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Nasir and Matt delve into the recently filed lawsuit by a sleeping fan against ESPN.  The then answer the question, "Is it illegal for an employer to not pay an employee for training for a job? This is an hourly wage job, not contract. The location of the job is in California." Transcript: NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub on a dead sprint right now. NASIR: Slow down, slow down. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallsoundsmartbusiness.com and also don’t forget to include your location because that gives us an idea of which law applies because every state has its own law. MATT: That’s true. It does make a big difference. NASIR: And sometimes city. MATT: We only know a couple of states. Hopefully only people are sending in the states that we know. NASIR: Yes, Alaska and Cuba. Wait, Cuba’s not a state. MATT: All right. NASIR: That’s only one state then. MATT: So, our Alaskan audience. I give credit to my wife for finding this story – even if she doesn’t listen to the podcast. She’s never going to hear the credit I’m giving her. T There’s always humorous lawsuits but this is a pretty funny one. This was pretty recently. I forget how long ago. In the last week or so, there was a Yankees-Red Sox game. For you, Nasir, and for other people that don’t watch baseball, baseball games are long but games between these two teams are known to be extremely long – like, four hours plus, every single game. NASIR: Oh, really? I didn’t know that. MATT: It’s a big rivalry and so there’s a lot of pitchers changing and all that stuff. But this was in the fourth inning so I don’t really know if he has an argument but basically this fan fell asleep in the stands on the top of the fourth inning and it was nationally televised on ESPN and the camera cut to him, sleeping, and then the two announcers who – you know, like I said – were the ESPN announcers just started making fun of this guy, cracking jokes with him. I listened to it, nothing too bad. But now this guy is suing ESPN for $10 million defamation lawsuit for the avalanche of disparaging words over his nap that he was taking in the stands. I don’t know. I think this is pretty hilarious. This just seems ridiculous that he would bring this lawsuit because he fell asleep and they were making a couple of cracks at him. NASIR: I’m trying to find the actual comments and the ones that I’m reading seem so benign, you know? Like, were they actual false statements? I mean, there are laws of privacy where putting someone in a false light and so forth but this is in a public place and disparagement is not a crime or illegal but defamation is and saying something that’s not true is, but that has to be a kind of a statement of fact and not an opinion and it seems they were, like you said, just kind of making cracks and jokes and making light of the fact that he’s falling asleep at a game which obviously baseball is one of the most interesting live action games in the world – of course, next to soccer which apparently you think is less interesting. MATT: Yeah, I did like how they tried to reach out to this guy. He wasn’t able to be reached – probably because he was sleeping – but his mom was able to be reached and her response was, “You should send the message that idiots need to stay out of people’s business and not make fun of people who are harmless.” I’m glad she gets the whole point of this lawsuit. NASIR: Yeah. Well, there’s truth to that, too. I mean, on one hand, I do feel kind of bad because we do live in an age where people can be put into like this public light. You know, all of a sudden, there’s videos on YouTube and it has tens of thousands of hits and now he’s known as the guy that fell asleep. It kind of reminds me of a Seinfeld episode when George was at a tennis game – probably a Wimbledon match or someth...