Business Litigation

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Yesterday the United States Supreme Court upheld, in a 5-4 decision, the constitutionality of the individual mandate under the Affordable Care Act. I am no expert on the act and I have not had time to closely review the decision. Consequently, I suggest you do what I am doing and go read some of the…

Mike Colwell of the BIZ recently wrote an excellent post on IowaBiz titled Partnerships a Guaranteed Divorce. Mike explains in his post that wise business people will always plan for the divorce. The end is inevitable, whether it’s due to death, retirement, disagreement or other reasons.

Mike also linked to my recent seminar on…

 I was busy reading an article on Why Lawyers Don’t Run Startups (And Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers) when I ran across a terrific lesson learned from the article’s author, Steve Blank. 

In every company that gives you a contract there’s someone who wants a deal. When you run into contract issues, call them first

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Last December I wrote about how an employee wage misclassification case cost Oracle $35 million. The question about whether an employee is exempt v. non-exempt is often misunderstood by employers. Often, employers want to avoid paying overtime to employees.  So employers will play a game of Russian roulette by paying those workers a salary instead…

A common thing I see from franchisees is that they include only the name of the franchisor in contracts as opposed to including the corporate or limited liability company name of THEIR franchisee business. Most of the time the names are different. For example, if I own a  "Subway" franchise but my corporate name is "Rush Nigut Enterprises, Inc.", I…

I often review contracts for clients that are doing business with companies from out-of-state. Inevitably these contracts will have a choice of law provision that says the laws of [insert state] apply. Clients usually take it for granted that a court will apply the laws of the state referenced in the contract.

But a recent…

I was quoted in this article from The Street entitled, "When The Parent Company Drags You Down". The article discusses the financial woes of some franchises including Quiznos and the impact on franchisees.

If your a franchisee caught in a system experiencing financial problems, my first piece of advice is to carefully review the terms of your…

Joe Kristan of the Tax Update Blog has a very interesting post on So What is the Right S Corporation Salary? The blog post discusses a recent 8th Circuit case where a West Des Moines accountant had to pay FICA taxes on about $91,000 of his earnings from his professional S corporation –rather than $24,000–…

Lawyers are not immediately recognized as the most creative souls on the planet but some of the best lawyers I know definitely have the the creative spark. I have seen many who were classic doodlers, photographers and painters. Some of them were also the most creative in the courtroom and ultimately very successful in winning cases. That’s why I am…

Jason Shinn of the Michigan Employment Law Advisor had a great post entitled "Is your company making this mistake when it comes to employees and intellectual property?" The post centers on a lawsuit filed by an employee of Marvel Entertainment who claimed he created the Ghost Rider character back in the 1970s. With the recent success…