Law Offices of Robert J. Ross

It is no secret that businesses generally, and small businesses in particular, have been through rough times, and those are not over yet. Still, there is some
assistance to be had as a small business owner if you know where to look. One prominent example is the Small Business Administration (SBA) and its
Guaranteed Loan Programs.

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You have a small successful business and you just have that feeling that it could be replicated with equal success. One traditional means of doing this would be to open more company stores on your own, but doing so obviously would take lots of capital and time, and you can only be stretched so far and still feel in control of what could be distant additional locations.

Franchising is a time-tested alternative for expansion that, at least over the long run, should involve less of your own time and money. If all goes well, and the odds of that are certainly enhanced by getting good professional advice at each step in the process, you can expand using someone else’s money, your risks will be reduced because the franchisees will take on most of the responsibilities and risks that come with opening new stores, and expansion should occur more rapidly than if you go it alone. Read more

When a telecommunications company went defunct, almost literally on his way out the door, the former president and CEO of the company allegedly deleted certain e-mails from the company’s computers. When the company was placed in receivership, the receiver sued the former executive for a variety of his actions taken in connection with the collapse of the company. Among these claims was an assertion that when he deleted the e-mails, allegedly to cover up some misconduct, the executive violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Read more

The prevalence of social media, including postings that are meant for employment-related topics in particular, has led to an increase in litigation on the subject between employees and their employers. The scenarios leading the parties to the courtroom are as varied as one might imagine. A company fires a worker over her criticisms of the boss that she posted on Facebook. Repeated attempts by a manager to “friend” a female employee on Facebook eventually leads to allegations of sexual harassment. A disappointed job applicant sues when a job offer is retracted after a hiring manager turns up something about the applicant on Twitter that the manager finds disturbing. Read more

The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) is a federal consumer protection law that regulates the real estate settlement process, including the servicing of loans and the assignment of those loans. RESPA places a number of duties on lenders and loan servicers, including requirements that borrowers be given notice by both a transferor and a transferee when their loan is transferred to a new lender or servicer, and that loan servicers respond promptly to borrowers’ written requests for information. Read more

Having a net worth of $1 million, or maybe even $2 million, does not give you entry into such a small exceptional group as used to be the case. By some estimates, between 5 and 6 million American households have a net worth of at least $2 million. This means that currently there are considerably more people who should consider how best to shield their money from the IRS and pass it on to their heirs, assuming that is their wish. One such strategy that just became more attractive, due to new federal legislation, is the making of gifts during one’s lifetime. Read more

Last summer, a law was enacted that raised the standard maximum deposit insurance amount (SMDIA) to $250,000. The law made permanent a previous temporary increase to $250,000 from the former maximum limit of $100,000. The new permanent maximum limit should especially benefit consumers who figure to have more than $100,000–such as in multi-year certificates of deposit–in their bank beginning in 2014, when the temporary hike in the maximum limit had been scheduled to expire.

It is important to bear in mind that the SMDIA does not mean that under no circumstances may a single individual have insurance on more than $250,000 in a single institution. The SMDIA applies per depositor, per insured depository institution, for each account ownership category. A person’s single account will be insured up to the new permanent maximum amount, but so will his or her share of all joint accounts, as well as any other of his or her accounts in other ownership categories.

Another legislative change, which went into effect on the last day of 2010, creates a new temporary insurance category that will fully insure all funds, regardless of the dollar amount, but only in checking accounts that pay no interest to the account holder. An example of a possible application of this new insurance is an account in which an individual who has just sold a home temporarily parks the large proceeds from the sale in that account, understanding that no interest will be earned. As the law now stands, this change is temporary, in that the new insurance account category is set to expire at the end of 2012.

Home Appraisal Fraud

Joseph and Kimberli bought an unimproved lot in a subdivision and then engaged an architect and a contractor to design and build the home of their dreams on it. The lot and finished home together would cost them about $731,000. They borrowed most of the sales price from a bank, which sought and obtained an appraisal from an appraiser regularly used by the bank. Conveniently enough, the appraisal came in at about $731,000 when conducted under both a cost approach and a sales comparison approach. Read more

A former employee who refused to give up a domain name that he had registered for the benefit of his former employer has been hit with a sizeable damages verdict. The federal appeals court that heard his case looked unfavorably on his having held the domain name for “ransom,” and agreed that the employee had violated the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). Meanwhile, an Illinois company was unsuccessful in bringing a claim against a Texas company under the ACPA. Although the Texas company had registered a domain name similar to one held by the Illinois company, there was not sufficient jurisdiction for the Texas company to be sued in Illinois. Read more

On December 17, 2010, the president signed into law an $858 billion federal tax package. The main elements of the legislation are a two-year extension of the reductions of income, capital gains, and dividend taxes enacted during the Bush Administration and a one-year extension on unemployment insurance benefits that had ended as of December 1. Although many parts of the package are of relatively short duration, below are some highlights of the new tax law:

Your Paycheck

Beginning in January 2011, a 2% drop in an employee’s share of the Social Security portion of the FICA tax, from 6.2% to 4.2%, will increase take-home pay for most workers. For example, this means an additional $1,600 in 2011 for someone making $80,000 a year. Read more