Employee Survival Guide® - Mark's Use of Real Legal Case Decisions to Help You Access Vital Employment Information

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Comment on the Show by Sending Mark a Text Message.Court decisions aren’t just legal citations—they’re human stories with stakes, missteps, and turning points that mirror what happens at work every day. We pull those stories out of paywalled databases and into your headphones, then translate the legal reasoning into plain language you can actually use. From the first complaint to the judge’s ruling, we follow the paper trail so you can see how facts meet law and why a case wins or loses.We walk through how we build each episode from real filings: complaints, answers, motion briefs, trial rulings, and appeals. That lets us spotlight age discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, non-competes, and severance negotiations using authentic details instead of hypotheticals. You’ll hear what counts as adverse action, what evidence carries weight, how timing shapes a retaliation claim, and where documentation makes or breaks credibility. We start with employee victories to show what success looks like, then bring in losses to reveal blind spots—missed deadlines, thin facts, or misapplied standards—that can derail otherwise strong stories.Discovery gets easier, too. As podcast platforms index spoken words, you can search “non-compete,” “hostile work environment,” or “summary judgment” and land on episodes that unpack those concepts through real cases. We want you to build practical legal literacy without a law degree or a research subscription. Courts are public, the lessons are actionable, and the aim is simple: help you protect your job, prevent discrimination, and negotiate from a position of knowledge when pressure hits.If this approach helps you think more clearly about your options at work, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the next topic you want us to decode. Your questions shape the cases we cover next. If you enjoyed this episode of the Employee Survival Guide please like us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We would really appreciate if you could leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Leaving a review will inform other listeners you found the content on this podcast is important in the area of employment law in the United States. For more information, please contact our employment attorneys at Carey & Associates, P.C. at 203-255-4150, www.capclaw.com.Disclaimer: For educational use only, not intended to be legal advice.

Hey, it's Mark here, and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide, where I tell you, as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about. And a lot more. Hey, it's Mark, and welcome back to the next edition of the Employer Survival Guide. Today, I want to talk to you about my use of cases, legal cases, in your podcast episodes you listen to. The reason why I use cases is because I'm trying to allow you to access real stories about friends and neighbors and people you would read about that are not otherwise accessible. I can access them because I have a database that I pay for, but you don't.

When you search the Internet, you cannot locate the case decisions that I read every day, the judges read every day. And I wanted to provide access to them. And initially I thought about, well, I'll just create a script for them. and it's time-consuming. So I use AI to, and I make no problems about it, I use AI, but here's what I do. I actually will find cases by searching Westlaw, and I will find case decisions where the employee was successful. Now, later on, I'll choose cases where the employee was not successful, so you can see

that compare and contrast. But currently, I'm using cases where the employee, you know, let's say the case was about age discrimination, just choosing one topic. But as you know, cases have multiple. claims that can have age and gender and alike. So I research them, I find them, and then I do something extra special. Because I want the production of the podcast episode that you're going to listen to, I want you to hear the actual facts. And so I'll grab the complaint or the amended complaint from the docket itself, from the federal court. I'll grab the answer. I'll even grab the

memorandums of law and support and against the motion to dismiss or summary judgment filed in the case. And then I'll also include the court's decision on that motion. I will also include a court of appeals decision if I find it, and even a Supreme Court decision. And I'll include them all into the production of the episode so that when you hear it, what you're hearing is a synopsis of the basic essence of facts, the issue of law, and what the takeaway is and how you can benefit from it. And why I'm doing that is because there's no other way for you as the general public to access this level of information. Now, why is important to access information to learn about, you know, employment issues you might face at work? It's because that's what lawyers and judges do.

Well, you don't know this, but unless you went to law school, in law school, you're faced with, you know, huge books filled with just case decisions. And we read them. And later in life and practice, lawyers and judges, we still read case decisions because that's what the law is. Just one case story after another, following principles of law, statutes, et cetera. But they're just narratives of people's real life conflicts. And I'm trying to provide you access to those case information so you can take away information from what's happened in them and relate them to your lives. And so that when you have a conflict at work, you'll have familiarity with the issue because you've already listened to it or you saw it on a YouTube video. And that's the purpose of what I'm trying to do with this part of the podcast and channel on YouTube is to give you access to the actual case decisions, real life stories.

There's a beginning, middle, and end. There's high drama. There's a lot of negative and pejorative and words used that I wouldn't utter hear. But the courts use and they don't shield the case facts from what people actually do and say to each other. And so you hear the raw essence of the case. And you can build a level. of experience while when you're at work, you'll be able to figure out, like, what are the options I have? Because you're building up a database of resources of learn knowledge through this podcast episodes or episodes, and you'll be able to figure out what you need to do. And obviously, I'm trying to put things into your possession that allows you to make decisions on your own without using an attorney. That's the whole point of all this, you know, giving you access to whether

it's otherwise not accessible. That's not the way it should be. I believe the law and the information should be accessible to you. And so that's the purpose of using all these case decisions that I put into the podcast episodes. And let me just talk about the nuance of AI and the project I'm working on. When you search your podcast platform like Apple or Spotify, you can type in the word age discrimination or you can type in the word sexual harassment, any word. These words are being picked up. Not only in a keyword sense, and you type them in like a Google search, but they're also being picked up now in the AI sense that the AI platforms for Apple and Spotify are in fact using the audio to grab the terms from the actual audio that's being spoken. And so it's becoming

much more richer. And so I'm aiming to provide a level of detail of case information through and allow these platforms to pick up using AI just to better serve you and what you're trying to use this podcast for, essentially trying to learn more about how you can protect yourself at a job and prevent discrimination from happening or what to do when it does happen or go through a severance negotiation. So I'm really trying to get in depth with these cases, give you access to them in a way that you'd not otherwise get access to them. And otherwise, the only way the way if you ask the question is simply you'd have to pay for them through a paywall through like Westlaw, a subscription service. Well, I already have that. It's public information. Courts are

public. So this is a very creative way for me to give you access. Again, do your search when you use your, if you're searching from information as you do on the web, you can also search your your Apple podcast platform, even on this channel for the Employee Surviva Guide. You can search and type things in because I'm actually putting the data that way. If you're searching for non-compete, you would find information an episode regarding non-compete. Please use the podcast platform that way. And we're just trying to get creative here to provide more information for you, along with the other topics we come out with, but that's the purpose of using cases.

I hope you enjoy it, and I'll continue to do it. And by the way, there are thousands upon thousands of cases. I mean, I'm not kidding. There are thousands of cases, and I try to select the best ones so that provide examples for you. So it's a rich environment. It's going to get richer.

And until next time, thank you very much. If you like the Employees Survival Guide, I'd really encourage you to leave a review. We try really hard to produce information to you that's informative, that's timely that you can actually use and solve problems on your own and at your employment. So if you like to leave a review anywhere you listen to our podcast, please do so. And leave five stars because anything less than five is really not as good, right?

I'll keep it up. I'll keep up the standards up. I'll keep the information flowing at you. If you'd like to send me an email and ask me a question, I'll actually review it and post it on there. You can send it to MCA-R-U-Y at C-A-P-C-Law.com. capclaw.com.