Preparing to sell your business when you first start may seem counterintuitive but doing so will greatly reduce the cost and stress later and will likely help you realize a higher valuation if you do decide to sell. Starting a business is exciting.  It’s also expensive. You’ve worked hard to save money to launch the […]

Effective January 1, 2022, the California Secretary of State updated its Statement of Information forms for corporations and limited liability companies in response to Assembly Bill 3075. The revised Statement of Information forms require the filing party to certify whether any officer or any director (or member or manager for a limited liability company) has […]

California is generally known as one of the more employee-friendly jurisdictions, and some commentators have opined that mandatory arbitration is at odds with California’s worker-protection public policy. In fact, two race discrimination lawsuits filed by former employees against Tesla, Inc., with largely similar facts of colleagues/supervisors using racial slurs against the plaintiffs and other Black […]

If you have recently incorporated a business or filed for a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”), this may sound familiar… You receive a notice in the mail purportedly from an official state agency containing an official-looking seal, telling you that you need to file an annual report by a certain […]

The issue of independent contractor classification is, perhaps unfortunately, something that many Californians have become too well versed in during recent years.  To briefly recap, the issue gained renewed focus with the California Supreme Court’s, April 2018 decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v Superior Court.  There the Court ruled employers bore the burden of […]

Many of our clients may not know that the recent stimulus bill known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (the “Act”) includes new trademark legislation that will have a sweeping impact on trademark owners.  Specifically, the Act incorporates the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020 (“TMA”), which includes many substantive changes to the Lanham (Trademark) […]

Employment law in the best of times presents an ever-changing landscape, but with the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine rollout, it can be especially challenging for workers and employers. As a general, regularly-updated informational resource for California workers and employers, we recommend the website created by the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency on Coronavirus 2019 […]

Over 370 bills were signed into law in California this year. With about as many new laws taking effect on January 1, 2021 – and everything else that has happened in 2020 – to say there is plenty to track would be an understatement. There are two particularly notable laws affecting our common interest development […]

Those who are or use independent contractors (“IC”) know that effective January 1, 2020, Assembly Bill 5 (“AB 5”) codified the ABC Test for classifying ICs and expanded its application to all Labor Code claims, the Unemployment Insurance Code, and the Wage Orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission. See, e.g., Cal. Lab. Code § 2750.3 […]

On September 8, 2020, in a case entitled State of New York et al. v. Scalia etal. (Case No. 1:20 cv-01689-GHW), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected the U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) “final rule” (the “Rule”) concerning vertical joint employment under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Here […]