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Yahoo News: “Lillian Landry always said she wasn’t afraid to die. So when death came last week, the 99-year-old was lying peacefully in a hospice with no needles or tubes. Her final days saw her closest friend at her side and included occasional shots of her favorite whiskey, Canadian Mist. Landry is an exception. Unlike most Americans, she made her end-of-life decisions years ago: no heroic measures to save her and even instructions on the bar where mourners should gather.” From the I injured myself, but somebody else must pay for my stupidity department. SunSentinel.com: “The sister of former Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle on Thursday won a $300 million jury verdict, the largest individual win in the Big Tobacco lawsuits in Florida. Cindy Naugle, an office manager and bookkeeper at Layton’s Garage in Fort Lauderdale, sued Philip Morris, owner of her cigarette brand of choice, Benson & Hedges. Naugle was found only 10 percent at fault for taking up smoking when she was 20 years old.” Tennessean.com: “An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world’s rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar ’s manufacturing plant, but no arrests. An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world’s rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar ’s manufacturing plant, but no arrests. . . . Under the U.S. Lacey Act, trading in such banned woods is a federal offense, punishable by civil and criminal penalties or the seizure of property.” The Probate Lawyer Blog: “It’s been widely reported across various websites in the last couple days that Farrah Fawcett’s will has been revealed and it “shockingly” disinherited her longtime ex-boyfriend Ryan O’Neal (father to her son, Redmond). These reports are wrong on several levels. Fawcett family. First, the document was her Trust, not her will. . . . The specifics of how this will work are a good lesson for others to follow when they have a beneficiary who is not ready to receive a chunk of change all at once.” A woman who was hit by a train while standing on railroad tracks taking pictures sued the railroad for $6 million because it did not post a no trespassing sign. Arizona Republic: “A foe and a proponent of photo enforcement squared off in a public forum Thursday. One of the few things they agreed on was that drivers don’t have to pay the tickets that arrive in the mail. ‘Mail is not proper service,’ said Shawn Dow of Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar, who is leading a petition drive to get a photo-enforcement ban on the ballot next November.” Las Vegas Sun: “Federal law enforcement officials in Nevada are launching a major offensive against mortgage fraud, with the FBI preparing hundreds of complex cases for prosecution against operators who have preyed on Las Vegas’ still-staggering boom-and-bust real estate market. Top sources at the FBI field office said a special mortgage fraud squad is assembling evidence in 300 cases, many of them involving a million dollars or more in ill-gotten gains.” Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: “Wisconsin’s largest personal injury law firm pioneered lawyer advertising in the state back in the early 1980s, but it appears it may have been asleep at the keyboard when its biggest competitor turned to Google, Yahoo and Bing. Someone looking for a personal injury lawyer in the Milwaukee area might easily type the names Habush and Rottier into an Internet search engine. . . . But the first result most major search engines return is for a Habush competitor – Cannon & Dunphy.” Legal Blog Watch: “Further proving what your mother told you when you were five years old (”If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”) is the case of Sindoni v. County of Tioga. In this bizarre case involving employees of the County of Tioga, N.Y., Sindoni, a senior typist, had her employment terminated after her personal animosity for co-worker “Teena” went well beyond the standard office squabble.” TaxProf Blog: “The Joint Committee on Taxation has published a list of the 17 tax increases in the Senate health care bill, which are estimated to raise $370.2 billion in revenues over ten years.” Classical Values: “Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country.” Financial Times: “Wealthy families are spending more time educating their children in financial matters after an explosion of wealth among entrepreneurs means there is more money to be passed to the next generation. The past decade has seen an enormous amount of wealth created around the world. While some of it has been lost recently there is still enough left for it to be an issue among the newly rich, who have little idea how to prepare their families to receive it.” Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “Employers often wonder how far they have to go in preventing employees from committing crimes or torts on the Internet. In a recent decision, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals found that an employer is only required to prevent on the job misconduct that is foreseeable. But ‘employers have no duty to supervise employees’ private conduct or to persistently scan the word wide web to ferret out potential employee misconduct.’ Maypark v. Securitas Security Services USA, Inc.” Wall St. Journal: “Companies Face Tougher Tests to Justify Monitoring Workers’ Personal Accounts; Rulings Hinge on ‘Expectation of Privacy’ – Big Brother is watching. That is the message corporations routinely send their employees about using email. But recent cases have shown that employees sometimes have more privacy rights than they might expect when it comes to the corporate email server. Legal experts say that courts in some instances are showing more consideration for employees who feel their employer has violated their privacy electronically.” Arizona Business Gazette: “Some new changes in federal law will require employers to provide free time off to workers in more situations. . . . companies that don’t alter their policies to comply could find themselves in hot water. Key to the issue is the Family Medical Leave Act, a 1993 federal law that requires employers with at least 50 workers to grant 12 weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period under certain circumstances and without fear of being fired.” Arizona Republic: “A former surgical technician at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center claims she was wrongly fired for blowing the whistle about unsanitary conditions in the hospital’s operating rooms. In a lawsuit against Banner, Susan Gipson of Peoria says the hospital ignored bugs in operating-room light fixtures, holes in operating room walls, rusty surgical instrument, mold and dirt on air vents, and blood and biological fluids “strewn around the (operating rooms).” The lawsuit was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court.” Last year the Arizona Bankers Association pulled a legislative fast one and convinced the Arizona legislature to pass a law called “SB 1271,” which at the stroke of a pen made thousands of purchasers of Arizona homes liable for hundreds of millions of dollars. SB 1271 would have taken affect on September 30, 2009, but the State Senator who sponsored SB 1271 sponsored another bill in last year’s special legislative session that repealed SB 1271. The Arizona Bankers Association filed a special action with the Arizona Supreme Court asking the Court to find that the repeal of SB 1271 was unconstitutional. While that case is pending before the Court, the Arizona legislature is considering a second repeal of SB 1271 to moot the ABA’s challenge to the repeal of SB 1271. Arizona Republic: “State lawmakers pushed Wednesday to scrap an Arizona law that would leave some homeowners on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars or more if their home went into foreclosure. . . . Under its original provisions, any homeowner who lost a property to foreclosure – and hadn’t lived in it for at least six months – would be liable for the difference between the foreclosure sale price and the original loan.” For an detailed explanation of SB 1271 and the problems it would have caused, see my article called “New Arizona Law Limits Borrowers’ Protection from Deficiency Judgment After Foreclosure of a Home: Arizona Courts Could Be Flooded with Deficiency Lawsuits.” We also tracked efforts to repeal SB 1271 on our website at “ARS Section 33-814(G) – News & Developments – The Fight to Fix Arizona’s Broken Anti-Deficiency Law.” See also Arizona Republic real estate reporter Catherin Reagor’s November 18, 2009, story called “Repeal pending on home liability.” TMZ.com: “The IRS wants some serious ‘Girls Gone Wild’ money, because they’ve filed a lien against Joe Francis for a whopping $33,819,087.” North Carolina Estate Planning Blog: “Planning for tax-qualified plans, which includes IRAs, 401(k)s and qualified retirement plans, requires a careful examination of the potential taxes that impact these assets. Unlike most other assets that receive a ‘basis step up’ to current fair market value upon the owner’s death, IRAs, 401(k)s and other qualified retirement plans do not step-up to the date-of-death value. Therefore, beneficiaries who receive these assets do so subject to income tax. If your estate is subject to estate tax, the value of these assets may be further reduced by the estate tax. And if you name grandchildren or younger generations as beneficiaries, these assets may additionally be reduced by the generation-skipping transfer tax. All tolled, these assets may be reduced by 70% or more. There are several strategies available to help reduce the impact of these taxes:” Phoenix Business Journal: “A Scottsdale furniture maker is the first business to be prosecuted under a state law that looks to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said Wednesday he was prosecuting Scottsdale Art Factory LLC under the Arizona Legal Workers Act. The law allows county prosecutors to go after the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.” Phoenix Business Journal: “The state has reached a $150,000 settlement with apartment landlords over their treatment of a disabled tenant . . . . [Arizona Attorney General] Goddard also said the state had reached the $150,000 settlement with National City Neighborhood LLC and its principals over treatment of handicapped tenant. The settlement resolves charges that the Tucson apartment landlord failed to provide an accessible parking space and did not make repairs to an apartment rented by James Larson and his wife Sabrina Ezell.” “ Nasdaq: “House Democrats are retreating from a plan to move permanent estate tax legislation by the end of the year, spooked by high unemployment and budget deficits. Members of the House Ways and Means Committee said that instead they hope to move legislation that extends current estate tax levels for one year. They could then revisit a permanent fix to the estate tax in 2010, when other tax cuts enacted under the administration of former President George W. Bush are slated to expire.” Instead of allowing the construction of more power plants in California so that Californians could have cheaper energy, the unelected five member California Energy Commission decided it is better to have fewer power plants so that the demand for electricity will exceed the capacity to generate it with the result that all Californians will pay more and get less. This is what happens when the governing elites ignore the laws of supply and demand. Given that Californians don’t have enough electricity and it’s only going to get worse, the California Energy Commission voted 5-0 to require all TVs under 58 inches to meet CEC dictated energy standards beginning in 2011 with even tougher standards beginning in 2013. When the TV energy use requirements are fully in place, California will still not have enough power plants to supply all of the power needed by its residents so the CEC will have to find more more ways to restrict the freedom of California citizens. MyFox8.com: “REIDSVILLE, N.C. – Officials at Reidsville Middle School suspended two students last week after their parents brought them fast food for lunch, violating a policy that prohibits outside food. On Thursday, Charles Finney brought his daughter food from McDonald’s for lunch. That night, Brittney, an eighth-grader, came home with a letter warning against bringing fast food to the cafeteria. The next day, Finney didn’t think he was doing anything wrong when he brought her a hamburger in a plain, brown bag. But Brittney was suspended for three days. Lowering the Bar: “Joe Francis, the Girls Gone Wild founder — or as Gawker.com described him, the ‘alleged arm-twisting sexual aggressor and loathsome Girls Gone Wild founder’ — was sentenced on November 7 to time already served, and was released into the wild to go back to stalking your daughters.” I am an Arizona attorney who has formed over 2,100 Arizona limited liability companies. One of the reasons I created my website and this blog is to inform people about the importance of operating businesses and holding investment real estate in a LLC. The primary reason to form an LLC is asset protection. The general rule of Arizona law is that the owners and managers of an Arizona limited liability company are not liable for its debts and obligations. This is exactly the opposite rule of Arizona law applicable to businesses operated as sole proprietorships or general partnerships and investment real estate owned by people in their own names, i.e., 100% liability for everything that goes wrong. The following article is written by a Georgia attorney who agrees with me on this issue. Big Canoe Law School: “Owning assets without holding them in an LLC (i.e., a limited liability company) is like driving without your seatbelt on. In an old jeep. With no top. And no doors. And no roll bar. Yippe-yi-yo-ki-yay, right? The deal is this: under GA law, a judgment creditor—someone who has sued you and won—can reach your assets, take them and sell them, or do a bunch of other things with them. They can do this until they get enough to cover the amount of the judgment against you.” For more about Arizona limited liability companies, see my Arizona LLC Law Library. Man buys house near the San Francisco airport for $1.475 million and apparently claims he was unaware of the airport jet noise that is the basis of his lawsuit. How does that happen? Oakland Tribune: “Stanley Hilton, 60, of Hillsborough, said in unique court papers that his wife of 13 years divorced him and took their young triplets with her last year because of ’round-the-clock’ jet noise at SFO. He also blamed his recent health and professional woes on the air and noise pollution, which he compared to bombs dropping in a war zone. Hilton last week sued SFO, Hillsborough, the counties of San Mateo and San Francisco, dozens of airlines and jet manufacturers, and the real estate agents and couple that sold him his home on Darrell Road for $1.475 million in April 2003.” Corporate Counsel: “You are familiar with the scenario: one of your employees leaves to go work for a competitor, but before he goes, he copies confidential information for use at his new job. While the scenario may not have changed much, the means of obtaining the information has. The days of photocopying documents and sneaking out the door with hard copies are long gone. Most information is now available electronically, and large amounts of data can be copied efficiently and discreetly via computer. The good news is that in many instances, accessing information electronically leaves a distinct trail for a former employer to follow. The bad news, though, is that if the proper steps are not taken, this trail can quickly be lost.” Yahoo News: “Even Academy Award winners are suffering from financial woes this recession. Actor Nicolas Cage lost two homes in New Orleans worth a total of $6.8 million in a foreclosure auction . . . .” Digital Media Lawyer Blog: “In a recent ruling, a judge in the Central District of California ordered a defendant in a cybersquatting case to turn over hundreds of domain names that incorporated the names of professional athletes to the plaintiff, Toronto Raptors power forward Christopher Bosh. . . . See Bosh v. Zavala . . . . While some might laud the Court’s intentions, the order violates both the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and California law. It also creates as many problems as its solves.” |
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