogs running around. While the vast majority of dogs in this country live up to their title of Man’s Best Friend, not all of them do. Sadly, many dogs endure neglect and abuse at the hands of their owners, which often have the effect of making the dogs more aggressive than they would naturally be.

Below, we’ll go over what you should do if you are bitten by a dog and what legal options are available to you.

Steps to Take if You are Bitten by a Dog

The Zika virus is a mosquito-borne illness that originated in Africa in the 1940s and was initially detected in monkeys. It was later identified in humans by 1952. From the 1960s to 1980s, Zika virus infections were found mostly in Africa and Asia and were typically accompanied by only minor illness. Now, however, the Zika virus has become a full-blown epidemic in many South and Central American countries and has even made its way to the United States. Zika virus during pregnancy is often the cause of congenital brain abnormalities in the fetus, including microcephaly, and the Zika virus is also a trigger of Guillain-Barré syndrome. The virus is primarily transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected mosquito, but can also be spread through blood transfusions and sexual activity.

Below, we’ll examine three ways that you may be able to hold someone else liable if they were responsible for your Zika infection.

Employer Negligence

In the realm of personal injury law, the kinds of cases we see most often are those in which someone has committed a negligent act that caused someone else harm. In most cases, the perpetrator of the harm did not intend to cause the harm to the victim but was acting in a way that made them legally liable for the harm. For example, very few people intentionally try to crash their cars into other vehicles, but car accidents are often the result of a lapse of judgment on the driver’s part. If that lapse of judgment rises to the level of negligence—for example, they were texting and driving and not paying attention to where they were going—then it can expose the person to liability.

While most people do not intend to harm others with their actions, there are some cases where that is exactly the perpetrator’s intent. These types of actions are called intentional torts. Below, we’ll take a look at a few different types of intentional torts.

Assault and Battery

A Texas woman has sued Victoria’s Secret in federal court, alleging that she suffered third-degree burns after one of its hoodies touched a stovetop burner and burst into flames. Samantha Burke says in her lawsuit that, on November 21, 2016, she was heating up some soup on her gas stove while wearing a hoodie from the company’s PINK apparel line. While moving the soup from the burner to the countertop, she states that she smelled something burning and realized that the drawstring on her Victoria’s Secret PINK hoodie had caught fire. As she set the soup on her kitchen counter, she saw flames on the right side of her body. Hearing her scream, Burke’s husband yelled at her to drop to the floor and roll. She did so, but the flames did not go out immediately. Instead, she and her husband put the fire out with their bare hands.

Doctors who treated Burke after the accident diagnosed her with third-degree burns and put skin grafts on them before placing her in an airplane splint, a device that fixes the patient’s arm at shoulder level to aid in the healing process. Burke states that she spent several weeks in the splint, which forced her into a posture that made her body ache, and pain medication provided her little relief. Even sleep provided no relief, she claims, as she had recurring nightmares of being trapped in a fire in her home. The problems persisted even after she thought she had improved enough to return to work. Burke claims that, while she was giving a presentation in a light sweater at work one day, the seater irritated her skin so badly that her skin began to bleed. Alarmed by this development, she returned to her doctor, who informed her that her burns had reached “maximum improvement,” meaning that she will be stuck with scarred skin that cannot be exposed to heat or sunlight for the rest of her life.

In her complaint, Burke is claiming damages based on theories of products liability, gross negligence, negligent design, and failure to warn. She also wants Victoria’s Secret to pay her hospital bills. This is not the first time that Victoria’s Secret has found itself in legal trouble over flaming garments. The company has been sued 19 times since 2004, including four class actions, by women alleging products liability and claiming they were either burned when a candle caught their lingerie on fire, they suffered allergic reactions to lingerie, or bras injured them and left scars.

A man who was temporarily blinded in one eye—and who may lose the eye altogether—after a foul ball struck him in the face at Wrigley Field this summer has filed a personal injury suit against the Chicago Cubs and Major League baseball. The suit alleges that the two parties failed to install enough safety netting at the field to protect him and other plaintiffs and seeks at least $50,000 in damages. The plaintiff, 60-year-old John “Jay” Loos, said he has undergone three surgeries to repair his severely damaged left eye and the five bones in his face shattered by the foul ball that struck him as he sat down the first base line during a game between the Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates on August 29.

Loos’s lawsuit comes at a time of increased scrutiny and criticism of the MLB’s safety practices. Many are calling on major league teams to extend their safety netting farther down the lines to protect fans sitting there like the netting that protects the fans sitting behind home plate. The MLB has acknowledged that fans would like the option to sit behind netting. “It is important that fans have the option to sit behind protective netting or in other areas of the ballpark where foul balls and bats are less likely to enter,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “This recommendation attempts to balance the need for an adequate number of seating options with our desire to preserve the interactive pre-game and in-game fan experience that often centers around the dugouts, where fans can catch foul balls, see their favorite players up close and, if they are lucky, catch a tossed ball or other souvenir.”

The suit also comes on the heels of another incident in New York, in which a two-year-old child was struck in the face by a line drive foul ball at Yankee Stadium. After the girl was hit in New York, Manfred said the MLB has worked with teams to expand netting in ballparks before and would “redouble our efforts on this important issue.” A spokesman for the Chicago Cubs said the team had not seen the lawsuit but declined comment. Days after the child was struck in New York, Cubs President of Business Operations Crane Kenney said the team would extend the netting already in place by at least 30 feet down lines. And on Monday, an attorney for Loos, Colin Dunn, said he’d contacted the Cubs and was encouraged by what they said, but declined to elaborate further.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has called on the Federal Aviation Administration to remove its medical certification exemption for commercial hot air balloon operators, saying it contributed to a July 30, 2016, balloon crash in Texas that killed 15 passengers and the pilot. The board found on October 17 that the balloon pilot’s “pattern of poor decision making,” combined with his own impairing medical conditions and medication use, led to the crash.

On the day of the accident, the balloon hit power lines before crashing and burning in a field near Lockhart, Texas. The pilot, Alfred Nichols, launched in fog and then descended through clouds that impaired his ability to see and avoid obstacles, according to the NTSB. Nichols took Valium and oxycodone that likely affected the flight, investigators said. He flew with enough Benadryl in his system to have the equivalent blood-alcohol content of a drunken driver, investigators said.The weather forecast about two hours before the 7 a.m. launch of the balloon showed clouds as low as 1,100 feet above the ground. A crew member for Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides said there was fog near the launch site. A passenger photograph taken about four minutes before the accident showed the balloon flying above a dense cloud layer that extended all the way to the horizon. The balloon hit power lines while descending about 44 minutes after launch, which caused the basket to separate from the balloon itself, allowing the burner assembly to cause a post-crash fire.

“This pilot should not have been flying — never mind carrying paying passengers,” said Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the board. “The pilot’s poor decisions on the day of the accident were his and his alone, but they affected those who flew with him.” Nichols had previously operated balloon-ride companies in Missouri and Illinois. Numerous customer complaints against Nichols’s companies were reported in those states dating back to 1997. Customers told the Better Business Bureau that their rides would get canceled at the last minute and their fees never refunded.Nichols also had at least four conditions for drunk driving and had twice spent time in prison.