This is Lesson #3 in a five-part series on the top reasons I’ve seen franchisees fail. Tucked away in nearly every franchise agreement is a provision that very few franchisees consider when they are purchasing a franchise business. The provision I am referencing gives a franchisor the right to sell or transfer its business to … Continue Reading
Happy New Year everyone! The first blog post of the year centers on a controversial Iowa Supreme Court decision handed down right before the holidays. In Nelson v. Knight, the Iowa Supreme Court was presented with the question whether a male employer could terminate a female employee because the employer’s wife, due to no fault … Continue Reading
Daniel Burnick of the Alabama Employment Law Report has an interesting post on a case involving a disputed Twitter account where the employee left his employment, changed his Twitter account name and then kept all the followers he had with his former employer. In Kravitz v. PhoneDog, Kravitz used @phonedog for his Twitter account while … Continue Reading
IASourceLink.com is a new online resource available to help small business owners and entrepreneurs across Iowa. I haven’t had a ton of time to explore the site but I impressed with the information available on my initial review. One neat feature is the Iowa Business Concierge service available in collaboration with MyEntre.Net. The business concierge … Continue Reading
In my last post I shared my ABI Quick Bits Interview on Wage & Hour Lawsuits. In that interview I discussed how I often hear employers reference "1099 employees". I cautioned that you should make sure not to confuse independent contractors and employees. They are separate worker classifications and it’s important the your workers are … Continue Reading
I recently sat down for an interview with Leisa Fox of the Iowa Association of Business & Industry to discuss wage and hour lawsuits. For a blog post I wrote on the topic see here. Be sure to check out the other Quick Bits videos on a variety of business topics from ABI.… Continue Reading
Rush Nigut of Brick Gentry, P.C. will be one of the featured speakers at the Iowa Association of Business and Industry’s Social Media Roundtable on November 14, 2012 at the Honey Creek Lodge Resort. Rush will deliver the keynote general session presentation on New Developments and the Future of Social Media. He will also lead … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
Over the years I’ve noticed that very few businesses actually plan for selling or passing on their business to employees or family. It’s one of the most important things any business owner can do. I’ve teamed up with business coach Monte Wyatt to provide a free seminar to business owners on business succession planning. The … Continue Reading
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 … Continue Reading
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 of … Continue Reading
I am pleased to announce that I now have a Rush on Business You Tube Channel where I’ll post short videos on various aspects of business and franchise law. I have a few videos posted so far and I’ll add content weekly. New videos include: Should You Include Your Spouse When Forming a Small Business LLC? … Continue Reading
Jon Hyman wrote on his Ohio Employer’s Law Blog that the NLRB has issued a 2nd report on social media as protected concerted activity. If you are an employer considering discipline or termination of an employee resulting from social media activity you need to be very careful. Jon points out: This report underscores that employees’ use of social media … Continue Reading
Over the last 5 years that I have been writing this blog, there haven’t been many Iowa business lawyers who write a blog on a regular basis. But when I was looking at Mike Colwell’s Startup Models site, I noticed a new blog from business lawyer Chris Sackett of Brown Winick called BizB4Law. Chris wrote a … Continue Reading
In my experience, wage and hour issues are often misunderstood by employers. Employers often treat employees as "exempt" in order to avoid paying the overtime owed to "non-exempt" employees. As a plaintiff’s attorney said in one of my previous blog posts on the subject: "I can hit a company with a hundred sexual harassment lawsuits, and it will … Continue Reading
One of the things I love the most is providing proactive educational workshops to companies and other organizations. Due to the ever-growing interest in the topic, I am pleased to announce that I am now offering a new legal training workshop for businesses, large and small, regarding social media. A custom workshop will be designed for your business to cover the following topics: Overview of Social Media, … Continue Reading
With emerging companies I am often asked about equity and stock options for employees. That process is often complicated and costly. Usually the reason I hear favoring the equity / options approach is that employers want their employees to "feel like they are a part of something." An admirable goal ineed but are equity /options necessary to … Continue Reading
Our new startup company, Notifyworks, Inc. has officially launched its Web site today. You can check it out at www.notifyworks.com. The site also contains a blog which will cover client relations and legal technology issues. Notifyworks is a software system that allow you to set up proactive notifications to clients that are timed to automatically go out in … Continue Reading
Once a mainstay of this blog, I have not written about employment law for quite some time. Since my franchise law practice has grown over the past few years, I’ve left it to Matt Brick from Brick Gentry to handle employment law issues in the office. On the blogging side there are many great employment law blogs to … Continue Reading
Earlier this week I applied for a charge card for my new business. As a part of the application, I was informed that I would need to personally guarantee charges, not only for my card, but also the cards of any other people under the account. Fortunately, this did not come as a surprise because I had … Continue Reading
Matt Brick has a super webinar on our Brick Gentry Web site on the Changes to Iowa Employment Law and Legislation. Employment law is a constantly shifting area of the law that has serious consequences for employers, even when making a good faith mistake. Matt’s presentation covers important developments in employment law for both public and private employers … Continue Reading
I often received questions about whether a worker should be classified as an independent contractor or employee. In fact a blog post on Employees v. Independent Contractors is still one of the most popular posts ever on my blog even though I wrote it over three years ago. In a couple of recent blog posts, Brick … Continue Reading
Listen and watch the premiere Brick Gentry, P.C. webinar from immigration lawyer Austin Kennedy on our new Brick Gentry Web site. Austin’s presentation is on Achieving Lawful Permanent Residency in the United States Through the Labor Certification Process. We are currently in the process of developing presentations on franchise and LLC issues. Register for our Webinars and receive … Continue Reading
