Rush on Business : Iowa Corporate Lawyer & Attorney : Rush Nigut of Brick Gentry Law Firm : Serving Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, & Sioux City

A few weeks ago I posted on how your spouse could get you fired. Well, its not just your spouse you need to worry about. What about your kids?

A recent Family Circle article discussed how a teen's post got her father fired.  The father apparently could not get time off to attend his daughter's school musical.  The daughter was upset and vented about it on her MySpace page.  The article says she stated she didn't want to work for someone like dad's boss: "He yells all the time, treats my dad like dirt, won't let my dad spend time with his family even though he gets to take time off constantly, and doesn't even know how to do his job."  

Unfortunately, the rant went out to several hundred of the girl's MySpace friends, including kids at school, one of whom was the boss' son. The boy showed the post to his father and the girl's father was fired.

All of this underscores the importance of discussing with your kids how "public" information can become. Even if an account is private, that doesn't mean that one of your kid's friends won't share the information with the rest of the world.  

P.S. Sorry I couldn't find a link to the article online but check out the October 17, 2009 edition of Family Circle magazine for the article, Share Tactics. There are several examples of how today's teens have no problem revealing every detail of their lives online.

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Okay, you have decided you can do it on your own. You don't need a lawyer to review your agreement (at least until the proverbial you know what hits the fan).  But let me give you some MasterCard commercial-like "priceless" advice:

READ YOUR AGREEMENTS. 

I am honestly not trying to be a smart aleck when I say this. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen really smart business people fail to follow this simple plea.  Just reading and actually understanding your agreements will help you avoid a great deal of trouble - with or without a lawyer.

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You've probably seen them in your contracts. Miscellaneous provisions such as choice of law, litigation venue, successors and assigns provisions, no waiver, entire understanding, or supersede clauses.  They tend to always appear at the end of the contract and are almost always an afterthought by the parties. After all, those provisions don't mean anything, right? 

Wrong.

Often when a contract claim proceeds to litigation these miscellaneous provisions are outcome determinative.  Take for example the litigation venue provision.  Let's say you are a small Iowa company and the contract specifies that your case must be heard in the courts of Los Angeles, California.  This means you must be prepared to fight the case in Los Angeles or you may automatically lose your case. The California venue will almost assuredly drive up the costs of litigation over an Iowa venue. First, your Iowa lawyer, unless he or she is licensed in California, will need to get local counsel in California. Chances are the California local counsel will charge a substantially higher hourly rate than here in the Midwest and you will likely need to travel for court hearings and other proceedings.  WIthout the money to fight, you are doomed from the outset regardless of how good your case may be. Plus, without a history with the judges in that state it is often difficult to predict the outcome of issues which could put you at a real disadvantage.

That's just one example. The other miscellaneous provisions in your contracts can come back to bite you in other ways. My recommendation is to carefully consider these provisions and don't treat them as an afterthought. If litigation occurs, you may be very happy you did.

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A jury recently found a Union County Board of Supervisor, Mike King, not guilty of disorderly conduct after half hour of deliberation.  Brick Gentry's Matt Brick and Doug Fulton defended King in the case.  

For details on the case please read Matt's blog post regarding the intersection of employment law and criminal law.

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Brett Trout, author of BlawgIT, offers his take on how you should navigate the Internet's legal minefield in a recent post on IowaBiz.

Trout's Cyberlaw: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business is a book  I highly recommend if you currently operate (or plan to operate) an online business. It's a great desk reference rather than one you would read from cover-to-cover. I have referred to mine on several occasions as Internet legal issues come up. But keep in mind that the Internet continues to evolve so quickly, particularly with the explosion of social networking sites, that the book can't cover all nuances even though it was published just two years ago.

As Trout says, you won't become a Cyberlawyer by reading the book but you likely will have a better understanding of the legal issues involved with the Internet and also will give you leg up when the need arises to consult a lawyer.

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