Indiana

Starting A Business With Your Significant Other

Posted on February 07, 2008
MoneyCnn.com published an article, Business partners in love Before you and your spouse start a joint venture, protect your finances - and your relationship, on starting a business with one's spouse. I think the article applies to anyone that starts a business...

New Indiana Blog from the Indiana Department of Revenue

Posted on February 06, 2008
Well, Indiana's Department of Revenue calls Tax Talk a blog even it has no RSS feeds and no comments. So far it has only post, Indiana?s free, online tax return filing service serves up improved bells and whistles:"Indiana has offered I-File, the fast, friendly and free online state income tax filing service since 1999...

Trade Secrets: Losing Your Trade Secrets at a High Altitude

Posted on February 05, 2008
Let me say, I hate flying. Which may be why I never thought of the problem The Workplace Privacy Counsel writes about in Is Confidential Business Information Safe At 30,000 Feet?.Before business executives start using on-board Internet access to conduct business, employers should examine the risks that this latest wave of technological conveniences creates...

Franchising: Terminating The Franchise

Posted on February 05, 2008
What event acts as the flashpoint for litigating a franchise? Termination. Today, I want to comment on the process of termination.My experience consists of the relationship between franchisor and franchisee declining till termination is the only alternative...

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Franchising: Online Franchising Resources

Posted on February 04, 2008
Just a quick one day for potential franchisors, franchisees and their lawyers:The Forum on Franchising is from the American Bar Association. More for the lawyer segment.Holmes & Lofstrom, LLP; Franchise & business counsel. Seminars, FAQ's from a law firm concentrating on franchise law...

New Trademark Blog and Declaratory Judgments

Posted on February 04, 2008
What is a declaratory judgment suit? I am glad you asked that question as I found a very good description of declaratory judgment suits in Dilution by Blurring's Declaratory Judgment Actions. Here is the question's answer from the article:What is a ?declaratory judgment?? A declaratory judgment is a judgment from a court that declares the rights of the parties in a dispute...

Music Downloads - The View from Scotland

Posted on February 03, 2008
I have written a few posts on music downloading (such as here) just because I find them to be an interesting confluence of law and business - especially our modern, Internet business. I like using the music business' problem with downloads for explaining that businesses with intellectual property do not sell CD's, or books, or movies...

Indiana Employment Law: Sick leave as wages

Posted on February 03, 2008
Indiana law views sick leave as a deferred income. Deferred means that the right to the compensation vests with the employee not only with the performing of the job but with another requirement that may exist outside of doing the work.Unless the employee bases the right to deferred compensation on a contract, the employee may still lose the deferred income...

Probate: Your Online Inheritance Tax

Posted on February 03, 2008
Indiana's Department of Revenue has the tax forms for Indiana's inheritance and fiduciary taxes here: Inheritance Tax and Fiduciary Forms. These are in Adobe's PDF format and some in the fill-in format for PDF. (If you do not have the Adobe Reader, there is a link on the page to Adobe for downloading the software...

Evidence - The Dangers of Digital Photos

Posted on February 03, 2008
Maybe you knew about metadata (that is, data on data) with digital pictures but I did not. Not until I read Beware of hidden digital camera metadata from Canadian Privacy Law Blog and Authenticating Digital Photographs as Evidence: A Practice Approach Using JPEG Metadata from Law Practice Today...

We Now Accept Credit Cards

Posted on February 02, 2008
To make payment more convenient for my clients, I started accepting Mastercard and Visa credit cards on January 28, 2008.

Tax sales and bankruptcy: New Indiana Court of Appeals Decision

Posted on February 02, 2008
Debtor owning real estate files bankruptcy. Debtor owes property taxes and so real estate put up for a tax sale which freezes out lender. Buyer at tax sale file to quiet title and mortgage company wins at trial level and then at the Indiana Court of Appeals...

Buing a foreclosed home?

Posted on February 02, 2008
I found some good advice in Foreclosure 'bargains' may be costly to the unwary from today's Indianapolis Star:A fast-growing crop of businesses offers to sell lists of bank-owned homes. One of the best known is RealtyTrac, which charges $50 per month (after a seven-day trial) for access to its database of more than 650,000 properties in (or near) foreclosure nationwide...

The time is coming for home repairs,

Posted on February 02, 2008
The time is coming for home repairs, do not fall victim to. home improvement fraud. Most home improvement contracts fail to meet the requirements of Indiana?s Home Improvement Fraud Statute. If you contact for any alteration, repair, or other modification of your residential property that costs more than $150...

Dissolving a Partnership in Indiana

Posted on February 01, 2008
How do you get out of a partnership? Dissolving the partnership is the first step.Indiana's partnership statute defines dissolution at IC 23-4-1-29:The dissolution of a partnership is the change in the relation of the partners caused by any partner ceasing to be associated in the carrying on as distinguished from the winding up of the business...

Copy right news - Regulations

Posted on February 01, 2008
The following comes from the United States Copyright Office:February 11 Due date for comments on cable systems issues (more) February 22 Due date for comments on proposed clarifications to regulations governing recordation of notices of termination and related provisions (more) March 24 Due date for reply comments on proposed clarifications to regulations governing recordation of notices of termination and related provisions (more) March 26 Due date for reply comments on cable systems issues (more) Recent Issues No...

Contract Drafting - A Look at Best Efforts

Posted on February 01, 2008
Adams Drafting blogs about writing legal documents about the same way Michael Jordan played basketball. While reading What the Heck Does ?Best Efforts? Mean? , I debated myself about actually doing this blog. I get few lawyers reading this blog and this is a bit too much of "inside baseball" for most laypeople...

Small Business Resources for Today

Posted on February 01, 2008
Business.gov - this site call itself the business link to government.Office of Advocacy U.S. Small Business Administration: sign up for regulatory alerts from the SBA.Use the SBA publications and newsletters to keep up with what is going on and for Indiana there is this: INDIANA BREAK (2,956) The Indiana Business Resource, Education, And Knowledge (BREAK) newsletter provides resources to help small businesses start and grow.

Franchising: Where to Find the FTC's Franchise Rule Opinions

Posted on January 31, 2008
Yes, the Federal Trade Commission publishes its Franchise Rule Opinions online. The FTC plainly labels the page: Recent Franchise Rule Opinions (1995 to Present). If you researching federal franchise law, you need to take a look at this page.

Employers Another Reason Not to Treat Employees as Independent Contractors

Posted on January 31, 2008
Soem employers decide that classifying workers as subcontractors instead of employees saves them money by not needing workmen's compensation insurance. For employers this decision exceeds the bad business judgment of replacing Coca-Cola with New Coke...

Consumer: The States and Gift-Cards

Posted on January 31, 2008
An interesting article from Business Week on those gift cards that never seem to get used. The Scramble for Gift-Card Cash: "A lot of states?roughly half?claim that at least part of the unspent balances should go to them under their unclaimed-property laws...

Alcohlic Beverages: Blogs and News on Interstate Shipping

Posted on January 30, 2008
I noticed A Befuddlement of Liquor Laws published by The New York Times. I have had no time to notice if Indiana's General Assembly has any legislation pending regarding interstate sales, but the Times article s provides a tantalizing glimpse of legislation elsewhere:Of course, retailers are not calling for the end of regulation...

Business Information: Dell Offers

Posted on January 30, 2008
Since it is free, I see no reason to mention Financial Management Made Easy from Dell Small Business. The site describes the program like this:Are you doing everything you can to automate and secure your business finance processes? Accounting and financial data and process management are essential parts of running a successful small business...

Indiana cases: Court: business license fee not a tax

Posted on January 30, 2008
Indiana appellate opinions suffered from some technical problems last week. The Indiana Lawyer Daily provides the write up here: Court: business license fee not a tax."In the opinion, David Paul Allen v. City of Hammond, 45A03-0708-CV-372, it states that on July 28, 2005, Allen filed a complaint for declaratory judgment against the city to invalidate the ordinance requiring businesses to have a license...

Indiana Whistleblower Suit

Posted on January 29, 2008
From yesterday's Indianapolis Star, Nurses file whistleblowing suit against jail company:Six Indianapolis-area nurses filed a whistleblowing and racial discrimination lawsuit today against Corrections Corporation of America, which operates Marion County Jail #2 in Indianapolis...

Text messaging threats to trade secrets?

Posted on January 29, 2008
So reports Crain's Detroit Business in 'Private' messages often open secrets:"I advise everyone and practice it absolutely. I don't send anything I don't want public," said Mark Malven, leader of the technology transaction practice in the Bloomfield Hills office of Dykema Gossett P...

Trade Secrets: Cooper Tires Ordered to Give It Up

Posted on January 29, 2008
Another tire company ordered to give plaintiff access to documents about its tires. The Salt Lake City Tribune reports:Product-liability lawyers nationwide will be paying close attention to a lawsuit brought by families of Utah State University students killed and injured in a 2005 van crash...

Indiana's Deceptive Consumer Sales Act - Part 1

Posted on January 27, 2008
Let me say that for most of the past fifteen years I have been thinking Indiana's Deceptive Consumer Sales Act is pretty useless. That was when I tried a case on another subject - home improvements fraud - that also comes under the Deceptive Consumer Sales law and the judge implied an intent requirement where the statute does not require any such intent...

The Lastest on Nelms and Cemetery Problems

Posted on January 26, 2008
The Indianapolis Star published articles yesterday on the Nelms cemetery/funeral home civil litigation.Temporary receiver named for Nelms properties follows up directly on the report I blogged about inA Johnson County judge ruled Friday that a Franklin attorney should continue to oversee the operations of an Indianapolis-based cemetery company after its owners' arrests on charges that they misused as much as $27 million in trust funds...

More about do it yourself LLC Operating Agreements

Posted on January 26, 2008
Read Operating Agreement for LLC? which gives links to forms. I followed these links and now I am reporting back:A. How To Form An LLC website: Which has this interesting disclaimer:The above is provided for informational purposes only and is NOT to be relied upon as legal advice...

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