Legally Sound Smart Business by Pasha Law PC: Recent Episodes
Nasir and Matt from Pasha Law
Broad answers to specific business legal questions (with multiple disclaimers), Legally Sound | Smart Business is a podcast geared towards small business owners. Hosted by attorneys Nasir N. Pasha and Matt Staub of Pasha Law, Legally Sound | Smart Business touches on a variety of topics, usually from a legal point of view, with an occasional laugh.
In this episode, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub explore the legal implications of Artificial Intelligence in the business world. They delve into the most talked-about issue of 2023: AI and its impact on the legal landscape. Although AI isn't necessarily a new topic, it has many unanswered questions in the legal world. Nasir and Matt discuss the dangers and challenges of AI, touching on issues from copyright law to the use of AI in the workplace.Diving deep into the privacy implications of AI usage and discussing the Samsung incident where data leaked through ChatGPT. They explore the intricacies of copyright ownership in AI-generated content, discussing a recent ruling that AI lacks human authorship. Nasir and Matt expands to cover data leaks in various contexts, emphasizing the importance of implementing rigorous policies as AI tools become increasingly integrated into diverse industries.Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: We are covering artificial intelligence as it applies to the legal world. Probably the most talked about issue in 2023. MATT: A lot of question marks.NASIR: Frankly, the dangers of it. I don’t know.MATT: We call that a lose-lose.NASIR: I would want to own that copyright.MATT: It’s a level of human input.This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts – Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub – cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub.NASIR: Welcome to our podcast today! We are covering artificial intelligence as it applies to the legal world. One of the big news for this particular podcast is this is entirely generated by AI. I am talking, my image, everything here is completely through artificial intelligence generated. It’s a new technology. What do you guys think so far?MATT: You know what’s disappointing? I actually came with the exact same joke or same line, and you stole it from me.NASIR: Great minds think alike. Great comedians too as well? I don’t know.MATT: I don’t know if we can consider ourselves comedians. We try, but… For attorneys, I think we can probably justify it, but in the general population, I don’t think so.NASIR: Maybe in the realm of dad jokes.MATT: That’s true.NASIR: I’ll take that. From that standard, I thought that was pretty good.MATT: Yes.NASIR: This is really me as far as you can tell. In reality, maybe ten years from now, you wouldn’t be able to tell, but we are going to be covering probably the most talked about issue in 2023 which is AI or artificial intelligence.I think the last time we had this kind of topic from a legal perspective to really parse out and hash out like this was probably for COVID-19. In fact, I think we did a whole episode on all the legal implications of COVID-19 – everything from working from home and the vaccinations and these kinds of things. But artificial intelligence in particular has brought in all these new legal issues. One thing that we said back in COVID – if you recall, Matt – even though it’s bringing on new issues, it is still based upon old law. This is what happens with technology or a new pandemic. The law is slow to adjust, so there are going to be things that are based upon what’s happened in the past to build analogies to apply to the future. We’re going to talk about everything from copyright law to using AI in the workplace and some mishaps in using AI in business. MATT: It’s similar to any emerging technology. At this point, it is very much in the forefront. Sometimes, we try to do podcasts that are evergreen. This one is obviously not going to be. If you listen to this a year from now, I imagine it is going to be much different the things we would say now versus 12 months from now. It’s definitely something that’s still emerging. We’re still learning. The law is very far behind, as you said,
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Fifty-year low of unemployment. MATT: The Goldman Sachs CEO had roughly 3,200 employees terminated. NASIR: Hopefully it’s not spontaneous. MATT: You know, if someone’s going to be upset, they’re going to be upset. NASIR: Matt, you’re right. It’s relatively simple to figure out whether you trigger a WARN Act or not. MATT: Nothing good is probably going to happen. This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts – Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub – cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub. NASIR: All right. Welcome. Fifty-year low of unemployment. That’s what we’re going to talk about today; also, the other side of the coin which is all the layoffs that are going on in the tech sector but especially in the last few months here in 2023, and in particular how to handle those layoffs from a legal perspective. MATT: Yes, it’s no secret to anyone that’s been paying attention to the news. There’s been a great amount of layoffs – mass layoffs particularly in larger companies. It felt like this was a pretty appropriate topic from the legal standpoint on both ends of the employer-and-employee spectrum to see what exactly is out there and what people can do. NASIR: Right. We’ve been debating whether to cover this particular topic because we’re in a very weird economy right now – at least from my perspective. Despite the unemployment being at a 50-year low, we are seeing lots of news about layoffs. So far, it seems to be a lot in the tech sector, but one of the reasons we wanted to cover this is I think we anticipate that this may start expanding a bit. Hopefully not, but when you’re dealing with terminating an employee versus a large group, there are different issues that need to be considered. MATT: Yes, exactly. That’s one of the key points in all of this – comparing big companies versus small or medium-sized companies. For big companies, it’s a whole other consideration for what needs to be done. For smaller companies, there are still some legal aspects that need to be handled, but it’s more the non-legal side of things that I think usually comes into play. You’ll see that in some of the stories that we’re going to talk about with this, but step one is looking at the business itself, seeing the size of it, and making the calls from there. NASIR: When it comes to layoffs, besides 2020, we’re talking about a different kind of layoff where things have settled down a bit in 2022, and that’s really when layoffs started to occur in the tech sector. MATT: Yes, I think that’s typically the way it goes. You see the Googles, the Facebooks – sorry, the Metas. NASIR: Meta, yes. MATT: Any of those big tech companies are typically the first wave of layoffs. You’ll see a mass amount at that point, and that sets the tone for the next 6, 9, or 12 months for what to expect from some of the smaller companies. It puts that flag out there and a fair warning on what’s to come in the next year. NASIR: Right. We’re not going to talk too much about the cause of this. I think everyone is in touch with the news, but one of the things that was very apparent in all of this is, because of technology changes, because of culture changes, because everyone is working from home, for example, especially in the tech sector, the communications around mass layoffs have both resulted in frankly humorous results and also a lesson in bad practices on what not to do when it comes to laying off a massive workforce. /p> MATT: Yes, that’s the story everyone sees. In every story we see in the news, there’s someone that made the wrong decision. You rarely see an instance of some CEO making the right decision, and that’s some story in the news. That’s boring. No one wants to read that.
In 2020, we saw a lot of employers permanently switching to work remotely. While some have slowly brought their workers back into the office, Goldman Sachs’s CEO, David Solomon, has been labeled as anti-remote. However, this wasn’t always the case – in fact, he once argued that having employees working from home was "the new norm". On this episode, Nasir and Matt take a look back at how Goldman Sachs's response to the pandemic has changed throughout the years.Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: Yes, we’re talking about Goldman Sachs – the return to office for them. Why Goldman Sachs? Well, they are a huge company. We wanted to talk about tracking them through the COVID response going back all the way to 2020.MATT: You’ll give up the ending to this podcast already, but…NASIR: Well, yes, that’s true.This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts – Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub – cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub.NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! Our episode locally here in Houston. Matt has joined me to talk about Goldman Sachs, right? Welcome to Houston!MATT: Thanks! It’s good to be here. I always like these in person.NASIR: I feel like I caught you off-guard.MATT: That’s fine.NASIR: Let’s start the podcast, by the way. We’re talking about Goldman Sachs – the return to office for them. Why Goldman Sachs? Well, they are a huge company. They have basically 40,000 employees worldwide. We wanted to talk about tracking them through the COVID response going back all the way to 2020 – February to March of that year – they started locking down through today where now they have more than 65 percent of their workforce back in the office. MATT: You’ll give up the ending to this podcast already, but…NASIR: That’s true. Well, we’re done, right?MATT: Yes. The big reason is their CEO – David Solomon – was pretty well-documented and took a big stance in getting people back in the office quicker than most companies out there, particularly on Wall Street.NASIR: Yes. In fact, depending upon who you ask, some would say he was actually leading that charge and a visionary in that respect. Others would say that he was being too aggressive. Another interesting thing about Goldman Sachs is that, on one hand, they have been on lists of some of the best places to work. One of the reasons is they have huge high-compensation packages for a lot of their employees. On the other hand, they are also criticized for being unethical. You have people complaining about 100-hour workweeks and things like that. Goldman Sachs in its nature is in the forefront of a lot of different issues – employment issues, especially, but also regulatory and these kinds of things as well. MATT: It’s not surprising that their CEO took this bold stance in getting people to go back to work quicker than some companies that haven’t come back to work – a good amount of them. NASIR: Yes, and everyone has heard in the news. We’re talking about companies like Google and Facebook or Meta. I don’t think Meta are coming back.MATT: A permanent option.NASIR: There have been others like Spotify and so forth. Especially a lot of the tech companies, they have made a permanent shift. That is something that Goldman Sachs has definitely not done. Frankly, depending upon the company, the industry, what states you are in. I know we have talked plenty of times about when we are dealing with clients in California versus Texas. It’s just such a different paradigm. That’s really shone itself during COVID because the conversations that you and I were having with California clients about the workforce and COVID was like, “What are some of the things that we can do to make it more comfortable for them to go home to work?...
https://player.vimeo.com/video/765042547?h=00370d406a&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479 When one of the world’s most famous chess players is accused of cheating, everyone wants to know how it happened. Hans Niemann is suing Magnus Carlsen, Chess.com, and others for $100m in a defamation lawsuit. There are many layers to this lawsuit and Nasir breaks down the legal aspect of one of the biggest cheating scandals in chess history.
Whether you are buying or selling a business, the transaction goes through the same steps. However, they are viewed from different perspectives. Sellers may not want to fully disclose all the blind spots while Buyers will want otherwise. Nasir and Matt battle it out in this Buyer vs. Seller to determine who has the advantage!
Round 1: Prepare to Negotiate - Letter of Intent
When it comes to selling a business, some of the most critical work is done before you even make your first phone call. A letter of intent serves as a way for both parties to get on the same page and lays the groundwork for what each of you can expect from the other.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/t4KVprJ9m94
Round 2: Due Diligence and the No Shop Periods
Buying or selling a business is a complex process. It's not just about talking about purchasing or selling the company's assets. For prospective buyers, it’s important to understand that buying a business is not all about the numbers. Thorough due diligence of all facets of your target company is necessary for you to make a meaningful offer.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5tK8uMHZArQ
Round 3: Warranties and Representations
Representations and warranties are the biggest reason that verbal agreements are so risky. Representations and warranties set a floor on the quality of the purchase, define each party's responsibilities, inform both parties how they can end the deal, and help structure payments.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QoxOnUEGdxs
Round 4: It's Closing Time
Signed, sealed, and delivered. The signing and closing of a transaction is often the most critical stage in the process. It can either be smooth or cause delays that could undermine the transactions.
https://youtu.be/AgEtBno39YA
“Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: All right. Welcome! We are talking buyers and sellers, acquisitions, mergers. It’s a lot more than what you would think. MATT: That depends on what side you’re on. NASIR: Everyone in business ends up at this point at one point in time. MATT: It’s a very interesting dynamic. This is kind of a very weird interaction. This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts – Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub – cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub. NASIR: All right. Welcome! We are talking buyers and sellers, acquisitions, mergers. We are going, once again, head-to-head – Matt and I – taking different perspectives. This time around, we’re not flipping a coin. Matt and I discussed it prior, and I am taking the buyer’s point of view. MATT: That means I’ll be taking the seller’s point of view. NASIR: That would be weird if you also took the buyer’s point of view, so that’s good. MATT: Well, obviously, there’s not a lot of positive results from the pandemic, but one thing I’ve noticed that has happened that’s been a positive is there have been a lot of transactions between companies – like you said, mergers and acquisitions, things of that nature. We’ve seen quite an uptick of representing buyers and sellers in those sorts of transactions just because of the nature of it. I don’t know necessarily if they were more motivated and what the actual reasoning was, but – at least in my opinion – there’s been an increase in those sorts of transactions. NASIR: Absolutely. If you looked at the stats on M&A in general, it’s a lot more than what you would think. You would think that – because of uncertainty, because of this, because of inflation – things would actually slow down, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. M&A attorneys are quite busy. We’re talking about buying or selling a business. We’re general practitioners. We work with medium to small-sized businesses, but everyone in business ends up at this point at one point in time.
When it comes to Restrictive Covenants, employers are fighting to keep their company safe while employees may use them to their advantage. Keep listening to find out if the Employer or the Employee wins this battle.
Round 1: Trade Secrets
A company's trade secrets encompass a whole range of information and are one of the most valuable assets that a company can own and protect. Trade secrets are a vulnerable form of intellectual capital, so there is a big risk for the employers.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nOmEKmdArto
Round 2: Non-Competes
Non-Competes are not legal in all states, but in those where they are, they can be a significant advantage for employers. Employees, on the other hand, in the states that are legal may find it difficult to find a new job.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/9JkCS5RJE1w
Round 3: Non-Solicitation of Clients, Suppliers & Vendors
Good employees are hard to come by and employers who have them want to keep them. Non-solicitation agreements protect you from the harm that can be caused by a former employee poaching these customers or employees to a competitor.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5JQLfge4I4g
Round 4: Poaching
Think of service providers, engineering firms, marketing companies, staffing firms, etc. In order to prevent clients from hiring away personnel, many service contracts contain “no-poach” provisions that restrict employees from being hired by another service provider.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/WGY7DPWJ1no
Round 5: Confidentiality
A company has little to lose and much to gain by using confidentiality agreements. Confidential information plays an important role in business competitiveness and success. It is also necessary to ensure the protection of company trade secrets under state or federal laws.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/hp5MxwbxFE4
Full Podcast TranscriptThis is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub, cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub. NASIR: All right. Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! This is our 318th episode of Legally Sound Smart Business. It’s a big milestone. 318, of course, is very well known to be a pretty significant threshold. Once you pass that mark, you’ve made it, so we’re very happy about that. MATT: I think that’s because my hometown area code is 317. We’ve hit that. Now, we’re above that, and we’re past all the previous parts of my life. NASIR: That’s precisely correct. Of course, 318th episode – traditionally, we cover restrictive covenants. That’s something that’s been established for many years. And so, 318, of course, I should say restrictive covenants in general is something that everyone is interested in. It covers everything from non-competes to trade secrets to confidentiality – you name it. Of course, at Legally Sound Smart Business, we like to take different perspectives. And so, today, we are going to split it up, Matt. One of us is going to take the employer’s perspective, and the other one is going to take the employee’s perspective. You’ll have to decide who makes the better argument – if it is an argument, I guess. But we haven’t decided which side to take yet. MATT: Yes, we have to flip a coin, right? NASIR: That’s what I have here. If you’re watching via video, I have my quarter. Is it a quarter? What is this? This is a quarter dollar, yes. I haven’t seen one in a while, I suppose. I feel like I haven’t even held a coin in six years. MATT: No. NASIR: I can’t believe they still made this. MATT: Definitely not. NASIR: Definitely not true? You don’t know. I mean, if someone was trying to give me change, I don’t even touch it. MATT: Refuse it? Yeah. NASIR: I refuse it. Let me do a couple of practice rounds here. All right.
The Supreme Court rejected the nation's vaccine mandate. Businesses with 100 or more employees are NOT required to have their employees vaccinated or go through weekly testings. However, this policy remains in effect for health care facilities. In this episode of Legally Sound | Smart Business, the team sat down to discuss their thoughts on this ruling.
In this episode of Legally Sound | Smart Business by Pasha Law PC, Nasir and Matt cover the Business of Healthcare. There is more to the healthcare industry than just doctors and nurses. Many Americans have health insurance to cover their yearly needs, but most Americans are not aware of what really goes on behind the curtains. From fraud, contracts, staffing, and even the notorious 'Dr. Death', tune in for more details and perspective on the intricacies of the legal world as it pertains to medicine.
Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast. Today, we are talking about the business of healthcare from a legal perspective. That’s what we do. I don’t think we’ve had an exclusive healthcare-related topic yet. MATT: It’s definitely taken the forefront in pop culture and what people have been talking about the last year and a half. This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub, cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub. NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast. Today, we are talking about the business of healthcare from a legal perspective. That’s what we do. Welcome, Matt. It’s been at least a month since I’ve seen you in person via video. You look good. MATT: Virtually in person, if that even makes sense. Thanks. I try to. It’s a better time than it was this time last year. NASIR: That’s true. Very true. We’re still doing it virtual even though it’s 2021 and not 2020, but that also is the nature of being distant from each other as well, I suppose. What have we got today? Well, we’re doing healthcare. We are business attorneys, but we also specialize in the business of healthcare. I don’t think we’ve had an exclusive healthcare-related topic yet. Of course, we’re really deep in healthcare in Texas and California. And so, a lot of our topics are going to be related to that, but I’m excited for this. MATT: Yeah. Obviously, healthcare has been very primarily featured in the news the last year and a half particularly with what seems to be just an everchanging thing of different rules and regulations that need to be followed. I don’t want to get too deep into it because we’re going to talk about a lot of those today, but it’s definitely taken the forefront in pop culture and what people have been talking about the last year and a half. NASIR: Yeah. I think one of the biggest things that I keep hearing from both current clients and new clients is telemedicine. There have been rule changes on a CMS level. When it comes to what you can and can’t do from a telemedicine visit has completely changed since the pandemic has come. The realities of what people are more willing to do now – instead of doing an office visit, doing a virtual visit. I think that consumers have had a paradigm shift in that regard as well. MATT: It touches on what you said at the beginning of this episode. You know, seeing each other virtually. It was just a necessity on what some physicians had to do. It was just a matter of survival. Obviously, there were in-person visits for when it needs to be, but a lot of physicians and other parts of healthcare shifted to that virtual setup just out of they had to do it. NASIR: Right. I mean, I know I’ve had – both personally and for family members – multiple virtual visits whereas before I don’t even think I had one, but let’s talk about it. It’s actually pretty interesting because the Teladoc model – you can call it a Teladoc model – it’s not a unique model, actually. It’s a model that many physician practices use in states where they have what’s called the prohibition of a corporate practice of medicine. That concept exists in most states of the country – not all – where they want to prevent for-profit businesses that are non-professional...
In our latest episode, Nasir and Matt are covering the legal issues on Social Media. The average person spends most of their day on social media, whether they are scrolling for hours or publishing their own content. However, just because you publish your own content on Instagram does not equate to you owning that image. The law is a little complicated and the solutions aren't always clear. Brands that work with influencers gain a lot of attention, but all too frequently, influencers break the law by not adhering to them.
Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: All right. Welcome! We are covering social media and the law. MATT: This is not even something you would have to think about. NASIR: Do you have the right to do whatever you want? MATT: There’s potential biases. NASIR: You have influencers’ endorsements. Who owns what? MATT: Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and stuff like that. This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub, cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub. NASIR: All right. Welcome. We are pretty much an A to Z – or Facebook to Twitter as I like to call it – of law and social media. How are you doing, Matt? MATT: Yeah, doing well. You know, the interesting thing about this topic is I guess it’s still relatively new, but if you had a business a few decades ago, this is not even something you would have to think about – at least in this sort of context. It’s always evolving because social media is always evolving but, yeah, there are a lot of considerations for business owners with this. NASIR: And it keeps changing, so much so that we actually did an episode similar – not quite the same – on social media and the law about 2017. If you take 2021 and minus 2017, that’s how many years ago it was. MATT: Yeah, it’d be interesting. Like you said, I mean, even four years ago, I’m sure some of the things we talked about are vastly different than what we are going to talk about today – new laws, new rules. It’s something that people have to stay on top on pretty heavily. NASIR: Right. I mean, even four years ago, social media from a legal perspective, I’m not sure how much it changed, but the way we use it keeps adapting. I’m trying to think in social media what’s been really different here. I don’t think TikTok existed four years ago. Or it barely existed, right? What other mediums? There are also mediums that are no longer existing. Wasn’t there that one where you can have those 7-second videos? What was that? MATT: Vine. NASIR: Vine, yeah, that’s gone. I think it was Vine, yeah. Did Twitter buy them out or something? MATT: I’m not sure. I thought they closed down, but maybe. NASIR: Yeah, it goes back and forth. MATT: I think it was probably, if I can remember correctly, I think Facebook was more popular. Things like Instagram were probably less popular. I’m sure there are still a lot of Facebook users, but my guess is the popularity of those two flipped a little bit. It depends on the demographic too, but that’s kind of the general observation I’ve had. NASIR: Right. We also went through the Trump administration which, of course, when it came to social media, there’s been quite a bit of activity with our president tweeting almost every single day multiple times. And so, that obviously was a big kind of cultural shift, I think – the mainstreaming of social media. When I have my parents getting on Facebook and Twitter and things like that, then you know we’ve gotten to a new level. MATT: I didn’t even think about it from that context. Obviously, that was a big thing at the time. Since then, he was kicked off for a period of time. Is he back on? I haven’t paid attention. NASIR: I think he’s still off. I mean, I don’t know about every platform,
What is a Non-Disclosure Agreement, and when do I need one? In this episode, Nasir and Matt shares why you need to use Non-Disclosure Agreements, basic facts about NDA's, and discuss about the infamous Jenner-Woods story. Having the right Non-Disclosure Agreement in place not only protects you and your business, but it also makes the purpose of sharing the information clear.
Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: Today, we are covering nondisclosure agreements. MATT: I feel like that’s all I talk about. NASIR: What is an NDA? MATT: It can stretch pretty far. NASIR: Let’s get to the meat of an NDA. Is it really confidential? MATT: It all depends on the scenario too. NASIR: I’m telling you this in confidence. MATT: This one’s a little bit tricky. This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub, cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub. NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast! Today, we are covering nondisclosure agreements – probably the most favorite topic of all business owners. I can’t run into anyone that is in business and they don’t want to just sit down and talk about nondisclosure agreements. Don’t you agree, Matt? MATT: Yeah, I feel like that’s all I talk about with our clients – nondisclosure agreements. But, yeah, if you’re a business owner, I mean, depending on the line of work and how long you’ve been doing business, you’ve at least encountered some – possibly hundreds. NASIR: Yeah, literally. MATT: Yeah, I can’t even keep track of how many you and I have probably reviewed, but it’s at least a few hundred at a minimum. NASIR: Yeah, at minimum. Nondisclosure agreements are also known as NDAs. They’re sometimes called confidentiality agreements. Sometimes NDAs include the word “agreement” in there, but sometimes contracts have confidentiality provisions that are somewhat applicable, but this is kind of a very narrowed topic, so we are going to make it a little interesting because we’re going to talk about these extremes where NDAs go way too far. You know, especially in the media, we’ve heard this quite a bit, I think, especially in the last few years, and we’re going to talk about everything and how NDAs were being used in The White House to how celebrities use it and different aspects like that. MATT: Right. Like I was saying before, we’ve seen so many different iterations and there’s always going to be some standard terms you’ll find in any NDA but, like you said, we’ve definitely also seen instances of it going too far, and that’s going to be the focus here – those experiences that we’ve had when we’ve seen language in there that makes us kind of think twice. Obviously, we have to notify our client at that point. I think this is a little bit of an overreach. NASIR: Absolutely. Let’s start. What is an NDA? Well, Matt, let me ask you that question. What’s your definition of an NDA? MATT: Sure. Let me see how I would answer that. Like you said, it’s a nondisclosure agreement. Basically, it’s typically two parties can be more disclosing information. It could be unilateral, or it could be mutual, but basically you have at least one party – maybe two – disclosing information to the other party and they’re prevented from sharing that information with any third party that’s not part of the agreement. How did I do? NASIR: You did great. That’s probably what I would have said. As you were talking, I started to think about different components of what we were going to cover today, but let’s talk a little bit about when to use an NDA or when this is applicable. I think the most common thing in business is that the first thing you do when you’re about to enter into a potential transaction, you want to disclose certain sensitive confidential information that is not ava...
Through a five-round championship bout, Matt travels to Texas from California to determine which state is better for business. Will it be a knockout with a clear winner or will it go to the scorecards?
Covered in this episode of Legally Sound Smart Business are some typical business mistakes blunders small businesses often make and how to avoid them.
Blunder #1: Copying and pasting agreements
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBwoa3np9M0&t=8s
It may sound like a good idea at the time, but this blunder comes with hidden pitfalls. Having an attorney draft terms that are specific to your company’s products and needs can actually save your company substantial time, money, and avoidable liability.
If you choose to forego an attorney, at the least, read the terms line-by-line, to ensure that you understand everything. If there is something you don’t understand, you should not be using it.
Blunder #2: Creating a brand without doing research on the name
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1dYrbhO5cI
One of the worst things that can happen to a new business is for the owners to spend a substantial amount of time and money promoting a certain name, only to find out it’s already being used. Even if they haven't registered a trademark, someone might own the rights simply because they were using it first.
At the very least, a Google search is an absolute must. A recommended search engine that does a worldwide search can be found here: https://www3.wipo.int/branddb/en/.
Blunder #3: Misclassification of workforce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsyPIpl3Bjc
It is one of the most common blunders, yet the negative effects of misclassification can be staggering. One worker claim can trigger an audit of your entire workforce by any number of state and federal agencies. These agencies have the right to issue heavy penalties and interest on taxes and wages, liens, and even injunctions. Businesses can still be subject to crippling class-action suits with multi-million dollar consequences.
Err on the side of classifying as an employee and assume the employee is non-exempt.
Blunder #4: Partnership agreement not signed by all parties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjSQF0AHVsY
After spending time discussing the terms of your partnerships, make sure you get in writing--and do not commit blunder #1 by just copying and pasting an operating agreement found online.
Blunder #5: Not documenting employee performance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9ErHzEH4cg
Documentation provides evidence that supports management decisions to take unfavorable action such as discipline or termination with an employee. This was discussed in our previous episode 311.
Transcript:
Full Podcast TranscriptNASIR: Today, we are covering blunders in the business world. We’re not just talking about a mere mistake. MATT: It’s a matter of cost and time. NASIR: To me, a blunder in business can result in substantial liability or exposure or cost or time. MATT: That’s when the target on your back gets a lot bigger. NASIR: Don’t do it.
[INTRO SONG]
This is Legally Sound Smart Business where your hosts Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub cover business in the news and add their awesome legal twist. Legally Sound Smart Business is a podcast brought to you by Pasha Law PC – a law firm representing your business in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Here are your hosts, Nasir Pasha and Matt Staub.
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast! Today, we are covering blunders in the business world. This is where businesses make huge mistakes – blunders if you will – that can really cost their business in more ways than one. MATT: Yeah, and I didn’t tell you about this beforehand, but I actually reached out to Bob Saget to see if we could have our own separate episode. NASIR: Bob Saget? MATT: Top blunders. NASIR: That’s bloopers! Oh. You mean, America’s Funniest Home Videos. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: Of course, a classic. MATT: I mean, to me, that’s a form of blunders, but maybe you disagree. NASIR: Well, I would say it’s just as entertaining. Maybe from our perspective, perhaps our clients or other businesses may not agree,
How you terminate an employee can make the difference between a graceful transition to avoidable negative outcomes like a dramatic exit or even a lawsuit. We gathered a panel of experts and asked them - is there a "right way" to fire an employee?
We would like to thank our guests for this episode:
Amr Shabaik, Civil Rights Managing Attorney with CAIR Los AngelesPatty Cuthill, Director of People & Culture with NextLevel InternetAnitra Negrete, Director of Human Resources with Leaselabs by RealPageTadessa Williams, Director of Human Resources in Houston, TX
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Look, the other person you’re firing, they’re a human being. PATTI: Well, you’re miserable. They’re probably pretty miserable, too. NASIR: Even if you have a script, it’s going to go off-script. PATTI: You want to pull the band-aid off right away. MATT: But there is some finesse to it. It’s not like you’re a robot. NASIR: You really have to treat these people with dignity and respect. NASIR: You have every right to terminate this employee. They may be surprised at first, but not secondarily. There are a couple of things that happens when you have someone else in the room.
NASIR:All right. We’re here to talk about how to fire somebody. In fact, we’re going to do something different today. We’re going to bring someone in – onto the podcast – and fire them live on national podcast… No, we’re not doing that, but we are doing something different today. Right, Matt? MATT: Yeah. You know, we obviously have our input from the perspective of attorneys, but we’re not always the ones that are terminating people. Oftentimes, with our clients, there’s people within the company that are handling the terminations, so we figured it would be best to get first-hand experience from, well, four individuals that have terminated people ranging from – what do you think? – like, five years to fifteen years. It’s going to be some valuable information for any business owner. NASIR: I think, put together, literally decades of experience – not including hours. And so, I don’t know. Let’s take a listen and introduce some of our guests. There’s four of them – three are HR professionals and one employment law attorney. Here they are! ANITRA: So, I’ve been in human resources going on now 20-plus years. AMR: I practiced employment law for the past six years before starting my current position at CAIR LA which I started sometime in late 2019. PATTI: Well, I’ve been in the HR field – human resources field – for I think over 15 years now. TADESSA: I’ve been their director for 11 years. Prior to that, I have a fairly extensive background in HR consulting, specifically working with professional employer organizations. NASIR: So, I’ll tell you, these people are across the map. What I find interesting is that basically they’re from two states, I should say – Texas and California. The Texas perspective, the California perspective, you can very easily see the difference. Luckily, you know, Matt and I – you obviously live in California, and I live in Texas. Obviously, we practice in both states – our firm – but it’s good to have that kind of dichotomy, don’t you think? MATT: Oh, yeah, definitely. As listeners will hear during the recordings we’re playing, it’s very different in terms of employee protections in California versus Texas. I guess, for those that are multi-jurisdictional, maybe they’ve encountered it but, for those contained within one of those two states – or even another state – there might be some surprising information that they’ll be hearing from these individuals. NASIR: Right. Even though they had different perspectives, I think they all had a common theme of how to approach a termination, and I think this is something that we preach quite a bit as well. It’s like, “Look, the other person you’re firing, they’re a human being.” At the same time though, they had different kind of subtle perspectives on it.
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned nearly every aspect of life on its head, and that certainly holds true for the business world. In this episode, Matt and Nasir explain how the early days of the pandemic felt like the Wild West and how the shifting legal playing field left a lot open to interpretation and instinct.
What were the major impacts from the evolving business situation, legislation, and healthcare changes? From telecommuting to PPP loans to force majeure clauses, what recommendations did we make to our clients as the first 8-10 months of the Coronavirus pandemic progressed? Listen to this episode as Nasir & Matt share their perspective from the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Hey, how is it going? This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Today we’re talking about everyone’s favorite subject in the workplace. That is COVID-19. I don’t know if anyone else is tired of talking about it, but we thought we’d share our legal experience and hopefully switch things up just a little bit for everyone here.
MATT: Right, and obviously, it’s been the major topic of 2020 just in general. For particularly in the employment sense too, for anyone that was going to an office every day, I would think, what, at least 90% of those people have been working from home at least in some capacity. Some still might be. From the employer side, there’s been a lot of challenges they’ve had to navigate since – what would that be, since March, essentially? We’re going to get into some of those today. What’s transpired over that time and some personal – not personal, some anecdotes from some of our clients on how they’ve navigated those seas.
NASIR: Yeah, we want to share our experience. When this first started out and I remember – it must’ve been February or early March when I remember I could not get on a phone call or a meeting where the first 10 minutes, 15 minutes was just occupied by COVID. The thing is, in retrospect, it’s almost kind of funny. Everyone would be making jokes. Okay, what does is this coronavirus? Then they would talk about the Corona beer. They would talk about elbow bumping. They would talk about, oh, let’s not shake hands and this and that. It was truly a joke. I mean, it was something that, oh, but I heard this. I heard that.
It didn’t take long. That was probably for a few days or maybe a week where – then not short after that all of a sudden it became a reality. Now people are going and staying home. Now you have the – you have these government orders nationwide, state, local, county that now are saying you cannot go to work. You have to stay home because this thing is spreading. Again, I don’t need to tell anyone because everyone has experienced it. It was a very interesting time in particular for us as lawyers, as business lawyers because now we’re receiving a flood of questions, and that’s really what we’re here to talk about today.
MATT: Yeah, there was a point when everybody seemed to not know a lot of things. Like you said, we had our clients reaching out to us. We were diligently working to research on our own then as best as we could. Again, not even all the answers were there, and there still are a lot of unknowns. At certain times, we had to make assumptions and what we think was going to happen and, obviously, convey that to the client. It was a pretty wild time looking back. We just wanted to speak on some of the key things that popped up over that time and where we were at then and where we’re at now.
NASIR: Matt, I’m curious what you think about this because during that time – and it’s not that it’s over, but from our perspective, we’ve dealt with all the major issues. I did get some kind of personal, professional satisfaction from that period of time because we were literally practicing some level of frontier law. I have friends in the medical industry, and they talked about how they were treating coronavirus at that time.
After plenty of ups and downs, our buyer has finally closed on the purchase of their business. While we're marking this down in the 'wins' column, it never hurts to review the game tape.
In this final episode, our hosts, Matt Staub and Nasir Pasha, return to the deal almost a year later to reflect on each step of the process. What if you're not in the market for an urgent care in California? How does this purchase process relate to other business deals Matt and Nasir have seen? Will the lessons we learned here carry-forward in a post-Covid world? Tune in to this final episode for answers to these questions and more.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is our last episode of Behind the Buy where we cover a business transaction from start to finish, and now we're beyond the finish line in our last episode where we're going to reflect and really give some insight on this entire transaction. My name is Nasir Pasha. NASIR: And I'm Matt Staub. NASIR: This episode, I've actually been looking forward to for a while. We've been releasing our series for months now, and we're actually recording this -- I think it's almost been a year since we actually recorded originally this series. Right, Matt? NASIR: Yeah, I think a little under I guess, but by the time this episode comes out, it'll probably be just under a year. NASIR: Yeah, just under a year and of course, 2020, for those of you that are listening from the future hopefully, we're still around. It's been a crazy year but buying a business in -- I think we're going to talk about this, but pre-Covid and post-Covid is a completely different story, but I think what's nice about this, we can kind of look at that in this lens. It's like how this may have been different after Covid, right? NASIR: Yeah, undoubtedly, obviously, it would be a much different transaction if it would have been after or even during, but we'll touch on that. It's just one of the things that can arise in the transaction of buying a business. NASIR: In our series obviously, you guys listen to it or maybe you're catching up still, but our client buyer was buying a business out in California, an urgent care business. And of course, not everyone's buying urgent care in California, that's a pretty specific transaction, but what was really neat about this transaction, not only the fact that you were able to kind of go through from the beginning to end -- because let's face it, not all transactions go through. This one did and I think we would consider this a success, and it did close, but there were so many different aspects at every episode at every step of the transaction that you can kind of grab from and relate to in other transactions. Matt and I often talked about how when we're even listening to the episodes ourselves, I know Matt obsesses over the podcast, listens to it every night. I'm not wanting to do that, but when we did talk about it, we did reflect upon how this related to other clients and other transactions that we've been in and we thought that this would be a good opportunity to kind of share those stories as well. NASIR: Sure. It's like you said, this is an example of a transaction that obviously, there were bumps along the road, but it ended up with the right result for the client, but there's plenty of instances where there are these different hiccups and bumps and that isn't the case and the deal blows up. We're just going to go through the life cycle of this transaction and touch on some examples where it hasn't been successful. NASIR: And that first step is that letter of intent. When you're acquiring a business, I wouldn't say this is the case in all cases, but for those that have gone through many series of acquisitions and so forth, everyone understands that you get a lot of prospects, but very rarely, maybe 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 20 deals actually goes, the first step of actually signing something and getting an offer,
The ink is drying on the signature line and things are looking great for our buyer. After so much hard work, the finish line is in sight and the cheering within ear shot.
Though the landlord is still serving friction, things seem safe to move forward and for now, our buyer will be keeping on the entire team. With the closing just around the bend, will all of our efforts and close attention to detail finally pay off? They say dot your I's and cross your T's, lets hope there isn't one more wrench looking for an engine.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to episode 7 of our Behind the Buy series of Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is closing day. Probably the most not exciting part of buying a business or this process, at least from an attorney's perspective because even though there's a lot in this episode, it's kind of underwhelming because if we did our jobs correctly, it's a non-event.
MATT: Right, honestly, if it is exciting, then that means something bad has happened. When everything's closed, you want to make sure that there's no fireworks that day because we've seen it before, something could happen at the last minute. There's a contingency that needs to be satisfied still and there's a question of that again, if something's blowing up that day, it's not good.
NASIR: Correct, and I do enjoy that kind of last-minute shuffle and trying to figure things out, usually like you said, there's problems, there's other people involved trying to figure that out, but in this case, it turned out well. I don't think I'm giving too much away because the transaction itself, even though there's been a few bumps in the road has been relatively smooth and I think that is hopefully some credence to our ability to make it smooth even with the bumps in the road, but I think also the main component was the time. This wasn't a close that we had to do in a week. I think this was a course of a couple months or so, and that gives us quite a bit of leeway to actually deal with some of these issues.
MATT: Sure, I mean that certainly helps, but like you said too, on our end, it's problem-solving so the listeners have heard the various problems that arose throughout the escrow period and it's really looking at those face on, addressing them and then strategizing to what's the best way to approach it because oftentimes nothing's going to be perfect if a problem arises, but it's really trying to mitigate the risk and find something that's going to be as seamless as possible. Preferably for our client, but ideally, I guess for both just to keep things going.
NASIR: Right, so we're going to play this call. It's actually pretty short, but there's actually quite a bit in there, so listen carefully because we're going to break it down in detail especially what's going on before and after this particular call is going to be a big focus for us, so let's listen in.
MATT: All right.
MATT: Hello.
NASIR: Happy closing day.
BUYER: Yes, very glad to be through this and finally get started on the actual business.
NASIR: We thought we'd just have a quick call on what you can expect today, and also catch you up on our recording a little. I know we've been talking about a lot of this stuff offline through email, but let me review it again. Typically, closings are not much of an event as you may think, but they actually are typical -- they used to sit in an office and exchange signatures and kind of a formality or some formalness to it, but that's rarely done now in our experience. In fact, just yesterday, you gave us the signature pages which today, we'll actually exchange those signatures with the seller. Matt, do you mind going over the closing package just to make sure she knows what's in there?
MATT: Yeah, sure. The main thing is finalizing the exhibits of the listed assets. We're not excluding any assets of business except accounts receivable and cash on hand.
Though things are coming along well, the journey would not be interesting if it was purely smooth sailing. After our buyer opens escrow, they are forced to push the closing date back when suddenly a letter from an attorney was received claiming the business, we are buying has a trade mark on the name! Now it’s time to for our buyer to either back off or buck up and fight for our Trademark rights!
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is our sixth episode of Behind the Buy, in our series where we uncover the business transaction of buying a business and you get to hear the inside scoop of our calls with our client. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: This episode, there's just so much to set up here. It's pretty dense, but I think we're gonna try to do it here. In this episode, there's two phone calls. At this point, if you guys recall in episode 5, the buyer and seller have gone through some periods of due diligence, there were some hiccups there with the lease and the seller made a dumb mistake by telling the employees prematurely. But we did get past that and we actually ended up signing an asset purchase agreement after it was drafted. Luckily, as soon as you sign the asset purchase agreement, it's not like the transactions over, you still have another period of due diligence, and that's a little bit more intense than the LOI due diligence period. That's about where we are right now.
MATT: If you recall from the previous episode, we had, I think it was three different contingencies in place, so like you said, just because the agreement signed doesn't mean the transaction's done and the sellers getting paid at whatever the closing date is. What's funny about this episode is if we look back when we had that issue with all the employees finding out, that seems like it's really a drop in the bucket compared to this. This is like a grab bag of issues that came up. Listen to the call, it's just one after the other without even any transition to the next one just because there were so many things on our mind that I think just needed to get them all out there and discuss with us.
NASIR: If I recall, after that happened in the last episode and the call before, you could tell that the seller is just gonna be fun to work with to say the least. There's two calls. The first call is really short. This is basically talking about the escrow period, but the second call, I just want to set it up a little bit because it's actually set very close either a week or so before closing. Our client actually sent us an email, it was late in the night or something like that and I remember, it was relatively urgent and so Matt and I talked first and then we got on the call with our client to discuss. I just wanted to set that up a little bit. Of course, like every episode, we have some defined words that we need to go over to make sure that it doesn't go over anyone's heads. I guess that's a little insulting to say, I probably shouldn't say that, or just a reminder of certain words that maybe some people may need a reminder of.
MATT: Well yeah, it's not even just the listener, I think attorneys too with this first one indemnification clause. I'm not even sure there's a full understanding of that, but it's a very common provision that's -- I don't wanna say every contact, but most contracts, but essentially what it is is you have two parties, the indemnifying party and the indemnified party, and it's basically if there's a third-party claim made against the indemnified party, the other party then would -- I probably should not describe it like this because I'm just saying indemnify over and over.
NASIR: It sounds like a big party, but it sounds great though.
MATT: Long and the short, there's a third-party claim against one party, and then the other party to the transaction, in this case, would then have to indemnify that other party, meaning they'd have to basically become respon...
With frustration at an all-time high and professionalism at an all-time low, our friend the Buyer has “had it” with the Seller and quite frankly their lack of knowledge. At present our Buyer is rightfully concerned that the latest misstep from our loose-lipped Seller will threaten not only the entire operation of the businesses but very well may threaten this deal.
After so much solid leg work has been done by our team, our guys will have to reach up their sleeves for a good plan, potential solution and hopefully a little luck. But the old adage keeps popping up that nothing is guaranteed in business. Hate to say it but “they let it slip”.…
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Alright, this is our fifth episode of Behind the Buy where we are covering a transaction from beginning to end with our client buyer, My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: I think this was interesting because our buyer was jarred on this one. To this point, the ups and downs were pretty -- I should say palatable by our client but this one, you could tell even on this phone call, she was a little annoyed.
MATT: Yeah and some of the previous calls, there's been some minor things that have come up and maybe a little bit more than minor. She's been relatively fine, but she was definitely concerned about this one and rightfully so, a possible thing that could just kind of blow up everything. I would say this is the most material issue we've come across even more so than the whole lease situation.
NASIR: Righ. Without giving anything away because we're gonna play the call here in a minute, I should set up the premise. We've signed the LOI, we're in this due diligence period and we're exchanging documents. We're still basically finishing up and drafting the asset purchase agreement, which is by the way one of her vocab words again. We use that term asset purchase agreement, APA, that's the actual agreement, the purchase agreement that we're utilizing and it differentiates between just a regular equity purchase or agreement where we're actually buying the equity in the business, in this case, an asset purchase for buying the assets. In this process of buying the business, we represent the buyer and the buyer wants to make sure that the business continues as normal. Once the business is purchased, we want to continue with the success that it's had in the past. So anything that disrupts that is a risk to the transaction. From the sellers perspective, they don't want to risk any kind of disruption in business, and from the buyers perspective, once they buy the business, they don't want it all of a sudden to fall apart. I guess that's the kind of cue up of the call is something happens on this call that risks that from happening.
MATT: You're exactly right, from looking at both sides of the coin, the seller doesn't want anything to happen because it could blow up the whole deal, there's contingencies in place and if those aren't met, the buyer might back out and then on the buyers side of things, if they go through with the transaction -- There's always going to be issues to deal with at the beginning once the transaction is finalized, but they don't want anything major that's going to disrupt the entire operations and possibly things from the get-go.
NASIR: Right and so hopefully, we come up with a solution here. This is a short call, so let's have it. I think we just have one or two more vocab words to go over and we'll play it. The first is UCC lien. I feel like we've covered that before but just in case, again when there is some kind of lender involved or some third-party financing and someone wants to make sure that their collateral is protected, they could actually file a lien with the respective state and that's called a UCC lien. UCC meaning Uniform Commercial Code. You don't need to know too much about that other than it's if you have a UCC lien on the business and you're buying a business,
As we go deeper into the buying process, we start to uncover more challenges from our seller and encounter some of the wrenches they are tossing our way. When we last left off in episode three our team was knee deep in due diligence for our buyer, had already penned and signed the Letter of Intent (LOI) and was grappling with this mysterious business broker.
As our team irons out the details on a pivotal deal changing lease for our buyer, the seller’s broker friend starts to stir the pot and our attorneys reach for their running shoes as our team gets ready to jump our first big hurdle.
Even though everyone’s eyes roll, worry not, our attorneys have dealt with his type before, but with every case being different will the other obstacles on the horizon be just too much for our buyer?
Listen to episode 4 of the Behind the Buy series.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: This is our fourth episode on Behind the Buy series where we're walking through the process of buying a business with our client and this one is a doozy. I think this is our first real obstacle and this is also during our due diligence period right after we signed the letter of intent but before the purchase agreement's kind of finalized.
MATT: But this is realistic and an actual transaction, too. Now we've kind of gotten to the substance and the meat of this transaction. Like you said, there's a lot of inter-working pieces and components that are going on. So I think this one's a great listen if someone really wants to understand what's entailed in the purchase of a business.
NASIR: Right. And some of these things, you just can't predict. But in a lot of ways, it's totally predictable. That is you're going to get things that you're not going to expect.
There are some vocabulary words we use here. We want to make sure we define beforehand. First one is earnest money and third-party escrow. In this call, we start talking about how we're going to be depositing a more sizable deposit with a third party escrow as an earnest money. And again, this is not dissimilar from buying a house when you're buying a business. It's kind of the same way. You're actually depositing cash usually with a third party. They're called the escrow agent or the escrow officer, and they retain it in their bank account in trust. They will release those funds upon instruction from both the buyer and seller or as otherwise directed in the actual purchase agreement.
MATT: The next couple of terms we have, we have asset purchase and then we have stock purchase or also equity purchase kind of used interchangeably. So I think we've talked about this in the previous episodes, but an asset purchase in this context would be a situation where you're kind of picking and choosing the items you want to buy from the seller kind of an a la carte way of looking at it. With a stock equity purchase, you're buying everything. That's what we're talking about when we say asset purchase or versus a stock or equity purchase.
NASIR: The next couple of terms are healthcare-related. Our buyer is buying an urgent care. We do have to cover some health industry-specific terms just to make sure that everything is communicated properly. There's just two here. One is CLIA waived testing. That just refers to the urgent care where they have to be certified by CLIA which certain labs have to do that. We find out that, okay, this is not a lab that requires that kind of CLIA license.
The reason that's important is because whether or not we need to transfer that license or get a new license when you're buying the business. The second item is also kind of related to that in the sense we had to see whether we need to transfer any in-network provider agreements as well. Most health care facilities are in-network, meaning they have some kind of contract with an insurance payer to be reimbursed at a certain rate.
One word--interloper! When a new mysterious broker enters the transaction and starts to kick up dust, Nasir and Matt take the reins. The seller signed off on the letter of intent (see episode 2), yet this “business broker” serves only friction and challenges by refusing to send financials, whilst demanding more of a firm commitment from the buyer.
Still, just like dealing with any drama causing personality, the guys and our buyer do our best to approach it with a clear mind and cold hard facts. However, with now more than two in this tango, will our guys be able lead us through the muddy waters of this “broker or joker”?
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our third episode of Behind the Buy. This is where we're going to encounter a third-party interloper. Usually, they're not, it's the broker episode, right, Matt?
MATT: Yeah, probably our first and only introduction to another party into this series.
NASIR: I have to say, this is the first time that our listeners are hearing -- We could have easily predicted this, but this is the first time where our listeners hear a transaction starts to just take a little bit of a different direction than what's expected. Again, that's common, and I think we mentioned at the beginning of our series or last episode that you kind of have to walk into these transactions expecting the unexpected to be really agile, otherwise, you're going to stress yourself out and it's also going to get in the way of getting a deal done.
MATT: I kind of look at it in the sense of any big event, big transaction, there's going to be things that are going to pop up that you just have to be prepared for, or prepare as much as you can. Not to throw it back to our wedding analogy, but I look at it as a wedding. You know something's going to happen leading up to it or on the day of too and you just have to be prepared to fix whatever needs to be fixed and move along and make sure that you hit the finish line.
NASIR: We're going to play the call here in a second. There's a couple of calls in this one. Our buyer gives Matt a call without me. Luckily, he recorded that call.
MATT: That's my favorite call.
NASIR: We do have a vocab review. A couple words that we used in the last episode including Letter of Intent, LOI, I think that's pretty self-explanatory but a couple of new ones. The first being escrow. What's escrow, Matt?
MATT: Escrow can mean a variety of things, I suppose. But in this context, there's going to be money that's held for a downpayment in this transaction and it's held in this escrow until we close.
NASIR: It's usually a third-party, usually unrelated to the transaction. We've had experiences where they want us as attorneys, whether it's buyer's attorney or seller's attorney to act as escrow. There are circumstances where that may be appropriate. Typically, we don't do that because there are things that can happen during escrow and that alleviates any kind of conflict of interest. You want your attorneys to be able to represent you throughout the transaction. The second vocab word again is a repeat from last time which is no-shop provision. This actually comes into play in this call you'll see because the no-shop provision is a provision that we actually put in the letter of intent where the parties agree that the seller is not going to go out there and "shop around" or go to other potential buyers for their business. That's going to come up in this call, so let's take a listen. Did I miss anything, Matt?
MATT: No, it was a pretty normal conversation, these 2 calls, so I think we're good.
NASIR: Good, okay. Let's listen in.
MATT: Hello?
BUYER: Hey, Matt. How are you?
MATT: Hey, pretty good, just catching up on some of your emails, in fact.
BUYER: Okay, I thought we could just talk it out. I thought that it would be easier.
MATT: Yeah, definitely. We're recording, by the way.
BUYER: Okay, got it. I just got off the phone with the seller.
Just as most stories and deals start out, everyone is optimistic, idealistic and full of hope for clear skies. It's a perfect outlook with a perfect setup for the ups and downs yet to come.
Peek further behind the curtain and into the first steps of buying a business: the letter of intent. After the first episode, you already have an idea and context of our buyer's situation. Listen to the call, as we walk through the important points and considerations when drafting our buyer's letter of intent, that happens to include a no-shop provision.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business, this is our second episode of Behind the Buy, our series where we take a look at the transaction of buying a business with our client, you get to listen in on our phone calls. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: This is our first real episode, I think our first episode was just kind of an introduction of our series, but this is where we really get to the meat. We're going to play our first phone call. At this stage, we're just setting things up. We're talking about the actual initial transaction of negotiating the business terms through what is called a letter of intent.
MATT: It's just some table setting if you will, the document that starts the whole transaction and discussing the terms that are in there, what should we include, what shouldn't we include. Just prepping our client and getting this whole thing started.
NASIR: Even though I think this is a pretty straightforward part of the transaction, there's a lot of important information here when a buyer's looking to purchase a business, the different options they have on how they make the offer and how they structure it. There is a lot of discussion to be had before things are put in writing. This is a critical step, but this also really sets up everything that's going to be coming, the twists and turns if you will, of this particular transaction.
MATT: Exactly.
NASIR: As always, we're going to have a little overview of some of the defined terms or vocabulary. It's not to say that -- most of you probably know this information, but in the phone call itself, we may not take a moment to define them during the call because of course, it's a natural conversation, so let's go over a few words in here so that everyone's prepped for this listen. The first are a set of three. There's the term sheet, the letter of intent and memorandum of understanding. From a client's perspective, often, they use these different three terms interchangeably. In a way, they could be very interchangeable in the sense that from a legal perspective, a term sheet and letter of intent and a memorandum, they all can have the same legal effect if they're drafted in such a way. The best way to distinguish each of them is usually just from a formatting perspective. I know that sounds oversimplified, but I would say that a term sheet is probably the most informal of the three and the Memorandum of Understanding is the most formal, but all three are some written document and they all include the basic terms of the business transaction. However, a term sheet is very rarely an enforceable document. Sometimes it can be very casual, a letter of intent is pretty much always an unenforceable document. However, it may have enforceable provisions and a memorandum of understanding is almost always an enforceable document, but may have some non-binding provisions in it. Really, the distinction between the three is in the details because for example, a term sheet for which you outline the terms of buying a business that is signed by both parties could end up being unintentionally a binding document and similarly with the letter of intent and an MOU. That's why even if you want to casually offer something in a term sheet, even in an email exchange, you really should get an attorney involved very early to make sure you don't accidentally walk into an enforceable transaction t...
When a savvy buyer hears opportunity knocking to purchase a prime positioned business, she decides not to go it alone and taps in the professionals to help navigate what could potentially be a fruitful acquisition. “Behind the Buy” is a truly rare and exclusive peak into the actual process, dangers, pitfalls and achievements, that can occur when buying a business.
In this limited series, hosts of Legally Sound | Smart Business provide insight and help you understand the steps that can go into acquiring a business and maybe even a piece of the American dream. Hear the calls and conversations that take place while you listen and learn about all the things that can wrong on the path to getting it right.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our first episode of Behind the Buy Series on Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: This is one thing that we've been wanting to do for a while which is let people understand what it is like to actually work with an attorney, but not only any attorney, us, as attorneys as we represent from start to finish the process of actually buying a business. This series is great for those that are thinking about buying a business or even selling a business for that matter. Not only that, for you guys to understand what it's like to actually work with counsel and to go through the process in real life, of the ups and downs like Matt said of an actual buying process.
MATT: If you've never purchased a business before, this will give you a lot of insight. Probably even more so than some situations where if you have bought or sold a business before. We really go through every detail and every conversation and all the players involved. It's gonna be extremely valuable even if you're not looking to buy or sell a business right now, just having this knowledge and kind of have a general understanding of what can occur in this whole process, I think is gonna be of great value to any of the listeners.
NASIR: For you new listeners, my name is Nasir Pasha. I'm joined by co host and also fellow business associate, law firm associate, attorney associate, Matt Staub. We've been doing this for years. It's been years.
MATT: Yeah, we've been in the podcast game before it was cool, I think.
NASIR: Well, yes. We made it cool, basically.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: It's something that we enjoy. This isn't our day job, but we love doing it. This series in particular, I think is part of the reason why we enjoy it because it's so unique. At the end of the day, attorneys are notorious for hiding the ball, hiding the nuances of what they do everyday when in reality, on one hand, it's not that complicated, on the other hand, I wish they would show because it shows what we actually do. Some of the things that we can actually help clients with and expose that. Hopefully, this series does that.
MATT: This is going to be the most in-depth look that you can really find in this sort of medium. I think the listeners will be pleasantly surprised with the insight that's shown here and all the details for this business purchase. We should talk a little bit about who the series is for. The first thing that comes to mind is anyone that's looking to buy a business or I suppose sell a business as well. This is the thing you should be listening to, at least in the podcast medium. It's also pretty valuable to anyone that could possibly buy or sell a business down the road as well because these are the things that you want to keep in mind as you continue the operations of your business. It's these little things and little considerations that would be much helpful if you think about them now as opposed to when you're in the actual negotiation stage. We even saw that a little bit with our client as well. She was able to overcome those pretty quickly. It wasn't an issue, but it's very helpful to get the mind working on those things.
NASIR: Well said, Matt.
GrubHub is subject to two "matters of controversy" that have likely become common knowledge to business owners: "fake" orders and unfriendly microsites.
In this podcast episode, Matt and Nasir breakdown the legal issues of the subscription industry's business on the internet.
Resources
A good 50-state survey for data breach notifications as of July 2018.California Auto-Renewal Law (July 2018)Privacy Policies Law by StateWhy Users of Ashley Madison May Not Sue for Data Breach [e210]Ultimate Legal Breakdown: Subscription Box Businesses [e286]How Subscription Model Pricing Is The Gift And The Curse [e228]Guide to Terms & Conditions for Subscription Box Businesses (January 2015)GDPR v. CCPANegative Options according to the FTC from 2009Negative Options according to the FTC from 2016
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law – practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: This is where we cover business in the news and give our legal twist to that news. Today, we are going to really focus on a subscription industry. Pretty much every service product now you can get on a subscription basis. We’re going to do the ultimate legal breakdown on privacy, data protection, and terms and conditions. If you really love the law, this is for you because we’re going to bore you to death.
MATT: Like you said, when people think of subscription-based things, I think – at least for me – the first thing that comes to mind is the subscription box model where you get an actual delivery of goods every month, but it’s way more than that. I can imagine there’s one listener who doesn’t have at least one subscription-based service – like Netflix or anything like that or an Amazon account. It’s very prevalent and it’s pretty wide-reaching at this point. It’s just there’s a lot of rules that go into it, especially depending on where you’re located as well and where your customers are. We’re not going to be able to cover everything, but we’re hoping to cover as much as we can.
NASIR: No, we’re covering everything. We’re going to be here for the next three days, nonstop, just buckle your seatbelts. The subscription model is nothing new. I don’t know how far back you’d go, but you could go back to at least newspapers and periodicals. I think where you can start seeing the kind of subscription box kind of related aspect is – what was that back in the day where you’d pay X amount?
MATT: Columbia House?
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. That seems to be where things really started to transition into something a little bit more clever when it comes to certain products being mailed to you on a monthly basis.
MATT: Yeah, we’ll get into that as well. There was a little bit of trickery involved in that, but that’s definitely one of the earlier adopters. Like you said, newspapers, that’s what I said at the beginning. It’s something that people might associate with one thing, but it’s really across the industry – pretty far-reaching in terms of different services in addition to the goods.
NASIR: But I think one thing that has changed – I mean, we just have to say it plainly – it’s the internet. When someone would walk into your store, you would have an interaction with that customer. Even if you had all the legal protections and things like that, it was just different because it was face-to-face. If there was an issue with the product or service, there was that human interaction. Now, on the internet, the stakes are just so much higher because, first of all, there’s this wall of a computer in front of you, so all your customers feel protected. Frankly, even businesses feel protected to be a little bit more flexible with how they do things. And so, if someone has a complaint and they’re upset about it, they’re going to blast you online. It’s very easy now. Any marketing material, once you put it up, it’s there forever. People can access it through archives and so forth versus, when you put it in a newspaper, it has a very limited distribution. And so,
In recording this episode's topic on the business buying process, Matt's metaphor, in comparing the process to getting married probably went too far, but they do resemble one another. Listen to the episode for legal advice on buying a business.
Nasir and Matt return to discuss the different options available to companies looking to raise funds through general solicitation and crowdfunding. They discuss the rules associated with the various offerings under SEC regulations and state laws, as well as more informal arrangements. The two also discuss the intriguing story about a couple who raised over $400,000 for a homeless man only to allegedly keep the funds for themselves.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Hi, and welcome to our podcast.My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news.Legally Sound Smart Business – we’ve been doing this podcast for now, I don’t know, I feel like it’s been like five, ten thousand years, something like that.
MATT: Well, I don’t know if those numbers are accurate, but there’s a recent story how the podcast industry is oversaturated which I would probably agree with because now everyone and their pets have a podcast.When we started doing it, I mean, we weren’t—
NASIR: It was novel at the time, but now it’s like everyone has a podcast.You know, we still get a lot of listeners, so why not?
MATT: Yeah, sure.That’s the thing. The market’s over-saturated, but there’s not a lot of podcasts – not in our category, I guess you could say. You know, not everyone is as charismatic as you and I are.
NASIR: Ah, yeah.Unlike other attorneys, we actually have lives and want to do something else other than write contracts and review contracts all day. Maybe that’s what it is. But we enjoy our work, so that’s why, I think.
MATT: Yeah, no complaints.
NASIR: Well, anyway, today is a tough topic because it’s a little kind of technical, so I don’t want to make it too dry. But, at the same time, it’s pretty relevant to so many of our clients in the sense that this is a pretty prominent issue, and that is raising capital for your company – whether you’re an early startup or really well into your road – what are your options out there and talking about what’s going on with crowdfunding and kind of give it a quick update in that regard as well.
MATT: Sure.Like you said, it can get pretty complex, pretty technical, so what we’re going to do – and I’ll start off with a recent story.
NASIR: Should we just start out by reading the statute? Regulation 506(b) says…
MATT: Now, I’m pretty sure, I’m going to say wit pretty strong confidence, there’s no podcast that does that, but I guess I could be wrong.
NASIR: We could be the first.
MATT: There’s a story – by the time this comes out, there might be an update, they’re just kind of waiting – there hasn’t been anything recent in at least about a month or so since we’re recording right now, but the story I’m talking about – and maybe the listeners saw it – I’ll try to summarize it here.It was a fairly young woman that was driving at night in Philadelphia. Car ran out of gas. She didn’t have any way to get gas, and no Triple A or anything like that. A homeless man happened to be around. He had only $20.00 to his name. He offered to give it to her. She was able to buy gas and get home. Really nice gesture.What ensues from there is what gets interesting.This woman Kate McClure and her boyfriend Mark D’Amico started a GoFundMe page to try to raise – at the time - $10,000 for this good Samaritan that gave his last dollars to this woman that was stranded on the highway. They started the page. The goal was $10,000. It got all the way up to over $400,000. They stopped it at that point just because it was just getting out of control.For those of you that are not familiar with how GoFundMe works, anyone can donate money and it goes into this pool. Correct me if I’m wrong, as long as you hit your goal, you get the funds, right?
NASIR: Right – minus their fees, of course.
MATT: They definitely hit their mark – 40 times over.So,
Flight Sim Labs, a software add-on creator for flight simulators, stepped into a PR disaster and possibly some substantial legal issues when it allegedly included a Trojan horse of sorts as malware to combat pirating of its $100 Airbus A320 software. The hidden test.exe file triggered anti-virus software for good reason as it was actually a tool that could steal passwords stored through Google Chrome. Flight Sim Labs had to later explain once they were outed by a user on Reddit that the tool was only targeting those who stole the software.
In this episode, Nasir and Matt are joined by good friend, entrepreneur, attorney, and podcaster, Marc Hoag. We discuss the legal issues surrounding this mess of a situation created by what seems an overzealous developer / development team, including hacking, malware, terms and conditions of Reddit, defamation and libel, DRM and anti-piracy, and copyright infringement.
Credit to MeowCaptain who brought this to our attention outside of the /r/flightsim subreddit with his video summary. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast!My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.Two attorneys here with Pasha Law – practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. Legally Sound Smart Business. It’s been a little bit of time here – almost a couple of months – but, today, I think we have a pretty nice story about flight simulators, and aviation, and software, and piracy – the kind where you steal software. Plus, we have a guest. Right, Matt?
MATT: Yeah. As you said, there’s a lot of things in play here, so I think we needed to find a guest who could hit all the checkmarks on this, and I think we found one – at least in my opinion.
MARC: Hoag – licensed attorney, aviation fanatic, podcast host, business owner. I think we’ve hit everything we can here, right?
NASIR: Startup founder, yeah. You’re right. It’s across the board.Welcome to the show,
MARC:!
MARC:: Thanks very much for having me, guys! Great to be here!
NASIR: Now, there’s only two hosts of the show. I know you’re a perfect candidate to take over our podcast but, you know, there are no openings, but I do appreciate you as a guest.We were talking to him earlier. We asked him if he’s an aviation hobbyist. He said, “Fanatic.” You were saying your wife picks out planes and their model numbers? What were you saying?
MARC:: No, I think it’s contagious. We actually recognize flights. We’re up here just north of San Francisco. All the Europe and Middle Eastern flights out of SFO end up arching right over our house here as they head on their way, northeast, out of the bay. Yeah, we actually recognize flight routing and numbers and just call them out just because we’re super weird that way and, yeah, it’s just kind of neat. You see a thing and you know, in eight hours, ten hours, fifteen hours, it’s going to be somewhere else.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s really weird. But, anyway, perfect guest.Let me give you some background of the story we’re getting. It is one of those stories where it’s kind of hard to follow but lots of legal issues which is fun for us to cover, of course.We have this company called Flight Sim Labs. They basically create add-ons for popular flight simulators. The one I’m familiar with that’s been around forever is Microsoft Flight Simulator – great name, very descriptive. From my understanding – Mark, correct me if I’m wrong – Flight Simulator by Microsoft is pretty much the main software that everyone uses for both hobbyists and even people that want to train to be a pilot, right?
MARC:: Well, kind of. It is still true. It’s alive and well in the after-market community.Microsoft, as you might know, actually stopped developing it quite a few years ago. What took its place was actually a product called X-Plane. It was initially developed by an aeronautical engineer whose name is Austin Meyer.
Attorneys Matt Staub and Nasir Pasha examine Mark Zuckerberg's congressional hearings about the state of Facebook. The two also discuss Cambridge Analytica and the series of events that led to the congressional hearings, the former and current versions of Facebook's Terms of Service, and how businesses should be handling data privacy.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re two attorneys with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news with our legal twist. Today, we’re covering – well, I mean, this has been a pretty big news week when it came to terms of service. I think, Matt, you put it well. What did you say to me? This was like the… I’ve just got to pull that message up.
MATT: Yeah, I’m trying to think. It was something along the effects of “this is the most riveting terms of service discussion I’ve ever seen” or something.
NASIR: And it was! What he was referring to, of course, was Mark Zuckerberg appeared before both the Senate and the House. I can’t remember which committee. He basically put himself in front of congressmen to ask him a bunch of questions. I’m sure everyone heard about it. There was a lot of interesting angles that everyone kind of took. You know, people were really focusing on how the congressmen didn’t know what Facebook was really and it was shown by how they asked the questions and so forth. I think, for our purposes, we’re really focusing on this privacy policy, the terms of service, and how that relates to actual businesses that also run online businesses – whether it’s a social media site or something else.
MATT: Right. I mean, any online site should have terms of service and a privacy policy, too. They’re required to in some states. But, yeah, terms of service can make or break a lot of online companies and I don’t have any numbers. They probably don’t even exist, but I’m very curious on what percentage of companies even put a lot of thought into their terms of service. Real quick, let’s rewind or let’s explain how we got here and how Facebook got here. Basically, this is an issue with how Facebook handles personal data of users. What happened was Facebook – I’m sure many listeners have heard – Facebook allowed a third-party developer to access the data of roughly 87 million people, then they turned around and sold it to Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company. It then was used by the Trump party and presumably winning the 2016 election. I think that aspect of it is what have gotten people really upset about this. Obviously, they’d be upset otherwise, but that last component of it with the Trump presumably winning the election because of this company collecting the data or getting access to the data, I think that’s a big reason why this is such a hot topic right now.
NASIR: Yeah, I would assume, if the results were a little bit different – who knows? Perhaps there may have been a little bit of a different pushback. You summed it up pretty well, and I think that’s how everyone is kind of presenting it, too. But I really feel it’s not a fair characterization of what exactly happened.
MATT: I think one critical piece – specifically to Zuckerberg being there – was he wasn’t subpoenaed to be there.
NASIR: Yeah, it was voluntary.
MATT: I believe he wasn’t under oath either. He could leave. I mean, he was there for how many hours? It was over two days, right? Was it ten hours total or something? But he could leave any time he wanted, and I think this is more of a PR thing for Facebook more than anything else because there’s no legal requirement for him to be there and say these things.
NASIR: I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t voluntarily go. He may have been compelled to go. Everyone saw this was kind of a lot of pressure for him to do something. The question was asked, “Are you going to testify?” And so,
The Trump presidency has led to a major increase in ICE immigration enforcement. It's critical for business owners to both comply with and know their rights when it comes to an ICE audit or raid. Nasir, Matt, and Pasha Law attorney Karen McConville discuss how businesses can prepare for potential ICE action and how to properly respond if ICE shows up at your door. They also discuss the different types of action ICE can take and distinguish between a judicial and administrative warrant. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to the podcast!My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.Well, usually two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois, but we have a special surprise guest for this episode.
NASIR: Surprise!Yeah, we have our third attorney at Pasha Law here, Karen McConville, based out of the Bay Area, Northern California, and she is our business corporate attorney with a nice little twist of a legal background of immigration and criminal law which is perfect for today’s episode.Karen, welcome to our podcast!KAREN: Thank you, Nasir! Thank you, Matt!
NASIR: This is where, of course, we cover business in the news and add our legal twist.Today, we are talking about – I was going to say ICE audits, but it’s a little more deeper than that. I would say an ICE raid to your local business or your business.This is something that is kind of heating up, especially in the Bay Area, but pretty much across the country with the new administration.
MATT: Right, and we’ll get into a couple of the specific stories that have really caught our eye here. But, like you were saying, it’s really with this new administration – the Trump administration.I’m sure people have seen a lot more of these instances in the news and it’s obviously adversely affecting businesses and I want to be sympathetic to the fact that, you know, we’re not just thinking about businesses necessarily.It obviously affects individuals’ lives, but just understanding that the bulk of today’s discussion will be focused on, from the employer’s perspective, how you handle these sorts of issues when ICE comes knocking.
NASIR: You’re right. It is kind of a delicate subject. But the reality is that a lot of small businesses, a lot of large businesses depend upon a workforce that may be undocumented, and the impact on the economy, the liability of these employers is an issue that I think many may not be aware in the sense that small businesses may not realize the liability they may incur if they are hiring undocumented workers. They also may not be aware what to do in the event that ICE comes a-knocking.So, Karen, tell us, I mean, this is something that’s going on in particular in the Bay Area, right?KAREN: Yes, this is something that’s happened quite recently. You may have seen articles, seen the article where I had sadly sat in businesses in Northern California and most of those were in San Francisco, some of them were in Sacramento.But, you know, I had an employer call and say, “You know, ICE is two blocks behind from my worksite. What should I do?” which is the reason why we’re talking about it today – because our employers need to be advised on what they can do, what they can’t do, and what they should do.
NASIR: A lot of people would say, “Okay, it’s the Bay Area. They’re notoriously known as a sanctuary – San Francisco in particular – a sanctuary city.” California, I think maybe even considered somewhat of a sanctuary state. I’m not sure if they’ve self-labeled that or otherwise. But it’s not just limited to those areas.7-Elevens across the nation, including here in Texas, have been also targeted for these raids.It shows you it’s not just the mom and pops. These 7-Elevens also have to deal with this issue as well.KAREN: Right.You know, there were arrests that resulted from those 7-Eleven raids. So, there’s two ways they’re going in about it. It’s through the employer and, also,
New years always bring new laws. Effective January 1, 2018, California has made general contractors jointly liable for the unpaid wages, fringe benefits, and other benefit payments of a subcontractor. Nasir and Matt discuss who the new law applies to and how this affects all tiers in the general contractor-subcontractor relationship. Click here to learn more from "Can My Business Be Sued for Something an Independent Contractor Did?"
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to the podcast!My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.Well, usually two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois, but we have a special surprise guest for this episode.
NASIR: Surprise!Yeah, we have our third attorney at Pasha Law here, Karen McConville, based out of the Bay Area, Northern California, and she is our business corporate attorney with a nice little twist of a legal background of immigration and criminal law which is perfect for today’s episode.Karen, welcome to our podcast!KAREN: Thank you, Nasir! Thank you, Matt!
NASIR: This is where, of course, we cover business in the news and add our legal twist.Today, we are talking about – I was going to say ICE audits, but it’s a little more deeper than that. I would say an ICE raid to your local business or your business.This is something that is kind of heating up, especially in the Bay Area, but pretty much across the country with the new administration.
MATT: Right, and we’ll get into a couple of the specific stories that have really caught our eye here. But, like you were saying, it’s really with this new administration – the Trump administration.I’m sure people have seen a lot more of these instances in the news and it’s obviously adversely affecting businesses and I want to be sympathetic to the fact that, you know, we’re not just thinking about businesses necessarily.It obviously affects individuals’ lives, but just understanding that the bulk of today’s discussion will be focused on, from the employer’s perspective, how you handle these sorts of issues when ICE comes knocking.
NASIR: You’re right. It is kind of a delicate subject. But the reality is that a lot of small businesses, a lot of large businesses depend upon a workforce that may be undocumented, and the impact on the economy, the liability of these employers is an issue that I think many may not be aware in the sense that small businesses may not realize the liability they may incur if they are hiring undocumented workers. They also may not be aware what to do in the event that ICE comes a-knocking.So, Karen, tell us, I mean, this is something that’s going on in particular in the Bay Area, right?KAREN: Yes, this is something that’s happened quite recently. You may have seen articles, seen the article where I had sadly sat in businesses in Northern California and most of those were in San Francisco, some of them were in Sacramento.But, you know, I had an employer call and say, “You know, ICE is two blocks behind from my worksite. What should I do?” which is the reason why we’re talking about it today – because our employers need to be advised on what they can do, what they can’t do, and what they should do.
NASIR: A lot of people would say, “Okay, it’s the Bay Area. They’re notoriously known as a sanctuary – San Francisco in particular – a sanctuary city.” California, I think maybe even considered somewhat of a sanctuary state. I’m not sure if they’ve self-labeled that or otherwise. But it’s not just limited to those areas.7-Elevens across the nation, including here in Texas, have been also targeted for these raids.It shows you it’s not just the mom and pops. These 7-Elevens also have to deal with this issue as well.KAREN: Right.You know, there were arrests that resulted from those 7-Eleven raids. So, there’s two ways they’re going in about it. It’s through the employer and, also, through the use of the tanners if they find anybody who’s there illegal.
With a seemingly endless amount of new mattress options becoming available, it is unsurprising that the market has become increasingly aggressive. As companies invest in more innovative solutions to get in front of customers, review sites, blogs and YouTube videos have moved to the forefront of how customers are deciding on their mattresses and how companies are attempting to battle for their business. With affiliate marketing becoming a colossal business for v/bloggers with the most coveted traffic, mattress companies are willing to pay influencers high affiliate commissions, but when relationships sour those same companies are just as glad to pay their attorneys. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to the podcast!
My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: And this is where we talk about the business in the news and, also, add our legal twist to that business news.
MATT: This is going to come out after Thanksgiving, but I think this is a very appropriate story for Thanksgiving Day because it deals with actual sleeping, I guess, but it deals with mattresses.
NASIR: Do a lot of people buy mattresses on Black Friday or during Christmas holidays?
MATT: After the meal.
NASIR: I was thinking, like, the day after, you go out and buy a mattress.
One thing I didn’t realize is that this mattress industry is cutthroat. You wouldn’t think so, but it seems like, if you’re in the industry, whether you’re in retail or you’re in this now, these online mattress companies, this is where everything’s going now. You can literally buy your mattress online. You see it all over the internet – even on TV now they advertise for it. It’s pretty crazy.
MATT: Well, we’re going to be talking about the online aspect of it, as you say, but it makes sense if you’ve ever driven around and you see one company or one building business that sells mattresses and you’re likely to see a handful within a couple of minutes. I think the reason that is because, like you said, competition. Someone’s going to go to one store to look for a mattress. If they buy, that’s it. If not, there are going to be a bunch of competitors right there that can make the sale.
NASIR: The whole mattress thing, I’m sure you’ve bought a mattress before, I assume.
MATT: Never.
NASIR: Well, let me tell you what it’s like…
The whole mattress buying process, it’s never fun. I mean, not that shopping and stuff like that is ever fun. But it’s like they’re all the same. You’re making this kind of long-term investment where, if you make a mistake, even if they give you a guarantee return or whatever, you can try it out for 30 days, you’re not returning no mattress. Whatever you buy, you’re keeping. I can say that I’ve had pretty decent mattresses in my life. I would say that I kind of just get used to them – whether I like it or not.
MATT: All very good points. I’ve felt the same things. I don’t know about you, but the last one I purchased was actually online and it was through an ad on some podcast I had listened to. Like you said, it was try it out for a hundred days. If you don’t like it, we’ll come and pick it up. If you have to send it back, that’s not even feasible, really. I don’t know how you would even do that. But, yeah, it’s a big investment. They say, depending on how much sleep you get, I guess it would be anywhere from 25 percent to a third of your time of your life, potentially sleeping on a mattress.
NASIR: Yeah, that assumes that, when you’re sleeping, you’re sleeping on the mattress.
MATT: Exactly.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to kind of go through this. It’s a really interesting story that’s played out for a couple of years here dealing with online sales of mattresses which seems to be the growing trend. There’s a lot of different companies out there doing it – one of which is Casper which we’ll get into.
In recent months explosive amounts of high profile allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and varying acts of inappropriate behavior have transcended every sector of our professional world. With a deluge from Hollywood and politics, and the private workforce, accusations have inundated our feeds and mass media.
This harassment watershed has not only been felt within the constraints of high profile communities. It has affected every echelon of our society and impacts businesses, religious institutions, education, entertainment and government. We have seen a multitude of brave faces, who Time Magazine calls the Silence Breakers, come forward and stand up to Cosby, Weinstein, Trump, Ailes, Conyers, Moore and Spacey. No longer can businesses neglect the need to educate and protect themselves as well as their employees.
This pivotal moment is a call to action for business owners, supervisors and employees to focus on the policies and culture they contribute to in the workplace.; In this episode Nasir and Matt take a moment to reorient its listeners to well established legal principles as it applies to sexual harassment, especially in the current environment.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast!
My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news.
Today, we’re talking about, oh, so topical, right?
You know, we try to stay as topical as we can, but this is almost too much. I bet you, when this is coming out, it’s not even close to being over, and I’m trying to figure out a name for it. Basically, what’s going on with sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations that are going on in a high-profile sense. But we’re going to take a look at it more on a practical perspective in how it actually still applies. In a sense, the law hasn’t changed here. The law may be changing, but this stuff has been going on for a while.
We can talk about those that are business owners, how you can protect your business and protect your employees from this kind of environment. I think that’s very important right now.
MATT: Yeah, I think the caveat should be, if you’re a business owner that’s participating in this sexual misconduct, this probably isn’t the episode for you. The advice for that’s pretty simple.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s a very, very good caveat. But, at the same time, just because you made mistakes in the past doesn’t mean that you can’t change the culture and environment you have in the future as well. We’re going to talk a lot about that. We’re going to talk about just the general nature of the law and where it’s changing and also talk about some of the more salacious topics that are going on in the news as well.
MATT: Sure. I think what’s helpful to start out is just to kind of lay out or define what exactly sexual harassment is.
NASIR: Oh, I was going to say, what are people calling this? I don’t want to call it a movement because that doesn’t make sense. They call it a watershed moment.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Is it a sexual harassment watershed moment? I’m not sure.
MATT: We have the whole episode to figure this out.
NASIR: Okay, I’ll come up with something.
MATT: The reason I think it’s helpful to define it – and we’re kind of seeing this now – obviously, there are some allegations that are pretty severe and some that are not as severe, but the importance is that it’s a very broad definition of what can be considered sexual harassment.
Generally speaking, it’s unwanted sexual advances or visual, verbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature and that’s both same sex and different sex that we’re dealing with here.
Generally speaking, what would be behavior that would fall under this? You can kind of put it into categories. I’ll start with the more obvious. I’ll start with the most severe and kind of work our way down.
If you are not familiar with the EB-5 program started in 1990 to give green cards to certain qualified investors in the United States, then you may not have been alone a few years ago. Currently, the EB-5 program has since exploded since its inception and now hits its quotas consistently each year. The program has brought tens of thousands of jobs and billions of foreign investment.
The program has two main requirements: (1) An investor must put in a $1,000,000 investment or $500,000 for qualifying new commercial enterprises; and (2) create or preserve at least 10 full-time jobs within two years of admission to the United States. Generally, most investments fall in the $500 thousand level, but both thresholds are expected to be increased soon. The businesses that only require $500 thousand dollar investment are those that are in a “TEA” or “targeted employment area.”
There are two types of targeted employment areas or “TEAs”. Either its a rural area (an area far from cities and with low population) OR an area of high unemployment areas. TEA investments require a different strategy since only businesses that work well in areas of low population or areas that are economically distressed. For example, you would not want to build a high-rise building n the middle of nowhere or a store that would require a lot of high-end traffic.
After the initial process of application, the investor and his or her family is admitted to the United States under a conditional permanent residency. Within a reasonable time after the two year period, the investor will apply to lift the conditions and obtain a permanent residency status.
The EB-5 visa is one of the most complicated types of visa applications and the entire transaction requires significant sophistication in providing the proper documentation supporting the investors application. Pasha Law PC provides general counsel services for businesses and investors applying in the EB-5 program. Contact our firm today to learn more about this visa program.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business!
This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: Thank you for joining us, everyone.
Matt and I are in the same room again, recording in San Diego, California. Great weather right now. Great time to visit.
We are going to talk about EB5 visas – one of the most controversial immigration programs out there. It relates to businesses. It’s a great way to raise money. It’s also an excellent option for immigrants who want to come here and that have the cash to invest into an investment project. I think it’s really topical right now because there might be some upcoming changes in the law.
MATT: Like you said, it really can be kind of the best of both worlds in that it’s a way for people looking to get permanent resident green card. Foreign nationals can get that. Also, if it’s structured correctly, it’s supposed to bring jobs or create more jobs in the US. It’s seen as a win-win with the investment coming in, jobs created – everybody wins. But, as you’ll see in some of these examples, it’s not always the case.
NASIR: Let’s start with the critics.
A lot of critics say that it’s unfair for immigrants to just basically pay their way and skip the line, so to speak, in being able to enter into the country. But, of course, that may be an advantage and that’s exactly what it’s designed to do, but some critics also say that the money that’s brought in doesn’t necessarily produce the same kind of benefits and results that they’re looking for. I think that’s arguable. I mean, I’ve seen the arguments on both sides, but I think it’s also difficult to argue that that money poses no benefit. I mean, that’s money that was going into the country that wouldn’t otherwise be invested – even if it’s just $500,000 or $1,000,000.
MATT: This isn’t an immigration policy podcast.
Government requests come in multiple forms. They can come in as requests for client information or even in the form of investigating your company or your employees. Requests for Client Information General Rule to Follow Without understanding the nuances of criminal and constitutional law and having to cite Supreme Court cases, any government requests for your client's information are rarely urgent and contemporaneous, i.e. usually they are made through formal channels and you are given time to comply. In such cases, it is only prudent to procure legal representation. Failure to do so could open yourself to liability in the event that you release information when you should not have or if you do not release information when you should have done so. The more difficult situations arise when a police officer or other government official shows up at your business' lobby, such was the case at the hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. Salt Lake City Hospital Nurse Arrest Incident A Utah nurse was aggressively arrested when an officer claimed she was interfering in an investigation after she refused to let him get a blood sample from an unconscious patient.; The Salt lake City police detective requested a blood sample from an unconscious admitted patient who suffered injuries from a fiery crash. Nurse Alex Wubbles, now famous from her viral arrest video, correctly explained to the the detective that hospital policy (and according to a 2016 Supreme Court case,;Birchfield v. North Dakota) barred a blood draw unless the patient is under arrest, or there is a warrant allowing the draw or the patient consents. ;
Here is the 30 minute raw video of Officer Payne's body cam:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Piuenvb-Zg[/youtube]
Days and weeks after, nurses, hospitals, and rights advocates alike were praising the efforts of Nurse Wubbles' confident position. She handled an obviously irate detective that seems to have intended to intimidate his way into obtaining a blood sample of an unconscious victim of a car accident, who later passed away from his injuries.
In this instance, the hospital clearly had a written policy for such requests. Even citing the law, the hospital defended its nurse to explain that without a warrant or an arrest, there is no implied consent to draw blood (unlike a breathalyzer, which was also discussed in;Birchfield). What Can We Learn from Nurse Wubbles and her Hospital? First, it is extremely difficult for any employee, whether executive or operational level, to respond to government official requests--especially live requests from police officers or detectives. This means that employees need training. They need to understand when they have a right to refuse, when they should comply, or how they should do so. Nurse Wubbles handled herself very calmly and only until it was proclaimed that she was being placed under arrest did she show any exclaimed response. For the viewer, the response was a natural consequence to the unlawful arrest. Nurse Wubbles was clearly trained on how to deal with this situation, though the new revised hospital policy has it so that police are not to interact with the nurses but must work directly with department heads for such requests.
Second, the hospital actually had a written policy. You can see in the video that she is referencing specific guidelines on what to do in such circumstances. Hospitals routinely receive such requests, and so it would make sense for them to have such a written policy, but hospitals are not the only common recipient for request of client information. How Do Data Giants Like Google and AirBnB Handle Data Requests for User's Data? Most online companies that store large amount of client data have received data requests from government agencies. It is inevitable that one of your clients will be involved in some criminal investigations or even civil; disputes.; Many of these companies actually post their policies online. For example,
Nasir and Matt suit up to talk about everything pertaining to employee dress codes. They discuss the Federal laws that govern many rules for employers, as well as state specific nuances in California and other states. The two also emphasize the difficulty in identifyingreligious expression in dress and appearance, how gender-related dress codes have evolved over time, and what clothing and grooming items are more susceptible to claims of employment discrimination. Dress Codes in General In general there is no federal law governing employee dress codes. Employers may implement whatever dress guidelines they feel are appropriate; however, it is when these dress codes violate a law as a result of implementing such a dress code. For example, an improper dress code policy may discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, disability, or any other federally protected status in direction violation of Federal law.
There are lots of different dress code policies that are completely legal. Though there can sometimes be challenges on defining the difference between "business casual" and "smart casual." (Apparently there is a difference).
Here are some examples of successful dress codes: Starbucks Starbucks has had a very definite dress policy which has just recently changed. No longer must Starbucks employees choose between those plain black and white tops. The company is now allowing and in fact inviting its baristas "to shine as individuals while continuing to present a clean, neat and professional appearance." Starbucks says that a range of shirt colors and patterns are now permitted. Apparently though, there are still some significant restrictions leaving them with a color range that is within the grays, navys, browns, etc. Dreadlocks The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit against a company that refused to hire a woman because she would not cut her dreadlocks. In 2016, a Federal Appeals Court ruled that banning an employee from wearing their hair in dreadlocks is not racial discrimination. In a 3-0 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a cased brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against a company that refused a hire a woman because she would not cut off her locs. In this case the court made the determination that the employer did not intend discrimination. This is not a case for employers to rely since the road to hell can be built with good intentions. The court was criticized by legal analysts for not taking into consideration the disparaging impact such a policy would have against African Americans. Ku Klux Klan The Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan came at issue when a man was prohibited from showing displaying the “Fiery Cross” tattooed on his arm. Mr. Swartzentruber alleged that the “Fiery Cross” was one of seven sacred symbols of his religion. This argument failed and the court ruled in the employer's favor for its right to require the employee to cover his offensive tattoo (even though other employees were allowed to display their tattoos. Religious Related Dress Code We covered not too long ago the Supreme Court case that sided with the Muslim girl who was denied a job over head scarf. In that case, her hijab was not in compliance with the "Look Policy" of Abercrombie and Fith and that the company wanted to avoid having to deal with her anticipated request for religious accommodation.
In another case, police officers were allowed to wear beards and blue turbins.
Title VII is a Federal Law that makes it clear that no adverse employment decisions made based on forbidden motive, including the motive of discriminating against a certain retaliation. This includes that act of segregation. In other words, you can not just put certain races in the back, away from public viewing, for example. Gender Related Dress Code Gender related dress codes are an old issue coming into a new light in the last few years. Just this year,
Nasir and Matt discuss the life cycle of a negative online review. They talk about how businesses should properly respond, how to determine if the review is defamatory, the options available to seek removal of the review, how to identify anonymous reviewers, whether businesses can require clients to agree not to write negative reviews, and the prospects of suing Yelp, Google, Ripoff Report, or other review sites. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law.
NASIR: This is where we cover business in the news with our legal twist. Today, we’re covering the ultimate legal breakdown of online reviews – something that we’ve dealt with a ton with our client businesses, right?
MATT: Yeah, probably more than I was expecting to ever but we’ve had clients where that’s been the only thing that’s been an issue. But, even for the clients that we do a lot of things for, it seems to be popping up with them as well, and I’m sure most people have, if they haven’t left their own reviews, they’ve at least used something like a Yelp or Google Reviews to at least look into something such as a restaurant or something else like that.
NASIR: Yeah, and I think early on in the internet, especially with the online reviews, most of the issues were dealing with businesses that deal with consumers. But, now, even B2B businesses, service industry, pretty much everybody has some kind of online profile where people can leave reviews – whether by choice or not, sometimes, profiles get created whether you like it or not.
MATT: Right. I’ve talked to a lot of different business owners who were confused how their Yelp pages even showed up. “I didn’t create this!” Well, it doesn’t really matter. They’re like, “Well, we can’t create my own page.” It’s like, well, good luck with that argument to Yelp.
NASIR: Yeah. And so, Yelp is a great example of online reviews. In fact, I would say that that’s 80 percent of our business – people complaining about Yelp reviews – and then, 20 percent everything else. It’s one of the most popular ones. In particular, a negative review on Yelp seems to have the most impact. But, also, there’s Ripoff Report. I know, if you get a bad review on Ripoff Report, depending upon how strong you are on the web, that can come up pretty high in the search engines if they search your business.
MATT: Yeah. Of course, it depends on the business. Sometimes, you type in a business’ name, it might be a whole bunch of things, and then their Yelp page. If you type the name in the right fashion, if you have a Google business page, it’ll pop up on the right. Reviews are right there, But, yeah, like you said, Ripoff Report, that can pop up really high on a search engine. It’s never anything good. Ripoff Report is only posting bad things so that’s going to be some bad news for your business.
NASIR: What’s different about Ripoff Report versus Yelp, on Google especially, Ripoff Report, in their title tags, they’ll put the actual title of the review. And so, unlike Yelp where it may show how many stars, et cetera – which may be negative – but, if they have something scathing like, “Oh, this business is a fraud,” or fraudulent or whatever, that will be what it says in the actual Google result which can be very, very damaging. But is it enough just to be a bad review to have legal action? Probably not. I mean, a true review that is bad has very little recourse, actually.
MATT: Yeah. To me, there’s different levels of “bad reviews” or one-star reviews. You have the ones that are – perfect example – you go to a restaurant, it was a terrible experience – bad service, food was bad. If you go on there and write completely truthful things about that experience, that’s just a legitimate bad review. And then, there’s ones where someone might leave a review, it’s more opinion-based or they just didn’t like the ambiance of a restaurant or something to that effe...
On this episode of the Ultimate Legal Breakdown, Nasir and Mattbreak down social media marketing withguests Tyler Sickmeyer and Kyle Weberof Fidelitas Development. They first discuss contests and promotionsand talk about where social media promotions can go wrong,when businesses are actually running an illegal lottery, and the importance of a soundterms and conditions. Next, they talk about the recent press release from the FTC tomarketing influencers about necessary disclosures in online marketing and how to avoid problems like those that occurred at the Fyre Festival. They wrap things up with a discussion on intellectual propertyinfringement, including issues caused by rogue ex-employees, affiliate relationships, and copyright infringement claims.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law.
NASIR: Welcome to the podcast! Today, we are doing the ultimate legal breakdown of social media production. But, today, we have some special guest to give us some little insight on the marketing side of things. We have Tyler Sickmeyer and Kyle Weber – two marketing gurus. Kyle, you’re in Tennessee, right? Tyler, you’re in San Diego? TYLER: Yes, that’s correct. Thanks for having us on, guys! KYLE: Yeah, thanks!
NASIR: Definitely! We definitely appreciate it. At the top here, I do want to kind of give some background. Tyler, why don’t you give us a good introduction of what you and your company does and how you service companies? We basically have a similar crossover of clients. Tell us a little about that. TYLER: Absolutely! Fidelitas is a full-service marketing and ad agency based in San Diego in Nashville. We work with clients across a variety of channels – both digital and traditional – including social media which we’ll talk about today. We like to service more of a strategic partner on our side of things. We like to come in and help guide clients through the actual strategy of why we’re posting what we’re posting rather than just throwing something up because it’s Tuesday so we need to throw up another cat photo. We try to keep it relevant and make sure that we can actually quantify the ROI for our clients on the backend of the campaigns as well. That’s a little bit about us.
NASIR: I love cat photos. Tyler and Kyle have also their Lion’s Share Podcast. We’ll put a link to that in our show notes as well. We actually just cut an episode with them earlier today. So, I’m looking forward to hearing that as well. Let’s get into our stories today. What are we talking about today, Matt? What’s their first topic?
MATT: The first thing we have here, maybe some of you might have seen it in the news, this company, it’s actually a couple of college students in Arizona – Sunny Co Clothing. They ran this publicity stunt through their Instagram basically saying – I’ll summarize it here – “Sharing is caring. Everyone that posts this photo—” and it was a woman in a bikini “—in the next 24 hours is going to get a free Pamela Sunny Suit which is the bikini. They post this, try to get their name out there, and then they figured maybe we’ll get a couple of bites on this and more people will know about this. Well, the problem is it sort of backfired. As they ran this, more than 3,000 people had reposted in the image and they actually had to cut the post out before the 24 hours they had initially put. They kind of backtracked on that, too. Basically, they ran into the issue – this is the issue that I guess some companies have – they run this marketing campaign and they don’t really think it through before they just do it. They kind of just push the send button and see what happens. There’s a problem with that. As you can see, with this company, they basically ran through way more than their inventory was and now they’re at the stage of having to try to figure out some sort of solution to it. The issue here, I guess,
On this episode of the Ultimate Legal Breakdown, Nasir and Matt go in depth with the subscription box business. They discuss where subscription box companies have gone wrong(4:30), the importance of a specifically tailored terms and conditions(6:30), how to structure return policies (11:45), product liability concerns (14:45),the offensive and defensive side of intellectual property (19:00), forming partnerships (23:30), when to form multiple entities (31:45), and rules and logistics for shipping (34:00).
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and we’re two business attorneys with Pasha Law.
NASIR: Yeah, welcome to the podcast today. We are doing our ultimate legal breakdown of the subscription box business.
MATT: Yeah, looking forward to this one. it’s a pretty fun topic because subscription boxes can offer many different things. I’m sure that most listeners have probably either ordered their own subscription box or maybe have their own business.
NASIR: You’re saying most people either have their subscription box business? Most people have subscribed to one, at least. I mean, some people are addicted to it.
MATT: Well, it’s nice.
NASIR: And they can be addicting.
MATT: And we’ll get into why that’s the case. Just for those of your that aren’t aware, subscription boxes, it’s a pretty simple concept – at least the service aspect of it. Basically, you pay an amount and it’s typically every month but every month you get a delivery to your doorstep and it contains a boxful of items. It can be anything. I mean, I think the ones that people might be most familiar with might be a Blue Apron food service or Nature Box, Dollar Shave Club.
NASIR: Dollar Shave. Loot Crate seems popular, too.
MATT: The general concept is you pay this monthly amount and, every month, you get a box of different items and most of them are themed to, like I said, some sort of concept behind it – whether it be food, whether it be some sort of artistic thing. At this point, it’s a pretty booming industry. It can be anything few and far between – and I believe, when we checked here – 5-billion-dollar industry, 2,000 different services, according to My Subscription Addiction which is my go-to for subscription box statistics.
NASIR: And it’s growing! I mean, 3,000 percent as far as online visits for subscription companies people are interested in the last three years, people are interested in this stuff and it seems like there’s basically two types of these businesses – the ones that curate products that they basically pick a theme – like, you said, the Blue Apron where they just kind of put together food that might be good for this particular recipe; some of them actually create their own product and it may be a different product every month. Somehow, they are actually the creators of it. So, it’s two types of categories there.
MATT: Right, and we’re going to get into this later but, obviously, if you have the ladder there – the one where you’re creating your own product that you’re delivering out, you might have a little bit less to worry about from a legal stand. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that.
NASIR: Less than more.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: It’s a different type of liability.
MATT: Let’s get into some of these big issues here for these businesses. I think it all kind of starts where a lot of businesses do – with the underlying contract. In this case, the terms and conditions for these services. You know, I’ve ordered my own subscription boxes. I’ve kind of looked around it. Some others, just to see what’s out there. Surprisingly, a pretty wide array of terms and conditions, terms of service, whatever you want to call it that are out there. Some of them are very well-detailed, some of them are…
NASIR: Horrible.
MATT: Yeah, I was going to put it nicer than that but, yeah.
NASIR: No, they are horrible. We have a few subscription box clients. In fact,
Nasir and Matt discuss the suit against Apple that resultedfrom a car crashed caused by the use of FaceTime while driving. They also discuss howforeseeable use of apps can increase liability for companies.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Hi and welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! I’m Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Two attorneys here with Pasha Law – offices in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas.
NASIR: Welcome to the podcast for a little short break we had between our last episode and this is where we discuss current business news with a legal twist. Today, we are talking about how developers – especially mobile app developers and other business owners in that space – can deal with possible liability for their software apps and their products. In this case, it’s a sad story of an Apple app that actually caused, well, it’s alleged to have caused a deadly accident.
MATT: Yeah, let’s do a little bit of the background here on how we first started discussing this. There was a car accident back – actually, on Christmas Eve in 2014 – in Texas. The reason this is just kind of surfacing now is they just filed the lawsuit here, two years. I assume that’s the potential limitations. They had to get that in in time. But there was a car accident with a driver – a 20-year-old – who was on his way to visit family on Christmas Eve. He was – for whatever reason – using Facetime while driving. For those of you who aren’t Apple or iPhone users, Facetime is basically a video call. You’re able to see the other person and vice versa when you’re doing a phone call. Kind of like Skype, I suppose. He’s driving on the highway and wasn’t necessarily paying full attention. He crashed into the car of this family and – you kind of alluded to this – the sad story behind this is it resulted in the death of the family’s 5-year-old daughter who was in the backseat. There was actually four people in the car – the parents and the two kids. I believe all were injured. I believe the other three were injured and then, of course, the unfortunate death of the 5-year-old. That’s kind of the backstory of what happened here. So, what happened has happened since. The family is now suing Apple, essentially alleging that Apple is negligent and not having any sort of safeguards that would restrict the use of Facetime while driving. When I first heard that statement, I thought, “Well, I don’t really know about that,” but the interesting thing about this is Apple actually had, as early as 2008, when they filed for this patent and developed this technology. They call it kind of lockout technology. It would basically lock out the driver from using certain apps while operating the vehicle which, now with that knowledge, I didn’t know if that was something you would come across or you knew about but, when I found that out, I was like, “Oh, well, that makes this case a lot more interesting.”
NASIR: But I have an inherent problem with the argument because, you know, just because you filed a patent, you have an invention, there’s commercialization – and this is kind of off-topic – commercialization of an invention is a lot different thing than actually inventing it in itself. Like, I can invent a machine that travels through time but because it costs a billion dollars to make, I haven’t been able to actually build it yet. And so, I’m looking for funding today. The point is, you know, just because they invented it, I can still file a patent but that doesn’t mean they can actually implement the software. For a practical example, maybe they had the technology but maybe the processor speed of the phone isn’t fast enough to be able to quickly detect if you’re moving or whatever reason. Alone, by itself, assuming that argument is valid just because they have a patent doesn’t mean it’s a viable option to protect the user.
MATT: Well, yeah, with your invention, you could essentially just be sued for whatever bad thing happens then because why didn’t you just emplo...
The guys kick in the new year by first discussing Cinnabon's portrayal of Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia soon after her death, as well as other gaffes involving Prince and David Bowie. They alsotalk about right of publicity claims companies could be held liable for based on using someone's name or likeness for commercial gain.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Hello and welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. I’m Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law, practicing in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas.
NASIR: Yeah, welcome to the podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist. Today, we are discussing some of the do’s and don’ts of celebrity endorsements and what to be aware of when using their likeness and recent gaps in the year 2016 f these instances.
MATT: Yes. I mean, I guess, when people listen to this, it will be 2017 – unless they’ve hacked into both of our computers and pulled the audio files for whatever reason.
NASIR: Or they could be listening in 2018, too.
MATT: That’s true – if podcasts are still around.
NASIR: Only for two years.
MATT: Let’s take a long trip back to 2016 here which will be a couple of days at this point. I think, especially this past week in particular, it’s been going around how 2016 was the year of falling stars – all these high-profile celebrities have passed away in 2016. You know, recently, we have Carrie Fisher. I guess the timing of this too is pretty interesting. I can’t remember if you’re a Star Wars person or not.
NASIR: Yeah, with the new Star Wars Force Awakens?
MATT: Rogue One, yeah.
NASIR: Rogue One, yeah. I’m a huge Star Wars fan.
MATT: As you can tell.
NASIR: No, actually, I did hear it was good. Go ahead, sorry.
MATT: Understandable. With all these big-time, big-named celebrities passing away, we had Carrie Fisher. The reason I mention that is that happened, she was Princess Leia in, well, I want to say the original Star Wars movies but it depends how you defined that, I suppose.
NASIR: The original episodes – 4, 5, and 6.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And she was also in Force Awakens.
MATT: I guess you kind of allude to this but it hasn’t become an uncommon thing for a brand or a company to pay a little tribute to these fallen celebrities. Obviously, tweeting out a message or posting something on Facebook, referencing these different individuals has become pretty common. What Cinnabon did – and it was very quick, you had to be very quick on the trigger to see this because I think they deleted it soon thereafter but we’ll link the photos so you can see – they put a photo up, it’s kind of a… how would you describe it? It’s almost like a painting.
NASIR: One of those almost sand pieces. In this case, cinnamon art pieces.
MATT: Cinnamon art pieces, yeah, drawn with cinnamon. Basically, kind of an outline of Carrie Fisher except – anyone that’s seen Star Wars – the hair buns on the side of her head, it was a Cinnabon. It looks kind of weird. When you first told me about this, it wasn’t what I was envisioning. You know, they have this and it says, “RIP Carrie Fisher. You’ll always have the best buns in the galaxy.” That was the tweet.
NASIR: It’s so tasteless. I’ve always tried to figure out if other people had opinions about this. I know maybe some people, their humor is different. It’s not that it’s not meant to be funny. Obviously, it’s meant to be a tribute and I’m sure the intention comes into play. But it seems really weird, right?
MATT: I think intent is the keyword that’s going to kind of run throughout this. What was the intent behind this? I think it does seem like they were trying to pay some sort of tribute but the approach was not executed that well. I mean, the whole thing wasn’t executed that well, but the approach was just not great. You know, I think it got more flack than positive feedback. There was some people that said, “You know, she had a pretty good sense of humor.
Nasir and Matt discuss the recent incidentat a Victoria's Secret store where the store manager kicked out all black women after one black woman was caught shoplifting. They then each present dueling steps businesses should take when employees are accused of harassment.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and we’re two attorneys with Pasha Law, with offices in California, Texas, New York, and Illinois.
NASIR: Welcome to the podcast. This is where we cover business in the news with a legal twist. Today, we’re trying to answer the question, “Who calls whom when you get disconnected on the line?” You always get in that awkward situation. No, we’re not talking about that.
MATT: We’ll have our opinion of that at the end. I have a couple of thoughts.
NASIR: You have a couple of thoughts?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Okay. Because, yeah, you’re driving along and, all of a sudden, you get disconnected and then you call each other and then they both go to voicemail. It drives you crazy. Anyway, today, we’re actually discussing what to do when a customer or client accuses your employees – or worst, you, your business – for being racist.
MATT: Right. this all kind of stemmed about from an incident – by the time people listen to this – last week. Last week, in Alabama, a woman was caught shoplifting at a Victoria’s Secret which, in a vacuum, wouldn’t really be a story we’d cover on this show. But, in this case, the situation was escalated because what we had was a black woman who was caught stealing and the response by the store’s manager was to kick out every other black female in the store.
NASIR: Whoops.
MATT: This is where we meet the individual named Kimberly Houzah. The reason we found out about this was she went on Facebook Live and did an 11-minute thing about her experience. She got even emotional. I think she ran the full gamut of emotions from kind of laughing almost to disbelief to angry to upset and why she was forced out of the store eventually and that video or that Facebook Live went viral. You kind of alluded to the “oops!” Big mistake on this store manager’s part.
NASIR: Yeah, I mean, her reaction is probably very similar to how anyone else would react but, at the same time, it’s like, what do you do in that situation? I mean, it’s very awkward. At the same time, you want to stand up for your rights and file a complaint but, at the same time, you also don’t want to be, all of a sudden, the center of a story on a podcast.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I always find it strange, whenever these people that go through these situations, I’m sure this always goes through their mind, right? On one hand, I was just thinking about, remember that one coffee at McDonald’s? Everyone knows this story. Coffee gets spilled on a woman and she sues McDonald’s and she actually won a judgment and ended up settling later. Of course, the narrative is that she sued McDonald’s for millions of dollars and she knew the coffee was hot and so forth. But the reality is there’s a lot more to that story and I’m not going to talk about that but the bottom line is that that woman – who ended up being a kind of an elderly woman – was in the passenger’s seat and she gets pretty severe burns on here. What do you do? She had to go through months without medical bills being paid about tens of thousands of dollars. McDonald’s was offering her some kind of nominal amount and it’s not like she wanted to sue but you get to a point where it’s like, “Okay, I have to raise this issue.”
MATT: Were you the one that turned me on to that documentary? You probably were.
NASIR: I don’t know. I don’t even know what documentary. This is the second time I talked about this today. Logan was saying something about some documentary. I didn’t even know there was one.
MATT: The other one was to a cashier at McDonald’s as you were talking to her.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly.
Nasir and Matt return to talk about the different types of clients that may have outstanding invoices and how businesses can convert unpaid bills to getting paid.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re both attorneys here with Pasha Law PC, currently practicing with offices in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas.
NASIR: Welcome to the podcast where we discuss current business news with our legal twist. Today, we are discussing what to do when your client refuses to pay.
MATT: Correct. You know, we decided to change things up a little bit. I don’t think this is necessary for any one particular current event that’s going on but it’s an ongoing issue. Maybe in the news people have seen some real estate tycoons who have, over the past few decades, hired contractors and small business owners for jobs, let them perform the service, perform the work. When they’ve completed them, companies haven’t held up their end of the deal. So, what we’re going to discuss today is, as a business owner, what can you do to protect yourself from being blindsided as well as what you can do once it’s happened.
NASIR: And this is a problem that pretty much every business has. I mean, it’s hard to think of any business that really doesn’t have some consideration of how to collect money from your customers or clients, right? For other businesses, there’s less risk. For others, there’s more. It’s just kind of depending upon what industry you’re in. Obviously, we represent a lot of small and medium-sized businesses across the country. But this could be very frustrating and sometimes crippling challenge to some business owners, especially in high-risk industries. We’re talking about everything from a lot of service-based industries – construction is one of those things where, a lot of times, there’s non-payment – and then, also, if you’re working with the type of clientele that tends to, you know, you have certain fees that maybe they can’t afford and they’re already in a position where they’re disadvantaged in relationship to what they’re being provided. I’m starting to think about, like, credit repair services. I know a lot of bankruptcy attorneys, for example, they have to make sure that they get paid their money because their clients are filing for bankruptcy. There’s a very wide range of types of businesses but pretty much every business has to deal with this issue on some level.
MATT: Yeah. Like you said, it’s going to vary greatly, depending on the nature of the work and the industry. If it’s a business where you’re going to require 100 percent payment upfront, obviously, you’re going to have less issues. I mean, you could still have chargebacks, things like that, or bounced checks. I think your bankruptcy example is a really good one. If you’re going to get paid at the end, especially with a client who’s having presumably some sort of money issues, it’s going to be a lot harder to collect. Really, to me, it’s a two-part analysis. It’s the front-end and the back-end. You can be proactive about it and that’s, of course, making sure you have all the safety precautions in place – obviously, we’re two lawyers here, we’re going to talk about what agreement and the terms you would have in that. On the flip side is the reactionary aspect of it and what you do after this happens. That can even be in situations – and many times it is – where you have a contract and the client just has refused to pay or can’t pay or whatever reason they might give.
NASIR: Yeah. In fact, whenever we come across a client, they want to go after a customer or a client that hasn’t paid and so forth, I mean, our first thought is, “Yeah, we need to address the apparent issue that the client is bringing to us.” But, in the back of our minds, “Okay, what can we do to assess to make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future?” Because most businesses can’t survive having to hire an a...
After a long break, Nasir and Matt are back to discuss a Milwaukee frozen custard stand that is now revising it's English only policy for employees. The guys also discuss how similar policies could be grounds for discrimination and what employers can do to revise their policies.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Hello and welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And…
MATT: And we’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law. You know, it’s been a little bit. I guess it’s been probably a full month since the last time this came out.
NASIR: I think we’re both a little older, a little wiser.
MATT: Definitely older. I think that’s how time works. So, yeah, welcome to the podcast where we discuss current business news with a legal twist. Today, we’re going to discuss whether or not businesses can require employees to speak only English while at work which is something I’ve actually thought about before. You and I are both in I guess locations where it might be more applicable than others.
NASIR: Yeah. I mean, Houston is like a metropolitan when it comes to languages and cultures. I mean, it’s not a New York but it’s pretty close. Of course, San Diego, the Latin community there is absolutely huge. In fact, not knowing Spanish is quite a detriment which is why I moved out right away.
MATT: Right away?
NASIR: After a long number of years.
MATT: Yeah, location is not everything because what we’re sort of going to touch on here deals with a situation in Milwaukee.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: This is pretty expansive but let’s dive into this. A small mom-and-pop store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Leon’s Frozen Custard – is having some issues. I guess a customer named Joey Sanchez said he was behind a Spanish-speaking woman while he was in line at the frozen custard store who was told by an employee that she had to place her order in English. I guess Mr. Sanchez thought that was a little bit weird. When he got up in line, he too was told he had to order in English. At that point, the employee who speaks both Spanish and English told him that she was not allowed to speak Spanish to the customer even though they could have a perfectly fine and understandable conversation speaking in Spanish.
NASIR: I just got a note. This Leon’s Frozen Custard is apparently kind of a staple in the area. It’s this kind of cool, it almost looks like an old studio diner kind of deal. If you look at it, it reminds me, have you ever been to that frozen yogurt place in El Cajon? It’s called The Mill.
MATT: I don’t think so, no.
NASIR: Obviously, I can’t now, but you’ve got to check it out. It’s a good summer place to go to get some frozen yogurt. I’m looking it up. I think it’s called The Mill.
MATT: Perfect timing in November. I guess it’s been pretty hot here.
NASIR: Perfect time. Yeah, the Yogurt Mill. This was before yogurt places were popular, where you’d pay per ounce. This is like you pay a few bucks and get a whole large cup of yogurt, whatever flavors you want. Usually, in the summers, there’s lines out the door every single day. Check it out. Anyway, quick plug and they definitely did not sponsor this program but we definitely will be asking for some money after this. But, go ahead, sorry to interrupt.
MATT: The podcast where we do the sponsor randomly in the middle which does exist for a lot of them. So, we have this situation here and the owner of this Leon’s Frozen Custard, Ron Schneider, not to confused with Rob Schneider.
NASIR: I was confused.
MATT: He’s claiming that he’s following the law. This was before this fall happened. He’s following the law and his policy is a matter of business and speeding up sales and not one of discrimination. He said he’s had this policy in place for more than a decade, when an increasing number of Spanish speakers moved into the area in Milwaukee. This policy, what it was is that employees are required to speak only English – not only to each other and ...
The guys discuss the new California law that allows actors to request the removal of their date of birth and birthdays on their IMDB page and why they think the law won't last. They also discuss how age discrimination claims arise for business owner.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Both attorneys here with Pasha Law.
NASIR: Yeah, practicing in the states of California, Texas, New York, and Illinois. I’m going to try to do different, you know how we have an intro that we try to stick with but we try to change it up so what I’m going to do is I’m going to change the order of the states.
MATT: Yeah. So, you have 12, 26 different, you can do that 26 times.
NASIR: Is that right?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Can someone check that? I don’t believe Matt.
MATT: Sorry, no, 24 times. I don’t know.
NASIR: I’ll confirm that by the end of the show.
MATT: Ah, man, bad math on this Thursday. It must be the heat. I’ll introduce the podcast. Like I said, this is Legally Sound Smart Business. We discuss current businesses with a legal twist. Last week, I actually was joking about talking about Brad Pitt. Today, it’s actually applicable to what we’re talking about because there’s a new law or a new legislation that’s been passed in California to go into effect January 1st 2017 that deals with actors such as Brad Pitt. Now, let me see. You know how I like to read pieces of statutes because I think it’s very uneventful for the listener but to get this point across.
NASIR: I hope you don’t read the whole thing.
MATT: No, I’m just going to read this piece here. The premise – from a layman’s perspective – is allowing actors to not have their age or birthday listed on their IMDB page if they don’t want to, generally speaking.
NASIR: Keep in mind – and Matt is going to read it – the statute doesn’t say IMDB, of course. Go ahead.
MATT: Yeah, but it’s pretty obvious. So, a commercial online entertainment employment service provider that enters into a contractual agreement to provide employment services to an individual or a subscription payment shall not, upon request of the subscriber, do either of the following… and then we get to publish their subscriber’s date of birth or age or share the subscriber’s date of birth or age information in any internet website for the purpose of publication. That’s what people want to read because there’s so many words in there. That’s more combinations and permutations in our four states in different order.
NASIR: I feel like that’s why I’m not getting hired for any big acting jobs.
MATT: Yeah. So, this is one of my issues with this right off the bat is one of the main arguments for this law is that it essentially allows age discrimination because, supposedly, people that are staffing for a movie or TV show can go to this person’s IMDB page, see their age, and say, “Oh, they’re too old.” But, to me, I don’t think that’s how it works. We’ve all seen plenty of shows. It’s all about how old or young you look, not how old or young you actually are, in my opinion.
NASIR: That’s probably true for certain actors but I think, if you’re starting out or still in a class C or D or E or lower letter than that of a celebrity or an actor, then I think age probably does matter because they’re probably like, “Okay, I want a 25-year-old that has this certain look.” Casting directors may have that criteria so I understand it from that perspective. But, yeah, if you’re an actor like me, you don’t really care about my age so long as you have my pretty face on the screen.
MATT: Yeah, I guess that’s one thing I didn’t know of how the process worked. In your example, let’s say they want a 25-year-old whatever – 23 to 27-year-old – do they go to the talent agent and give them those numbers? Is there a hard search of those numbers that fits in or is it someone who looks that way? I actually have some friends who are in the industry.
Nasir and Matt discuss the racial discrimination claims surroundingAirbnb and how it's handled the situation. They also discuss some practical tips for businesses experiencing similar issues.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub and we’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law.
NASIR: That’s right. We practice business law throughout the United States. Actually, no, only four states, right? California, Illinois, Texas, and New York. I have them memorized.
MATT: Depends how you look at it. I mean, it’s really technically coast to coast.
NASIR: Oh, absolutely, it’s coast to coast. Either way, welcome to our show today. We are covering Airbnb and this is where we take that business legal news – or I should say “business news” – and add our legal twist. The legal twist we’re adding today is basically Airbnb and, I should say, more specifically their host, are being accused of racism. What do you think about that?
MATT: I have the wrong notes. I have this is Brad Pitt, Angeline Jolie. Must be my other podcast.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s afterwards, right?
MATT: Okay. All right, very good.
NASIR: Stay tuned for that.
MATT: I found the right one.
NASIR: Okay, good.
MATT: Airbnb, off the top, let me just get through a little bit of what’s going on. You kind of did the nice little lead in here but let’s run through it a little bit here. Airbnb, for those of you who don’t know, it’s an online way to essentially either find a place to stay from anywhere from one night to more or, if you have your own place, you can do the same thing – you can rent out your place for a night. Have you ever used it before?
NASIR: I’ve used it internationally but, domestically – when I say “domestically” I mean within a mile of my house – I haven’t used it.
MATT: Yeah, same with me. Like I said, it’s a pretty nice service, especially for people if you have a weekend, you’re going for a wedding, something like that. Internationally, it’s very good as well. I think it’s a little bit more… I should say more accepted but it seems like it’s more prevalent there.
NASIR: It seems ideal, especially if you want a house or something, when you’re in a big group, that seems like a good choice.
MATT: Right.
NASIR: Certain locations, the hotel choices aren’t that great or you want a different experience than the rather routine tourist location.
MATT: As our assistant put it, you have a place with a little bit more character. I think that was well-put by him. They have this setup where it’s essentially a platform for people to rent their spaces out and also rent spaces. Pretty much, I guess since the beginning, there’s been some talks of racism that have occurred. Really, what it is is a situation – I’ll kind of boil it down, how it works. You do your search, you see this site, and you see what places are available within the area you’ve searched, and then you do a request to rent that space if it’s open for those days. At that point, the owner can either accept that or reject it or do some sort of back and forth what-have-you. I mean, it’s not a negotiation per se but it’s just, “Oh, sorry, this place is actually rented out, I forgot to mark it.” Something to that effect. What’s been happening is there’s been requests by certain demographics of people that have raised some eyebrows. Let me bring up one example in particular. This is a man, Rohan Gilkes – this is on Medium.com, I actually checked out the little story, it’s pretty funny – well, not the racism part but some of the other stuff, we’ll post it. What happened with him was he’s a black man, wanted to visit a friend in Idaho. She mentioned there was a great cabin on Airbnb close to her. He thought, “Perfect! I will look at that space.” He found it, requested to stay there for five days. Like I said, when that happens, the owner of the place sees his profile and has his photo on it which, at that point,
Nasir and Matt discuss whyAmazon seller accounts are getting suspended and banned without notice and how business owners can rectify this situation through a Corrective Action Plan.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re attorneys here with Pasha Law PC, practicing in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Welcome to the podcast!
NASIR: Yeah, and this is where we discuss business in the news and add our legal twist. Today, we are talking about Amazon.com.
MATT: Never heard of it.
NASIR: And how they’re… No, no, no, it’s a website that sells stuff.
MATT: Okay, eBay.
NASIR: Apparently, all these guys go on there and they sell stuff but Amazon is apparently terminating or suspending some of those sellers’ accounts somewhat arbitrarily – hundreds by the day, apparently.
MATT: Let me just do a quick rundown here of kind of what’s going on.
NASIR: Please do.
MATT: I was just joking, for people maybe listening for the first time.
NASIR: I think they know that you knew what Amazon was but sorry to interrupt you. Literally, yesterday, I was thinking about it because I knew we were going to cover this today. I think it was around 25 different packages from Amazon – no exaggeration – and the reason is because – I think I’ve talked about this last time – we were expecting so we had a whole list of things that we’re buying and we’ve been waiting for a while just to figure out because we’re also moving and we’re like, “Let’s just go ahead and buy it now,” so they all came within 24 hours so I picked it all yesterday. A couple of packages are arriving today still.
MATT: Was that Amazon Prime?
NASIR: Yeah, it was Amazon Prime, two-day shipping.
MATT: Yeah, contemplating getting that myself. We’ll have to talk after this to see.
NASIR: We’ll discuss it afterwards.
MATT: For those who aren’t as familiar with Amazon…
NASIR: Those of you who don’t live on Planet Earth.
MATT: Amazon has thousands of third-party sellers who utilize their marketplace as a storefront – something which I imagine probably have actual storefronts as well but, for the most part, this is mostly eCommerce. And so, some of these small businesses as you alluded to are saying that their accounts are being suspended with little notice and very few options of recourse and what some are calling arbitrary suspensions. A recent conference for online entrepreneurs and sellers in Seattle pitted the sellers against Amazon with hundreds of vendors and merchants expressing their concern over these suspensions, nothing that they live in fear of being unable to sell on their site, and we’ll get into why that’s an issue here, because you might think, “Well, it’s just one site, why not sell somewhere else – like their own site, for example?” But Amazon, it’s a very impactful site for these businesses. A recent Wall Street Journal interview, a vice president of Amazon said, “Sellers reporting an average of 50 percent increase in sales from when they joined Amazon’s marketplace and used its storage and shipping services.” Pretty substantial.
NASIR: Yeah, and they’ve made it so easy for sellers to enter into this because, if you think about it, if you have something to sell, not only will they take care of the merchant processing but also the inventory cracking, the shipping, even the storage. In fact, Amazon prefers you to ship your supplies to their fulfillment center so that, as soon as someone purchases it, they can easily ship it. Not only do they make it easy for you, you also get that marketing available that you wouldn’t get if you just had your own website. So, it makes sense.
MATT: Yeah, I think that’s kind of the default spot – one of the default sites – people go to buy something.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: These business owners that are affected by this are saying they’re losing hundreds of thousands in sales – which could definitely be the case for some of them – due to ...
Nasir and Matt talk about the accusations surroundingfashion giant Zararipping off the designs of independent artists like Tuesday Bassen and howsmaller companies can battle the industry giants. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. We’re two attorneys here with Pasha Law, a firm practicing in California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Welcome to the podcast. I don’t get the opportunity to do the bulk of the intros.
NASIR: We’re splitting it up a little bit this time but welcome, everybody! This is where we take business in the news and add our legal twist to it. I think today we have a nice topic. What do we have?
MATT: We have an interesting topic today. We’re going to be discussing what’s come together as a group of independent artists and designers who have all alleged that their works, intellectual property have been stolen by this huge fashion icon, Zara, which is believe is a Spanish-based company. One artist in particular – which kind of started this whole dispute that’s been going on – is Tuesday Bassen who first started off by taking action that sent a cease and desist letter to Zara and basically asked them for compensation because she was under the impression that some of her pins and patches… It’s going to be easier for us to kind of show this. We’ll put a link in the notes. People have to see for themselves but basically saying that some of her work had been essentially ripped off by this huge company and, as a result, she lost money. We know this is something a lot of business owners care about, particularly ones that we work with, I mean, being the smaller companies here. Sometimes, they have to fight these battles against the bigger ones. This is something that comes up all the time with clients or other individuals that we talk to. I think it’s going to be pretty good. We’re going to run through kind of the background here but I think it’s going to be a pretty good takeaway for these smaller companies because those are going to be the ones in this position here.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. Thankfully, I am a fashion guru, as you said. I’ve actually shopped at Zara, I think, at least once. I assume you have not?
MATT: No, I didn’t even know they sold men’s clothes until I looked them up.
NASIR: Oh, I didn’t buy men’s clothes there.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: But, apparently, Zara has a little bit of a reputation apparently of allegedly stealing some of these designs. Tuesday Bassen is not the first person to go after Zara for the same thing but I think her case is a little bit different and she seems to have a social media presence that is behind and I think that’s what really galvanized a response from Zara that has gone public now.
MATT: Exactly. She’s really the one that has kind of kicked things off – or at least the one that gained the PR in order for other people to step up. I know there’s another one, for example, this guy named Adam Kurtz who was verified when I looked him up on Twitter so he must be a pretty big deal in the industry as well. But, yes, Tuesday, she started things off by sending this cease and desist letter to Zara. As far as we know, we don’t know the exact.
NASIR: Yeah, we couldn’t find the exact letter but I think we know how much she paid for it. She paid $2,000 but we don’t know what exactly it said.
MATT: Yeah, the pertinent information is just how much she paid an attorney to write it and not what was actually in there.
NASIR: Not a bad price, by the way.
MATT: I mean, we have a good idea what was in there. Basically, I’m assuming she kind of asserted that she owns these works and Zara is infringing upon them by straight up ripping them off. I assume maybe she had asked for some sort of compensation for them to stop doing it – something to that effect is my guess. She can send me that bill for $2,000 now as well since I just…
NASIR: Anyone could have wrote—no, that’s true. No, absolutely,
Nasir and Matt discuss Brave Software's ad replacing technology that has caught the eye of almost every national newspaper and has a potential copyright infringement claim looming. They also welcome digital marketing expert Matt Michaelree to speak on the specifics of what Brave is attempting to do and whether it has the answers moving forward. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And I am a business attorney and so is Matt, and we practice business law throughout the country in Texas, California, New York, and Illinois. Been doing it for a while now, right?
MATT: Speak for yourself. I can’t say. I don’t think I can necessarily put myself in all those states but the firm at least.
NASIR: We provide legal services to small and medium-sized businesses and we’re happy to do it and this is the podcast where we cover what’s relevant to our clients.
MATT: How I look at it, it’s an interesting dynamic because – not to spend too much time on this but – we typically service small to medium-sized businesses. We often talk about big businesses and then relate it back to how it applies to those small and medium-sized businesses. It’s running the full gamut of business size.
NASIR: It’s true because only big business have the money to actually litigate these issues so they’re the ones that control the law and we’ll see that today in our topic today, for sure.
MATT: I guess you can classify this as still, they’ve gotten some money but it’s still relatively small business. I think this would fall under our typical client or a client we would handle necessarily. So, we’re talking about Brave Software. For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, I think the best way to kind of summarize this – at least from my perspective – is I don’t know if you want to say ad blocker or ad replacer but basically you go to a site – dealing with the media in this case – and essentially an ad that might pop up, I mean, I’m sure everyone that’s listening is familiar with this, you know, you go to the Union Tribune to something in San Diego and you try to click on an article and, instead of getting that, you get some sort of ad or video or something to that effect. I mean, I think we’ve all been there. I’m sure you’ve been there, right?
NASIR: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Of course, with all those ads, it also slows down the website and this Brave Software purports to promise to speed up to 300 percent times faster by removing webpage ads and scripts. But the main issue is that the Newspaper Association of America has thrown a fuss about this and they sent a very scathing letter and published it online to basically protest against this browser.
MATT: Right. If you noticed, I was hesitant to say “ad blocker” at the beginning because I think that’s how they were kind of describing it initially – or at least that’s how it’s being reported. But, really, what it is is an ad replacer and you’ve just touched on it the way they’ve set things up is going to speed things up on the user’s end. It’s possibly going to do some things with tracking of people as well. I mean, less tracking as opposed to going to a site and having those things on your computer. But, also, from a security standpoint. But the idea in place for Brave is that it’s going to replace the ads that you would typically see and cater it I guess more so towards something that you might be interested in. I think this is actually we can see that out there, too. I don’t know if you’ve ever… this is when I search for things, that’s why I always do it in a private browsing because I don’t want this to track it as something of mine. I’ve been looking up a daybed that my wife had picked out. And so, I’d looked it up. Now, when I go to all these websites, certain sites, I see all these ads for that daybed or I’ll see ads for some of our clients from time to time, too,
Nasir and Matt discuss the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Gretchen Carlson against Fox CEO Roger Ailes. They also talk aboutthe importance of sexual harassment training and properly handling such allegations in the office. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, boy, do we have a story today.
MATT: Yeah, I mean, it just keeps evolving. It’s far from final but, I mean, kind of one of the big things that we were waiting to hear on happened. Let me rewind a little bit and let’s go to the beginning – well, not the very beginning because Roger Ailes has been working with FOX for a really long time so we’re not going to maybe start that far back but I guess we’ll start with the actual complaint that was filed.
NASIR: Yeah, let’s do that.
MATT: That was what? July 6th and it was Gretchen Carlson, another previous FOX employee, filed a lawsuit against Roger Ailes – just Roger Ailes.
NASIR: She was that co-host at Fox & Friends if you ever watched that. Did you ever watch that show?
MATT: No, I don’t watch any of those shows.
NASIR: I actually find FOX News entertaining – not for news purpose, just entertaining in general. But, anyway, go ahead.
MATT: Yeah. I mean, I guess there are some questions of whether she could consider some of these people her friends based on the title of the show, especially Steve Doocy.
NASIR: I don’t know his name, but it is spelled D-O-O-C-Y so I’m not sure how else to pronounce that.
MATT: She worked on a bunch of different segments and shows but you mentioned FOX & Friends but she was an employee of FOX and Roger Ailes is the chairman and CEO of FOX News so that’s where we’re starting. But it’s something to say right off the bat is the lawsuit’s only against him and not against 21st Century FOX or anyone else – just Roger Ailes. That’s something we’ll circle back around to. So, she files this complaint and it centers around just basically a bunch of repeated instances of sexual harassment. I’m not as familiar with Gretchen Carlson’s career as you might be having watched the different shows but – at least what’s alleged in the complaint and what I’ve read elsewhere – she was pretty likeable, pretty successful at what she did – I mean on the shows she was on.
NASIR: I suppose. I mean, according to her, I mean, she was on a pretty popular show. But I think she was replaced by Hasselbeck – I forgot her first name.
MATT: Elizabeth Hasselbeck?
NASIR: Yeah, Elizabeth Hasselbeck – either replaced or pushed aside, so to speak.
MATT: I think the allegations in here might be part of the reason why.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, she was working with FOX – you know, these different shows. We’ll link the complaint because there’s more detail in there and we’re not going to go through all the different allegations that she is asserting against Roger Ailes – and, I guess, at this point, we should say they are just allegations – he’s denied everything. At this point, you know, there has not been any sort of responsive pleading to the complaint yet. So, at this point, it is strictly allegations so we will say that so we won’t get in trouble.
NASIR: You won’t get in trouble. I’ll say it all day.
MATT: I think it all kind of started with – or one of the things it started with – was her co-host which is the Steve Doocy. There’s a couple of instances of him doing things to her I think specifically putting his hand on her and putting her arm to shush her during a live telecast – you know, amongst other things. She had problems with that so she approached Ailes and just wanted to inform him of what was going on and that’s really where it kind of started and that, based on what’s in the complaint, he didn’t take her too seriously – not only that, that’s when some of the sexist remarks from him or gestures started popping up.
Nasir and Matt talk about the changes at Starbucks that have led to many disgruntled employees and customers.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we are talking about our second favorite food item, I would say, right? After pizza. Would you say? Coffee.
MATT: Is that a food?
NASIR: No, uh… that’s true.
MATT: I guess you could freeze it and then eat it, but it seems more like a beverage.
NASIR: Well, you know what I mean – at least we talk about it. I know you and I tend to talk about coffee a lot for some reason, too. It seems like it comes up. I don’t know if it’s on the podcast or otherwise. Or we’re just happy to be drinking coffee at a coffee shop.
MATT: Well, it’s possible. I mean, I don’t like Starbucks – which is what we’re going to talk about today – and I think I’ve mentioned that many times how it’s more of a convenience. Basically, if I need coffee and it’s the only option available, that’s the only time I go there. Even when people want to meet at Starbucks, I’m always reluctant and try to go somewhere else.
NASIR: Try to go somewhere else.
MATT: I don’t really necessarily try. I mean, now, I oftentimes just suggest where we should go.
NASIR: It’s not that I don’t like Starbucks nor do I like it. it’s just that I have had great coffee and there’s a difference but I’m also very tolerable to different degrees of quality.
MATT: Yeah, that’s the thing. I will say, I mean, I only drink iced coffee.
NASIR: That makes a big difference.
MATT: Their cold brew that they’ve had this last year – maybe more than that – is actually not bad. I’ll give them that.
NASIR: Okay, we’ll give them that.
MATT: Yeah, I can drink that. I don’t drink hot drinks so maybe that’s the problem.
NASIR: Maybe they’ll be a successful company now that they have some good iced beverages.
MATT: Yeah, I was looking up the numbers for how many stores they have. We can get to that in a bit.
NASIR: How many stores do they have?
MATT: More than 23,000 in 2015.
NASIR: Wow.
MATT: Looks like about half of that…
NASIR: Half of them are right next to each other.
MATT: They’re on the same block, basically.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: About half of that looks like to be US locations but that number is a year older. I don’t know. It’s somewhere in there. But it’s quite a bit, obviously. Let’s get into this. First, it all kind of stems from this – I assume it’s a barista who started this post – basically saying the morale at Starbucks amongst the people working there is at a low – maybe an all-time low – or at least it’s sinking because a slew of issues, the first of which being the hours that the baristas are working there. I think it’s well-documented that Starbucks offers benefits to its employees which I think has been a huge selling point for a long time now. It’s something they’ve gotten a lot of praise for. But, if you work there for the requirement to get those benefits or you have to work at least 20 hours a week so obviously the workers want to do that, but I would guess that most of the people working there probably see this as a full-time job just because, if you’re working a minimum 20 hours a week during the day, I mean, it’s tough to work two part-time jobs – just from a logistics standpoint – to make it all sort out. The problem that it looks like a lot of these workers are having are it’s very difficult to work more than 25 hours a week there based on the scheduling that’s been done in recent months or I don’t know how long it’s been going on but that seems to be the case.
NASIR: I think for a little bit now. And so, one of the reasons we’re talking about this is because this barista – like you were saying – Jaime Prater, he started this campaign on this website. I’ve never heard of it. it’s called coworker.org and it’s basically an open letter to Starbucks where you can get multiple signat...
Nasir and Matt talk about why Leonardo DiCaprio isn't done with his work on the Wolf of Wall Street and also discuss the recent Yelp decision that businesses should be excited about. Transcript: NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Why do you always laugh at me at every intro? MATT: You always pause at a different spot. I don’t know. NASIR: It’s for dramatic effect. MATT: I notice it and no one else probably does. NASIR: Yeah. No, you’re probably right. MATT: So, there’s a story that’s been popping up and I think the actual story, I just did a quick Google search on this because I was actually trying to find out when the case initiated, 90 percent – maybe 95 percent – of the stories are about this part with Leonardo DiCaprio having to testify in this case which is such a minor part. To me, that’s just really, like, not news at all in the grand scheme of things with the actual substance of the case. Let me get to the backstory here. I think it was filed in 2014, right? Yeah, 2014, a lawsuit was filed by Andrew Greene. If you’re really into the Wolf of Wall Street, you might know who that is. Basically, he had a bunch of causes of action – libel, right to privacy, defamation, things like that or I guess the libel – basically saying the character of PJ Byrne, the actor in the Wolf of Wall Street, was a portrayal of him – him being Andrew Greene – and he was portrayed very poorly, I think. Let’s see – portrayed as a criminal, a drug user, and a degenerate through this character in the movie. Naturally, he files this complaint against who – the director? NASIR: Yeah, or actually a bunch – not only Paramount, the director – let’s see. MATT: Red Granite Pictures, some other entities. NASIR: Appian Way LLC. MATT: See, basically, he’s saying, “his character in this movie, it was supposed to be me and it was portrayed in a disadvantageous way and so I’m going to sue you.” I think, initially, it was for $50 million. Now, I think it’s around $25 million and it’s probably because some of the claims got kicked out. But that’s kind of where we’re at right now before we get into the Leo aspect of it. NASIR: Yeah. If you guys have seen the movie, honestly, I doubt if you will remember who this guy is because I had to pull him up. I mean, he’s definitely a character in the film but he’s not a very memorable character. MATT: No. NASIR: You know who I’m talking about, right? You’ve seen the film, right? MATT: I watched a brief little clip. I think probably the most memorable part – well, one of the most memorable parts – that he’s in is when I think he’s the one – or at least one of the people – that’s involved, remember when they paid that woman to shave her head for $10,000? NASIR: Oh, okay, yeah. MATT: He was one of or maybe the only person that was the one shaving her head which he says never happened. What’s his name? Jordan… Jordan Belfort, the main character. You know, he says all this stuff happened. I’m sure it’s somewhat exaggerated but he said that the head-shaving thing happened. I think that’d be something that’d be easy to prove, right? NASIR: Yeah, I mean, you would think, but bottom-line is, okay, right now, I guess he’s an investment banker. He claims he wasn’t or is not drug-addicted or misogynistic, “an obnoxious sleazeball” that he says Scorsese and Paramount Pictures basically framed him to be. MATT: Yeah. So, he’s not happy about that. Probably also not happy about the fact that I’m sure he has a lot less money than he used to. So, naturally, he’s going to… You know, you see this movie, I’m sure he thinks, “Wow, it brings a lot of money, how can I profit off of this? I’m going to file this lawsuit claiming that they ripped off me and did so in a bad light.” That’s where things started in February 2014. A bunch of the claims got dismissed September of 2015, I believe,
Nasir and Matt discuss the criminal charges facing FedExinvolving the alleged transportation of illegal drugs. They also talk about how business owners should address working with customers that may be breaking the law.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And so, business news, right? That’s what we cover? What’s the business news that we have today?
MATT: Well, it could be business or it could be legal – preferably if it’s a Venn diagram, it’s something in the middle.
NASIR: That’s where we come in.
MATT: Yeah, that’s what we try to cover at least. This would quality as business news even though we don’t do—
NASIR: Drugs?
MATT: A drug or a criminal – too much criminal law – or at least I don’t. I don’t know about you.
NASIR: I don’t do too much of it. Let’s just put it that way – just the right amount of criminal law.
MATT: Fair enough. So, this is a pretty interesting case. I think the actual indictment was two years ago? 2014, I believe.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Brought against FedEx. Yeah, 2014, Grand Jury indictment. Essentially, they were accused of a few things – conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, distribution of controlled substances, conspiracy to distribute misbranded drugs, and misbranding drugs – things of that nature. Basically, what was happening, I believe it dealt with pharmaceuticals was the primary area here but, essentially, FedEx was being the courier between people shipping these illegal drugs and the people on the receiving end. I think it’s really the case is going to come down to – at least when I was reading this – I mean, when we’re recording this I guess the trial has just started so I guess we might know more once this comes out, as we often say, but what was FedEx’s knowledge of what it was transporting between Illegal Point A to Illegal Point B?
NASIR: The complaint and some of the press around this describes the situation where drivers literally complained about bringing parcels – specifically pharmacy parcels because I think they’re labeled differently – to delivery addresses that were nothing more than parking lots or schools or even vacant homes. And then, when they delivered it, there was all these multiple cars parked and people waiting outside for the deliveries. Of course, as soon as the packages or package is dropped off, people come and get it and bring it home.
MATT: Right, and that’s definitely one of the big points here, obviously, is the driver of these trucks – and they are employees if you recall, we’ve talked about that before – it was FedEx, right? That had that issue.
NASIR: They both had that issue, yeah, but I was thinking it was specifically FedEx, I think so – at least in California.
MATT: The drivers were coming back to upper level management telling them exactly what you just said – that these deliveries don’t seem 100 percent legitimate here – you know, pulling up to a location near the delivery address and people running up. I think there were instances of people just actually jumping into the FedEx trucks and trying to get these packages. You had the drivers reporting issues like this and, from how it’s been painted – at least in the media here – is that, you know, FedEx knew about these things and just kind of chose to do nothing about it. I think the prosecution had a pretty good quote, if I can find it. Here is part of it – basically, they faced a choice and the choice was to stop or go meaning that they knew that these illegal deliveries were happening. Time and time again, they went. That’s probably not the quote I was looking for but you get the point that they’re being accused of essentially knowing that these illegal deliveries are occurring and I think they’re playing the card of “well, we’re just the courier; we didn’t know about it; we’re not responsible for the fact that these ...
The guys return after a long break to discuss why Yahoo is auctioning off over 3,000 patents and how this decision will affect the longevity of the company.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome back after – I don’t know – it’s been like weeks and months since we had our last episode, right?
MATT: Yeah, it’s been a while. Even so much, we were actually one of the rare instances we’re in the same city and still kind of figuring out a way to record.
NASIR: That’s true. That’s true. Well, I mean, we do get busy sometimes. The podcast isn’t all we do. We actually do lawyer once in a while, right?
MATT: I don’t.
NASIR: Okay. I’m sure you get the question, too. I don’t know what’s more embarrassing – when people ask how long it takes us to actually do this podcast and how much time we spent or maybe more embarrassing is how little time we do to prepare for these podcasts. I’m not sure which is more embarrassing.
MATT: Well, you don’t want to prepare too much.
NASIR: We know you don’t.
MATT: Don’t work and don’t prepare. Just sit around for the week until podcast recording. But I think it’s been good we waited a couple of weeks. I think we have a good topic to discuss today.
NASIR: Yeah, Yahoo!
MATT: Yeah, Yahoo. I think this is pretty fresh news – at least as we’re recording this.
NASIR: By the time our podcast comes out, it’s always old.
MATT: So, Yahoo is looking to – amongst other things – sell a bunch of patents that it owns. I guess more than 3,000 even though, when I did a search, it only pulled up 2,661. Maybe I’m missing some.
NASIR: That’s because only 2,661 was transferred to Excalibur. I think they’re selling some under Yahoo, I think. I’m not sure.
MATT: Okay. So, over 3,000 is looking to sell. It’s transferred, like you just said, 2,661 to this entity that it set up – Excalibur IP LLC. I guess it’s holding on to another or it’s intending to retain more than 2,000 other patents. All of these patents either have been issued or are under approval review. Obviously, we’re just going to talk about the ones that are up for auction. So, they transferred all of these patents – or a bunch of these patents – to this entity, Excalibur, and are looking to essentially find the highest bidder.
NASIR: Obviously, we all know they’re been in trouble for years. if you’ve been to Yahoo.com recently then I’d be asking, “Why are you going to Yahoo.com?” but, either way, everyone kind of knows they’ve been going down for a while. They even hired a Google exec a few years ago as a CEO that didn’t seem to do much.
MATT: It seems like she might be on the outs here.
NASIR: Yeah, but right now, their patents that they put into this LLC, they literally transferred it to a separate LLC that they’re going to be auctioning off. I mean, they’re saying that – at least Yahoo is saying that – it’s valued over a billion dollars.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And so, that’s not insignificant. They included – of course – a lot of their search stuff. I mean, I basically went through every single one here.
MATT: I bet.
NASIR: No, I didn’t, but I did skim through a lot of them. A lot of them are like something to do with search or targeted advertising or user generation of keywords for content authored by them is one of them. It’s pretty fascinating because you’ll look, I mean, they still have, of course, all patents. They retain the names of the actual inventors but patents are treated as personal property in the sense that you could sell, transfer, and assign just as you would a car or a can of soda – which is definitely a commodity as well. But, of course, when you assign a can of soda to somebody, the paper work is pretty simple. In fact, you don’t need any paper work at all. But patents are a little bit of a different story when it comes to the actual formality of transferring it.
MATT: Yeah.
Nasir and Matt discuss the increase in the salary thresholdfor exempt employees and how employerscan try to avoid paying overtime as a result.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast – padcast. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Padcost.
NASIR: Well, we’ll have the padcost next week. Today is our podcast. But, man, huge news, right? I mean, this is something that we talked about last year – big impact for many listeners. I hope you listen carefully because this is – what is it? December 1st this new law will go into effect?
MATT: Well, the date I had in mind was I was going to ask you when we talked about this last year if you can remember.
NASIR: I was going to say summer.
MATT: Yeah?
NASIR: June?
MATT: Now, I’m forgetting. I think it was July 5th but I looked earlier just to see if you’d remember.
NASIR: How can you ask me the question and test me if you know the answer. I thought it was going to be some trick answer like today’s date or something. Yeah, it feels like it’s almost been a year, I know that.
MATT: Now I feel bad. Yeah, July 6th – that’s what I said, right? Or did I say 5th?
NASIR: That’s the date that it was published or the date that we recorded it?
MATT: Hmm. Good question.
NASIR: It’s an okay question. It’s not great but…
MATT: Not a good question – a good point. That was the day it went up so it’s possible that we recorded in June. Yeah, you could have been right.
NASIR: What should we do? Should we just refer to that episode and have everyone listen to it because it’s pretty much the same?
MATT: I meant to go back and listen to it to see what we had to say and I just didn’t do it.
NASIR: Yeah, ditto.
MATT: I don’t know what the number was at that time but I don’t think much has changed in-between when that first came out and what it is now.
NASIR: I think the dollar amount is different by, like, $3,000, right?
MATT: Yeah, because we were closer to 50 before, right?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Okay. You said this was going to affect a lot of people. I had a number of how many people it’s going to affect. It’s quite a few.
NASIR: Some say it’s up to 4.2 million. That’s what the DOL estimates.
MATT: We should probably explain what we’re talking about because we haven’t done that yet.
NASIR: Let’s just leave it in the dark. Okay, go ahead.
MATT: So, the dollar threshold for exempt employees. The way I think of it is this; the way an employee can be exempt is if it checks two different boxes – the first of which being the duties test – it’s one of a couple of different categories here. We have executive, administrative, professional, outside sales person and then some computer professionals as well.
NASIR: Or what we like to call computer geeks.
MATT: So, that’s checkbox one. I mean, there’s a lot of people that can fit into those categories – quite a few, actually. I think we’ve talked about those before so I don’t want to go back and explain all those different ones. That’s box one. Box two is the salary amount. So, previously, it was what? 23,660? I’m just going off of memory. Yeah, 23,660. It got a substantial jump up to 47,476. So, what is that? Almost double.
NASIR: Yeah, just about doubled. What’s interesting on how they actually determined what the amount is and it’s actually kind of important because this formula or standard that they created is going to be used ongoing so this number – 47,476 – is actually going to be automatically updated every three years.
MATT: Three years, yeah.
NASIR: And so, the basis for that is basically they take the 40th percentile of weekly earnings of full-time salaried workers in the lowest-wage census region – which currently happens to be the south. And so, the idea is they take – just to kind of rephrase that a little bit – they take the lowest-wage region of the country – which happens to be the south – and then take the 40th perce...
Nasir and Matt discuss the Baltimore law that makes it very difficult to operate food trucks in the city. They also discuss all the legal restrictions tohaving a food truck.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And so, in preparation of tonight’s podcast, I did some research and I went down the street to a food truck and I got myself a fish taco in Houston, Texas. You know, I don’t know how many times we’ve mentioned “fish tacos” but I had to try and see. It was pretty good.
MATT: You actually did this?
NASIR: No, I actually did it.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: I’m trying to look around to see if I have the trash somewhere so I could figure out what the name of the food truck is so I can plug them but I can’t remember what it is. I feel bad now.
MATT: Yeah, food trucks, they definitely have peaked. I think we’re on the downhill but there was definitely a time a few years ago when it just seemed like, it’s kind of like craft breweries where it just seemed like almost everyone had a craft brewery or some tie to one and that it was kind of like the same thing with food trucks. I kind of saw it that way.
NASIR: It is kind of hard to understand the real appeal to it because, I mean, you’re right, people do go crazy over it and I feel like maybe it’s just the novelty of having something new, especially when they get all those food trucks together in one parking lot, it’s almost like going to a food court in a mall because you have all these choices. But, at the same time, if you end up going again, it’s always ended up being the same food trucks every week it seems like, right?
MATT: Well, I think you hit the nail on the heads there. I think that’s the appeal if you have multiple food trucks and particularly if there’s some sort of rotation because, yeah, that’s a good comparison – it’s like a food court in a mall because you can go with a group of people and presumably there’s something there for everyone. But, yeah, there’s a couple close to where I live that are essentially just permanently – well, not permanently because they do drive away but they just set up in the same spot every day and that’s all it is.
NASIR: They might as well be just like a restaurant that’s parked somewhere.
MATT: Yeah, I think that’s one of the issues we had. We’ll talk about a specific issue in Maryland – Baltimore specifically but we talk about more broadly after that. The Baltimore city code, there’s a new law and, essentially, to summarize it, food trucks can’t be parked within 300 feet of a brick-and-mortar or an actual restaurant if it serves similar type of food which obviously leaves some room for ambiguities there but it’s an interesting law because I imagine what probably happened was these food trucks were parking outside of restaurants and I think the two that we’re going to talk about specifically is the pizza one, of course, and a barbeque.
NASIR: Barbeque, yeah.
MATT: Yeah, they just parked in front of a place that is going to have significantly more overhead and they probably just were upset about that. That’s I’m guessing what happened.
NASIR: Yeah. And so, as you can imagine, this law is a little controversial and, obviously, that’s why these two particular food trucks are suing and basically saying that it’s unconstitutional. I think they actually mean they’re suing for this under the state constitution which I think there might be some wiggle room for under the US Constitution too as well. But this seems to be a local ordinance and we can get into some of the constitutional aspects of this. But, first, let’s just talk about overall fairness. Like you said, I understand the want to protect some of these retail brick-and-mortar restaurants but doesn’t it seem kind of contrary to our culture of free competition to restrict and to have such a specific law against food trucks?
Matt listens to Nasir recap the developing battle in his hometown of Vandalia, Ohio over whether a Dunkin Donuts can move into a location in close proximity to a local favorite donut shop. They then discusswhether the issue is more legal or personal.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: What are we doing today, Matt?
MATT: Well, I’ve never been to this place or this city but I’m going to give a little bit of background and then we’re just going to kind of take it from there, I guess. By the way, for the listeners, I feel like this is close to where you’re from so I think there’s something in here that you’re not telling me but, anyway, Vandalia, Ohio – I think that’s how you pronounce it.
NASIR: Vandalia, Ohio. You got it.
MATT: Okay, got it. So, Jim’s Donut Shop, from what I can tell, it sounds like they’ve been there quite a long time by kind of what this public backlash has been. Anyway, Jim’s Donut Shop has been up and running. It seems like a pretty small town. But, apparently, Dunkin’ Donuts – as it did in San Diego, I think they’re still only the one location but they’re expanding out – they want to put not only a new location in the city but very close to, in close proximity to where Jim’s Donut Shop is located. I think I’ve seen differing numbers but it seems like the farthest it would be is a few hundred feet.
NASIR: Yeah. First of all, you did get the name right. This is the town that I grew up. Jim’s Donuts, I think we need to span at least the first twenty minutes of this episode just on Jim’s Donuts.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: I think it’s very important to understand that, yes, I mean, literally, my family talks about going to Jim’s Donuts on a Sunday morning to get donuts. It’s funny because this place actually has this feel. You know, there’s a lot of older people that seem to go there and I don’t know if they still do this. They used to smoke in there and I think a lot of people would go there for the coffee and maybe truck drivers. You know, it’s a stop. Vandalia, Ohio, is basically Highway 75 and Highway 70 Intersection which are two very long highways that, if you’ve ever traveled cross-country, you’ve probably rode on one of those.
MATT: You said 70?
NASIR: Yeah, Interstate 70 and 75. When I moved to San Diego, I literally got on with my high school buddy, Nathan, and we drove from Vandalia, Ohio, all the way to Las Vegas, I think, on Highway 70 and then got on Highway 15. But, anyway, you know, I don’t know if they still do but the donuts there – it sounds derogatory but, trust me, it’s not – it had this taste to it, almost as if some of the cigarette smoke would get into the batter but it was part of it, you know? What’s funny about this story is I’m very torn and the reason is because, you know, I can’t talk some of it but the property that Dunkin’ Donuts is planning on buying us actually owned by my dad. I’m actually very familiar with the transaction so, obviously, I can’t talk about some things but, obviously, if somehow the city mixes this deal, then we’re not going to be able to sell that property so it’s kind of a big deal for us. But I do like Jim’s Donuts!
MATT: I knew there was something secret you had planned for this. You wanted me to give a background on a story where you seemed much more familiar with than I did.
NASIR: It’s just so weird that Dunkin’ Donuts would be built on 34 and 42 East National Road which, of course, 42 East National Road is where my dad’s office used to be before he retired.
MATT: Oh, well, we should have had him as a guest.
NASIR: I know, I was thinking about calling him. It’d be funny. I already know his take, luckily. So, I can speak on his behalf as his attorney.
MATT: It seemed like there was a couple of things or there’s things – some legal, some non-legal – preventing Dunkin’ Donuts from moving into this space.
The guys kick off the week by discussing a Nevada employee who is claiming she was fired for not supporting the Scientology beliefs of her employer.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And are you a member of the Scientology Church? I want to preface… I just want to make sure because it might be a sensitive topic otherwise.
MATT: Not that I know of, I’m not.
NASIR: Okay, good. Well, I think you’re required to be one. I think that’s a new requirement for the firm starting now.
MATT: I mean, it’s actually died down a bit. It peaked for a period of time when…
NASIR: The HBO special or documentary?
MATT: Well, I think the Tom Cruise thing is probably when it peaked, maybe.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, that’s true, and when it became more exposed and people started making fun of it a little bit.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But it’s definitely still out there. I don’t want to say “in full force.” You’re right, it’s probably peaked but it’s not that it’s not strong. I think it’s still pretty strong.
MATT: Yeah, you just definitely don’t hear about it as much as you used to.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: We have an interesting case and this one’s out of Nevada but, actually, I guess both episodes this week if we’re going to talk about things in different states where we don’t necessarily practice but they’re interesting items nonetheless. So, there is a woman who is working for this company. I don’t know if it’s called Real Alkalized Water. Is that what it’s called? I saw a different name somewhere else.
NASIR: Real Alkalized Water.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: I guess their website’s AffinityLifestyle.com but they’re also known as Real Alkalized Water.
MATT: Yeah, that website. The URL didn’t go anywhere so I don’t know.
NASIR: Oh, it didn’t?
MATT: No.
NASIR: Oh.
MATT: DrinkRealWater.com is what they’re…
NASIR: Oh, okay.
MATT: Before I get into this…
NASIR: It’s just so fitting. Yeah, we have to talk about this. Go ahead.
MATT: I think this seems like this is just a scam, right? I mean, water?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Like, real water is just water. It’s tasteless, colorless, odorless. It doesn’t have anything weird. I mean, it’s just water. That’s the whole point of it. I have a problem with this. I’m sure whatever weird science stuff that they say they’re doing to it – which maybe you know about and I don’t – but there’s no way it’s legit.
NASIR: Well, you have to talk about some of the claims. So, “Real Water is a premium drinking water with alkalized pH of 8.0 that utilizes the proprietary E2 technology—” whatever that is, it’s trademarked though, “—making it the only drinking water on the market that can maintain a stable negative ionization.” This supposedly premium water promises to “unleash the power of negative ions.” I mean, if you read some of the things that they claim, they talk about infused electrons, they talk about how regular water has all these free radicals, I mean, there’s been a number of people that just basically labelled this as junk science, right?
MATT: Yeah. I mean, that’s what I’m definitely leaning towards. You know, water is what it is. Maybe you can create some sort of side thing that resembles water but this is not real water being that. So, I don’t know. We’ll just leave that at that. So, this woman worked for this company. She was a brand ambassador, I believe. Yeah, brand ambassador in March of 2015. I guess, you know, right off the bat, they had her start watching these Scientology videos. They described it as a self-betterment course. They also mentioned to her she would receive a raise of 25 cents per hour if she sat through these videos, but I guess she just wasn’t very comfortable watching this or didn’t. I believe she was raised Catholic – not off the alley of Scientology.
NASIR: Her name is Echevarria… Logan told me how to pronounce it. I forgot but anyway…
The guys discuss the massive floods in Houston,how employers responded, and why one meteorologist became a local hero. They also discuss the steps businesses should take in preparing for storms outside the workplace.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And I am all dry from the weather. I think that’s the first question. Everything is safe and sound in Houston, Texas.
MATT: I mean, I didn’t hear about this, I don’t think, until Tuesday? Monday?
NASIR: Well, Monday is when it happened.
MATT: Okay, it must have been Tuesday.
NASIR: Yeah. So, what happened last Monday which would have been last, last Monday when this episode comes out? Basically, overnight – and I was kind of half-awake – it was just raining like crazy all night. Of course, I’m not in ivory tower on the eighth floor of our building so I wasn’t really too concerned about anything in my own selfishness. But I knew something was going on and I woke up at like 4:30 in the morning, checking my phone, to see if there’s floods or whatever. And then, I think, at 5:00 or 6:00, the weather warning goes off on your phone and so forth. But, overnight, things just started to flood like crazy and people woke up to flooded homes, flooded streets. You see, Houston, just picture a huge area that’s completely flat and then cover it with cement and then pour rain on it. That’s Houston, basically. Of course, it’s going to flood. So, it’s been kind of a rough week and so we thought we’d cover some of the implications of that flooding.
MATT: Well, yeah, that’s what I was going to ask because I’ve never been there. Is it like San Diego that the city was not built for any sort of rain? I mean, it would never even rain that long in San Diego but the drainage system in San Diego is so poor that it just can’t.
NASIR: That’s true. In San Diego, if it rains pretty hard, I remember in Mission Valley, there would be spots where it’d just be impassable. But you’re right, it’s because San Diego is not built for that and it hardly gets any rain. When it does rain, the ocean water or the sewage water goes into the ocean and you can’t swim for X number of weeks, et cetera. But, in Houston, I mean, first of all, it’s basically swampland. And so, to answer your question, it’s supposed to be built for rain. The problem is it’s just flat. The only thing that they can do, for example, in Galveston, what they did is they literally – this was decades ago – Galveston is a beach city close to Houston on the gulf and basically they raised everything, like, ten feet – meaning the buildings – and so, that way, when there’s a surge of water in the ocean, you know, it doesn’t flood every single time. That’s really the only thing that they do here. Basically, when they build new buildings, they make sure it has a run-off and what is it called? A reserve?
MATT: Moat?
NASIR: Not a moat. Like, depending upon the size of the lot, they dig below and then they build up so that the water has somewhere to go. Most of the time, that works. But, of course, all of these old neighborhoods which, frankly, tend to be the lower income areas, are the ones that get affected most when these things happen.
MATT: How long did this happen for? Just one day or was it multiple days?
NASIR: Sunday night and it was basically flood waters that would not recede until the next day but then, also, Tuesday, there was more rain. On Wednesday, there was more rain. That kind of exasperated it a little bit. But the worst of the worst was on Monday. I think a total of eight or so people have passed on most of those on Monday, I believe.
MATT: Yeah, that’s crazy. I mean, the reason I ask is what we’re going to talk about today is kind of the employer response – maybe how employers in Houston responded and how they should respond and kind of this vigilante meteorologist that stepped up in the Houst...
The guys discuss the boycott of Amazon over the products of an unnamed presidential candidate. They also talkabout how a business should handle a boycott and whether it's possible to exit one unscathed.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: Did you say Nasir Pocket? Sounded like it.
NASIR: Yes, my name is Nasir Pocket.
MATT: I’m Matt Staub – couldn’t think of something creative to say.
NASIR: Very good.
MATT: Sometimes, you forget you forget your name.
NASIR: It happens. It can’t see you, Matt. My internet connection’s down.
MATT: That’s fine. I think that’s why. You might have said your name correctly. I just, without the visual, I can’t…
NASIR: You didn’t know it was me, right?
MATT: Yeah. I do know a Nasir Pocket as well so it could have been them. I’m going to check. I didn’t see who was on the other line of this call. So, here’s the goal for today. We’re going to not try to say – other than right now when I bring it up – we’re going to try to not bring up Donald Trump at all even though we’re going to talk kind of about what’s going on with these boycotts and everything else. Is that a deal?
NASIR: I kind of have to bite my tongue but, yeah, I’ll try. I’ll try my best. We’ve had more Trump articles in the last month than I think most people can stand but it’s topical. What can we do?
MATT: Yeah, I think we can do it even though one of the stories we might talk about is kind of related to that. Amazon – I think people are familiar with who Amazon is. You can buy products on there. We’ve talked about it a few times. I think people know. They’re getting a pushback from what’s the group? Ultraviolet is the group. I’m not even familiar with it – an online community that promotes equality and fights sexism. They’re kind of boycotting or protesting against Amazon for selling a certain candidate’s…
NASIR: You created the rules!
MATT: Well, it’s going to be difficult.
NASIR: “A certain Republican candidate’s menswear collection.”
MATT: Yeah, exactly.
NASIR: The only candidate that has a menswear collection.
MATT: Well, I don’t know that. There could be other ones.
NASIR: Cruz does have some style.
MATT: They’re wanting essentially for Amazon to remove these products from its marketplace and that’s kind of the gist of this. Amazon has policies in place. You know, it won’t sell offensive products. If you go to what these are, listed as some examples, I mean, really, it’s offensive things. We’re talking, you know, promoting hatred; violence; racial, sexual, or religious intolerance; crime scene photos; other more graphic things – which would make sense. I don’t think Amazon wants to be selling that.
NASIR: Yeah. For example, I think Amazon prohibit confederate flags was in the news – whether that’s allowed – and I think they prohibited that, correct?
MATT: Yeah, I’m not sure but that would make sense kind of based on, I think, that would fall under this first category they have. But what about a product that is sold under somebody’s name or a business’ name and it’s the person that might have these beliefs particularly of sexist nature – or alleged sexist nature.
NASIR: Or racial or religious intolerance.
MATT: Yeah, exactly. What if it’s that person that has those beliefs? Like, in this example, I don’t think the shirts themselves are promoting sexism or racism. It’s the person behind the shirts I guess that is the one that’s doing it. It’s an interesting idea.
NASIR: Well, I do have a Trump tie. Oh, I said his name. Whoops! Sorry. I was wearing it out and someone did call me a racist but I’m trying to figure out if it was the tie or not or it was just my racial comments or something.
MATT: Yeah, you know, a quick side note, I also have a tie and I used to have a shirt – I got rid of it – and I actually like the actual product a lot. It’s pretty good quality, in my opinion.
Click here to read HubSpot's response on this topic.
Nasir and Matt discuss the trend in startups to compensate programmers and other early employees with stock options and how the company culture at HubSpot isn't what it seems.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Why are you laughing? Is it too formal or what?
MATT: No, it wasn’t too formal. It was just, uh, interesting breaks and peaks in your…
NASIR: Oh, because, well, the reason is because I was starting to think about what the name of our podcast is because, you know, since I never say it in our intro anymore, I almost forgot what it was.
MATT: There’s somebody else that does the intro, says the name, says our names, and then we immediately just repeat it.
NASIR: Well, we don’t say the name of the podcast which, for the life of me, I can’t remember what the name is, but that’s okay.
MATT: I say it at the end, I guess – in a way, I do.
NASIR: Uh, keep it sound and keep it smart?
MATT: Yeah, close enough. I hope you went to that game on…
NASIR: I did watch it. The final?
MATT: Great game, yeah.
NASIR: You know me. It’s surprising that I sat through a game that I have no idea who the teams are or players are but, yeah, it was a great game. I think I just watched the last half.
MATT: Yeah, the whole game was good but the last half was good. Yeah, my wife did the same thing. If she’s able to watch a whole half of basketball, you know it was a good game.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly, and we’re talking about the… uh, what are we talking about exactly? I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing.
MATT: College basketball.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, yeah, college.
MATT: Because it was in Houston, that’s why I bring it up.
NASIR: Yeah, we’re talking about the same thing. Anyway, what have we got today?
MATT: You know, this is a topic that – I’m assuming you do as well – I seem to talk about it all the time with people – mostly with startup companies. We’re going to go through an actual company and kind of the tribulations that they’ve had. So, you have a startup company. Oftentimes, you have multiple people that are involved. Unless you get some sort of investment right away or unless one of the founders has some money from some other source or some money to pump through, they’re pretty handcuffed in terms of money they can pay out to people that are performing services for them which – you know, this is just a complete estimate I should say – over 90 percent of startups – and I use “startups” loosely – probably have this issue.
NASIR: The so-called “tech startups” or kind of dotcom startup.
MATT: Well, I think tech is a classic example because all businesses can probably use some sort of programming or tech person, but the tech ones in particular obviously have this huge need. And so, oftentimes, what happens for these startups, it’ll have the means to pay people. You know, we’re just talking minimum wage. We didn’t even talk about that yet but, in California, it was going to be quite the increase here in the next few years.
NASIR: $15.00 – and New York.
MATT: New York as well, that’s right, but we’ll talk about that at a later time.
NASIR: I think we have a story about it.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, in lieu of paying these people at least minimum wage, they pay them nothing but they pay them in equity meaning that – well, only if you stock in this company or membership interest if it’s an LLC – in exchange for your services, the one thing that they often do though is they tie it into some sort of vesting schedule. So, in order for this person to receive this, you know, think about it this way – we’re going to give you five percent of the company which is probably pretty high but we’re going to give you five percent for doing the work you’re going to do as a programmer.
Nasir and Matt discuss various lawsuits against social media platforms in which users are accused of artificially inflating their social currency.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Do you ever just think about how, like, we do a podcast and, in a way, it’s really weird because we’re attorneys and we spend our time on Thursday nights recording a podcast. I mean, I have a great time but, when I start looking at it from a third person’s perspective, I’m just like, “What are we doing?” but I love it.
MATT: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s only – and I guess it’s technically evening for me – it’s early evening. For you, it’s a little bit later.
NASIR: Yeah, 7 o’clock.
MATT: People don’t really want to listen to attorneys for the most part.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. But people have been listening. We have a nice little following now. I mean, it’s pretty neat, you know?
MATT: It’s a lot to live up to.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: Are you sure that we haven’t been artificially inflating our listener counts?
NASIR: No, we have, for sure. I mean, I’m saying the number of fake listeners we have is just enormous. It’s in the trillions, actually.
MATT: I bring that up because that’s what we’re going to talk about today. You could count that as social currency, couldn’t you?
NASIR: Absolutely, yeah.
MATT: It’s a pretty broad definition of what social currency is. I don’t think there’s any definite things that fall under it but that’s what we’re going to talk about today – social currency. It raises a lot of interesting questions because I’m sure – well, we know for sure because it’s happened to the firm before with artificially inflating not necessarily view counts or things like that or times someone’s viewed a video.
NASIR: But definitely manipulation, right?
MATT: Yeah, it was voting, right? When we ran that photo competition.
NASIR: We’ve got to tell that. Because it happened so long ago, most people probably don’t know the story. I’ll give you the 30-second version which will probably be a two-minute version but, anyway, it was a really cool idea. We had these – I don’t know what they are – these little piggy banks and we gave them out at events and we had a contest. Basically, take this piggy bank and take a photo with it and make it interesting. Matt’s holding it up. No one else can see it, by the way. We’re not on TV, by the way, Matt, just so you know. And so, we gave them out and the idea was, okay, take a photo with our piggy bank with our logo on it and make it interesting and then post it on our Facebook page and we’ll do an open voting and whoever gets the most votes will get an iPad. Of course, we get a lot of photos but they’d email it to us. They don’t follow the rules and all the stuff like that. We’d get a good number of submissions. By the way – correct me, Matt, if I’m ruining the story because I forget the details but one of the persons got like 100 more votes than everyone else.
MATT: It was like immediate, too.
NASIR: Yeah, within a day or so. It’s like, “Okay, maybe he got his friends to do it.” But then, we started looking at the actual people that were voting and it was obvious – basically all of them were from the same country and it was like either the Philippines or Indonesia or something like that and there was exactly 100 of them. Then we’re like, “Wait a minute. We’re familiar with the fact that you can just buy social media likes and things like that online.” Of course, you can do the same thing. You can buy people to vote for you online as well and that’s exactly what happened. This person basically cheated himself to get an iPad. Of course, we didn’t give him one but we were so pissed off about it that we literally blacklisted him in our CRM software. Remember that? Because I was like, “Whoever this guy is, we’re not dealing with him,” but anyway.
Nasir and Matt discuss the class action suit against Jessica Alba's Honest Company for allegedlyselling products that contained harmful chemicals.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we get to cover your favorite actress today, right? She is an actress, right?
MATT: Yeah, and I have something to bring up. She has like a bio on their company site. It’s Jessica Alba and it says, “Golden Globe-nominated actress whose career includes roles in films such as Fantastic Four, blah blah blah… and television shows like Dark Angel, The Office, and Entourage.” When was she on The Office? That’s what I trying to remember. Was that a typo?
NASIR: Yeah, it’s a typo.
MATT: She’s prone to typos or making mistakes.
NASIR: Making mistakes, yeah.
MATT: We’ll get down to the bottom of this before the end of the episode. You know, how do you choose the name of your company if you’re starting a new company? You know, there’s a lot of thought that’s put into the name, probably – or at least I would hope. Her company is called Honest – The Honest Company Inc. Started in California in 2011 – maybe a little bit later, 2014? Somewhere in that range.
NASIR: Sorry to interrupt. I had to look it up, of course, on The Office. I couldn’t get over it. Apparently, remember there was a movie within the show where Jim and Pam would watch?
MATT: That doesn’t count. Yeah.
NASIR: She was in that with Jack Black. I guess she was on The Office.
MATT: All right. Well, that’s fine. She’s not lying about it but why would that be…?
NASIR: How she’s known for? I know. It was like one episode, right?
MATT: And that one was tricky, if you remember, because it was I think someone right after the Superb Bowl and they kept billing it as “oh, we have all these big names in this episode with Jack Black, Jessica Alba and all these people” and then we got into the actual episode which was funny. The episode was funny, I’ll give them that. But it was tricky because these actors just being in a separate show.
NASIR: It was a little deceiving or dishonest, I would say, no?
MATT: Perfect, there you go – dishonest – and that’s what we’re getting to and it is deceiving. It was misrepresentation. Whether it’s intentional or negligent, it was something.
NASIR: That is the question.
MATT: Here is the problem. So, she has this company that has all these I guess we’ll call them beauty products and products for babies and kids.
NASIR: I think they’re trying to expand in different vertical. I mean, they do baby wipes, too.
MATT: Oh, I that was the reason it started – because she’s a mom of two and she wanted to have these “safe products” that are not full of all these chemicals like most things out there and that’s fine and that’s why she named it The Honest Company because our products are honestly made without all these things and there’s a whole list of them on the website. And so, one of the them is SLS – this is listing it as sodium lauryl? Do I have the right thing?
NASIR: Yeah, it’s a sodium lauryl sulfate.
MATT: Okay. Yeah, sodium lauryl sulfate – SLS.
NASIR: They’re not selling that. That’s what’s in it.
MATT: Just bottles of that.
NASIR: They’re selling a laundry detergent that is apparently SLS is a common known chemical. It’s used a lot in soaps and different things like that. It’s a common active ingredient but apparently – for whatever reason – some people say it’s not good so they were basically selling this laundry detergent. If you look at the product, it will list out all the chemicals that it doesn’t have. As we commonly see, we see a list of ingredients. Part of their transparency is they list all the ingredients that it doesn’t have and that’s one of them.
MATT: Right, and that’s the whole Honest aspect of it, you know? It’s trying to be honest about things. “We honestly don’t have these chemicals,
Nasir and Matt talk about the story out of Texas that Mexican restaurants were reportedly attempting to ban Trump supporters from eating at their restaurants.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Today, we’re talking politics.
MATT: I wanted to bring up one thing first. I don’t know if you do this one purpose but I think this is the third March we’ve done the podcast. I think all three years we’ve recorded on the same time when Dayton is playing.
NASIR: Dayton’s playing right now?
MATT: In about five minutes they’re starting up.
NASIR: Oh, okay. Well, I’ll pull that up, too. San Diego State didn’t make it this year which is a pretty big deal.
MATT: No, they didn’t. Long story short, they had some bad losses at the beginning of the year. They lost their conference tournament the final so they lost the automatic bid and so they were on the bubble. I’m not going to say they should have made it but there might have been one or two teams. There’s definitely at least one, maybe two teams that made it that San Diego State should have made ahead of but that’s kind of how it works.
NASIR: I mean, I heard they should have won the championship. They were favored in that game, right?
MATT: Oh, yeah, their conference is terrible so they should have but, yeah, your Dayton Flyers are…
NASIR: Dayton Flyers, all my high school buddies are not surprised that I have no idea. Well, anyway, let’s talk something I could actually discuss – not sports but politics.
MATT: Yeah, this is an interesting one. You realize this was a fake thing that happened, right?
NASIR: Yeah, not to talk actual politics but I was kind of hoping it was real but, okay, fine.
MATT: When you first told me about it, I assumed it was real then I started looking into it and realized it was fake after I read a couple of stories.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But I think this was in the San Antonio area, is that right? Or was it all spread out through Texas?
NASIR: I feel like it was just in the area because it was one person that was doing it but I’m sure it may have happened in other places but these are the two stories that we picked up.
MATT: Basically, what was happening is someone was going around, putting up these signs at Mexican restaurants and I’ll read this one because it’s kind of humorous at the end. “We stand with our fellow Mexican restaurants and their efforts against hateful speech. We will also no longer be serving people who display support for the views of the presidential candidate, Donald Trump. You can’t have your taco and eat it, too. Standing together.” And then, the logo of this restaurant…
NASIR: Taco Cabana.
MATT: Yeah, and there was another one, not the exact same sign but a similar thing at another Mexican café, Mama Margie’s. Somebody I guess was going around, putting these signs up. Before the story kind of broke, people thought that these Mexican restaurants had band together and were going to outright disallow anyone who was a Trump supporter to eat at their fine establishments.
NASIR: There was a lot of confusion because some people were saying that, no, some employee did it or whatever. But this Mama Margery’s in San Antonio, apparently, they had some video footage of someone else coming in from the parking lot, putting the flyer up, and taking a picture. In a Twitter response on their company account was like, “The message was not approved by Mama Margery’s.” By the way, it doesn’t sound like a great Mexican restaurant but okay.
MATT: It’s Margie, I think.
NASIR: Is it Margie? Oh, well, maybe that’s why.
MATT: I don’t know if that makes it better.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, but it says, “I’m in the business of tacos, not politics, which is way yummier!” which is a fine response. Yeah, it was fake, but then it really begs the question of can you do that? I mean,
Nasir and Matt talk about the mayor of Austin recommending employees work from home on Friday due to SXSW and the President being in town and how that affects employers.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: That’s correct.
MATT: All right, that’s it.
NASIR: That’s actually the first time you got that right.
MATT: Yeah. Well, you know the phrase, “260th time’s a charm.”
NASIR: Yeah. Wow. 260, huh?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: We’re getting up there.
MATT: It’s a good amount – close to 300.
NASIR: Closer to 300 than it was closer to 200, that’s true.
MATT: Yeah, definitely.
NASIR: Have you ever been to South by Southwest?
MATT: Oh, is that what that means? I thought it was Swiss… I don’t know. I was going to try and pronounce it as a word. No, I haven’t. Never even been to Austin.
NASIR: Oh. Most people compare Austin to San Diego – or I should say they see some comparables to it. I would agree, actually. The atmosphere, it’s a big small town just like San Diego. I have been in Austin during SXSW. It was crazy.
MATT: Yeah, I remember that.
NASIR: You remember that? But I was there because I was meeting with the Texas Department of Insurance – with eight or nine people from there – in this old office building. You know those old government buildings where smells of old books or something? And I was in the boardroom with, like, six or seven different people and, literally, outside – and this is Downtown Austin – there was like band music going off and drums and they were like, “Oh, yeah, that’s been going on all day and all week,” or whatever and I’m just thinking, “I drove all the way to Austin and SXSW is going on and I’m just sitting in this boring Texas Department of Insurance meeting.” But, anyway, that’s my experience.
MATT: You didn’t even really partake in any of the…
NASIR: No, I walked around a little bit. I needed to head home but, yeah, I just walked around. There were some activities going on. I don’t even think I ate lunch there. That was horrible.
MATT: Time well spent.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Well, is it this Friday?
NASIR: I think it starts this Friday, yeah.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: At least maybe the interactive part. Don’t ask me. I always forget there’s like all these Austinians? What are they called – Austinites?
MATT: Austines?
NASIR: Austines?
MATT: Austinites is probably right.
NASIR: Okay. They’ll be upset that I don’t know but, if I recall correctly, it’s divided into two or three segments – one of them being South by Southwest Interactive which is all the startup scene and things like that then you’ve got the music and something else, too. I don’t know.
MATT: Austonians, maybe.
NASIR: Austonians.
MATT: I don’t know.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: It’s a tough call. Well, anyway, the reason we’re talking about that is – I didn’t know about this. You told me about it so I’m not going to pretend like I knew about this beforehand but the Austin mayor is encouraging people to work from home or take a half day on this Friday which I’m assuming will be the previous Friday from when people from when people are actually listening to this. That’s why I asked about the dates but that’s fine.
NASIR: By the way, Austinites, according to Wikipedia. Demonym I guess is what the term is – a word to identify residents or natives of a particular place.
MATT: This’ll be a fun episode to transcribe.
NASIR: I know. Sorry. Okay.
MATT: Yeah. So, the mayor is saying to anticipate heavy traffic. Part of the reason is because SXSW. Another reason is because the President is going to be in town and I assume another reason is probably there’s just traffic there in general. It is a big city with a lot of people in it.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I’m not going to act like I know what the traffic is like because San Diego traffic really isn’t that bad and there’s a ton of people in San Diego, too.
The guys kick off the week by discussing the lawsuit in Hawaii where an employee posted a defamatory remark about a customer and tried to holdthe employer liable. They also discuss the new anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy posting requirements for California.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, today, we are covering… actually, I don’t think we’ve had a case out of Hawaii yet – except maybe that time we covered that surfer that was eaten by a shark.
MATT: We’ve done so many episodes, I don’t even know if that was even… I would believe that that’s something we’ve talked about but I really have no idea.
NASIR: I don’t know. I just made that up. I don’t know if it sounds like I have something in my mouth or not, does it?
MATT: Uh…
NASIR: I have a cough drop in my mouth because I’m still coughing. I’ve been having a cough for like a few weeks but I was having these Halls soothers which are basically just like candy. Apparently, they don’t do anything to the cough. They just soothe your throat which I just thought they didn’t work and I was having them anyway. Apparently, I got the cough suppressant ones now and it’s actually working.
MATT: The point of it is, I guess, if you have been coughing.
NASIR: Yeah, something like that. But I was just picking the one that tasted the best so that was a mistake.
MATT: I was probably all those Red Bulls you had last week.
NASIR: Oh, I’m having trouble giving them away. I’m down to one actually, I think. That’s not bad. I’ve given away two.
MATT: I still have all four so my fridge is going to explode in a week, probably, when they sit in there.
NASIR: Next lawsuit.
MATT: See, this Hawaii thing – well, not Hawaii thing – this happened in Hawaii and I guess the end result was there was a motion for summary judgment granted and it’s specific to Hawaii obviously but we’ll talk about the general end of things for employers to look out for in this but let me get to the facts. This was at a Hertz Rent-a-Car and there was a customer that showed up. I’m not sure what the capacity was of their interaction with the business but basically what happened was this person left and one of the employees for Hertz I guess knew who this person was and went on their Facebook page and started writing stuff about them that – I’m not going to say what it was but it wasn’t – well, I’m not going to say what it was partially because I don’t know what some of this stuff means.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: And, partially, because it’s not appropriate for this podcast. Anyway, they wrote these comments on there which apparently the customer was not happy with. That customer went and then complained to Hertz Rent-a-Car. I guess they fired this employee and I think a couple of other employees as well. The customer then turned around and sued Hertz for negligent supervision, negligent retention, and negligent training because this employee apparently – or not apparently – this employee wrote these things on this customer’s Facebook page while they were an employee or while they were working for Hertz. We’ll get to the reasons why the result ended up being what it was but, long story short, there’s a motion for summary judgment that Hertz filed and it was granted meaning that the case was then dismissed and, I mean, in the easiest terms so we can put it for these purposes.
NASIR: He mentioned the actual post. I mean, I read this maybe at least two times now and I still don’t understand what exactly they were saying. Somehow there was some defamatory statements in there and what’s interesting, in order for a statement to be defamatory, it needs to be understood to somehow be damaging or defaming in itself, right? So, apparently, someone understood it to be defamatory. I would have read and I would be like, “I have no idea what’s going on,
Nasir and Matt discuss the new iPhone updatethat employees should pay attention to. They also talk about the pitfalls of employers issuing wearable technology to their employees.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast.
MATT: Let’s first talk about…
NASIR: I had another sip of this Red Bull.
MATT: Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk about. This is an update. We finally both got our class action Red Bulls.
NASIR: I mean, it’s literally like cough syrup. It’s possible there might be another class action settlement because it might be considered poison. I’ve been drinking this thing for the last – I don’t know – almost an hour I’ve been sipping it.
MATT: You don’t have to. It’s not required.
NASIR: That’s true. But I want it. I deserve it. I worked so hard for it.
MATT: Yeah, by going online and filling out your name and address.
NASIR: Which I did during the recording of the podcast, if I recall correctly.
MATT: So, yeah, I haven’t had any of mine yet but we at least got it.
NASIR: I would just throw it away.
MATT: I’ll probably have mine at some point but they might be in my fridge for a while.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: I can’t imagine they go bad.
NASIR: Yeah, like, they’re already bad. In fact, it may even actually get better.
MATT: It ages well. Well, we’ve got a lot of security issues to talk about today. We’ll relate all these to how it relates to employers but apparently there’s this new iOS update and I was trying to look at it on my phone. I wasn’t able to figure this out.
NASIR: This is 9.3 so I don’t know.
MATT: Yeah, I don’t know what I even have. I imagine I have the most recent one.
NASIR: You don’t even have an iPhone, Matt. In fact, you’re holding a brick right now. It’s not even a phone.
MATT: Yeah, but anyway, this 9.3 update, I guess in the past there’s ways to do some sort of mobile device management by employers with employees.
NASIR: I didn’t know about this but apparently Apple provides some kind of software. I don’t know if they provide it or they give access to some kind of software where you can monitor everything from GPS location to god knows what else, I don’t know.
MATT: Yeah, I wasn’t aware of that either – probably because I don’t have an employer that has issued me a phone to have that on there – but with this new update, employees will now be able to see and know about employers are tracking them. I guess once on the lock screen where it says “this phone is managed by your organization” and, of course, if you go in the settings too, you can see it that way. Obviously, the lock screen makes it a little bit more obvious but I guess this is going to be a situation where, like you and I and many employees probably didn’t know that their employers were monitoring what they do and it’s not going to change the fact that they’re being monitored but they’re just going to know about it now which they possibly didn’t know about in the past.
NASIR: And so, there’s different types of monitoring, right? I mean, there’s the cellphone and then there’s your computers – you know, that’s been going on for a while. I mean, maybe cellphones are a little bit new. Internet activity, key strokes can easily be tracked, cellphones, also GPS tracking on vehicles is pretty old as well – everything from truck drivers to delivery persons. And then, there’s also video and audio recording within the office. So, there are lots of different types of monitoring but each are a little bit different. But let’s put the law aside for a second – which we like to do 99 percent of the time – giving notification to the employee, specifically with the cellphone, is it morally good to do it? Is it required? Do you think the law should give notice to the employee? What do you think?
MATT: If I was an employee, I would expect that almost.
The guys live long and prosper by welcoming Star Trek expert Michael Liberto to discuss the Prelude of Axanar fan film and the copyright infringement claims alleged by CBS and Paramount.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. With us, we have our Star Trek expert, Matt Staub.
MATT: Oh, no. Well, we talked about Star Wars – it was in December, right? Or maybe January?
NASIR: The last thing you want to do is basically say Star Wars and Star Trek are the same thing but go ahead. Please, go ahead.
MATT: I know. I almost didn’t because I know it was going to be bad. But, yeah, I only brought it up because of this. We talked about Star Wars a month or two ago – or whenever the movie came out – and I knew some but Star Trek I know even less – actually, very little at all. So, I’m not the expert by any means. But, luckily, we found somebody who is a Star Trek expert and this is Michael Liberto. MICHAEL: Hey! How are you doing?
NASIR: Thanks for joining us! Just so everyone knows, he is our resident Star Trek episode for all our Star Trek episodes that we’ve had and will have going forward which I’m sure will be a ton. But thanks for joining us! MICHAEL: Yeah, thanks for having me.
NASIR: So, Matt, why do we have him on? What are we talking about here?
MATT: Michael is going to chime in on a lot of this but let me give the premise as I understand it. There was a group of fans that actually started a Kickstarter to raise some funds to produce this fan movie, essentially, about Star Trek called Axanar and I think, at this point, they’ve only produced kind of the prelude of it – not the full-length picture that they ultimately want to end up doing. You know, to be honest, I looked at it and it’s actually pretty good quality. It looked very professional in my opinion. They’ve put out this prelude to it. Now, CBS and – I can’t remember who else. MICHAEL: Paramount.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: We’ll fill in the blanks for you.
MATT: Basically, they’re saying, “Look, this is straight up copyright infringement. There’s a lot of issues with this. You can’t be doing this. Blah blah blah.” In order for us to kind of explain the legal side of things, we need to understand the factual side of things. That’s why we were hoping, Michael, that you’d be able to fill us in on some of these holes that we can’t really help with. My first question – and maybe this is a stupid question – what is Axanar? MICHAEL: Well, Axanar is a planet that’s part of the Federation. It’s nearby Vulcan and Andoria and a bunch of other Federation planets. But, more importantly, it would be kind of a Prelude to Axanar – you had mentioned that before – is this brilliant piece done. Seriously, the quality of this is exceptional. But it’s a pretty long story. Axanar is basically a planet where the Federation Admiral Ramizer is the gentleman making the Constitution class vessel which we know could be the original Enterprise.
NASIR: I’ve heard of that. MICHAEL: Yes, they’re kind of warship models because the Federation didn’t have any warships until four years’ war with the Klingons and Axanar where it is being produced. In the Prelude to Axanar, we can see in this documentary feature the Supreme Warlord sending their brand new D7 battle cruiser to Axanar to wipe out the Federation’s ability to fight this war. Prelude to Axanar is the beginning of this huge battle that’s going to decide the four years’ war.
NASIR: Everything you’re describing is completely new stuff, right? This isn’t something that Paramount or some of their Star Trek writers came up with. This is a spin-off, right? MICHAEL: It is a spin-off but there are a couple of caveats. First of all, Garth of Izar is mentioned in a couple of original series – well, actually, in one original series show – and he is the role model of Captain Kirk. Also, Ambassador Soval – who is played by an actor named Gary Graham – he...
Nasir and Matt talk about the Seattle startup SwanLuv, which quickly shifted its business model of giving couples free loans for weddings.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matthew Staub, we are continuing our week of talking about startups that have had some growing pains.
MATT: Yeah, this one seems to be all pain, actually.
NASIR: Yeah, from the beginning, right?
MATT: Well, I was trying to figure out when exactly they started all this. From what I can tell, there was a ton of stories in December – you know, a couple of months ago. I’m guessing it’s been about two months since they ramped up and started. But let me just explain what this company is. I had not actually even heard of this, surprisingly. This is the type of story that my wife would have come across and said, “Hey, have you heard about this? You should have this on the podcast.” It’s called Swanluv. I’ll tell you the original premise and what they are now. The original idea was they would give a loan up to $10,000 to a couple for their wedding expenses with no obligation to pay it back. All right, sounds too good to be true, right?
NASIR: Great idea!
MATT: But, yeah, terrible business model of just giving away up to $10,000 in request. But the catch was, if the couple didn’t stay together – i.e. if they got divorced – I assume it’s just divorce and not any sort of death or anything like that, I think it has to be divorce – if the couple end up getting divorced, they would have to pay the loan back, the principal back with interest. That’s the general idea of what they were doing. There’s a lot of problems with this, one of which was apparently they had this algorithm or formula or something like a questionnaire and the couples would enter this information and they would calculate the risk based on how they answered certain questions.
NASIR: You know that’s all made up, too.
MATT: Oh, yeah.
NASIR: As if they can actually predict that. What’s crazy too is that they planned on funding the loans from people breaking up.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: That means that, in theory, they’d have to front a lot of money until these things actually started coming in. Forget about the whole collection issues and the issues that people would try to get out of this by not divorcing but just separating and how are they going to keep track that people are staying married? I mean, I can go on and on but, I mean, can we at least agree that it’s not a good idea as far as a startup business? Like, if someone came to you, like, “Hey, here’s my 60-second pitch, this is what I like to do. Could you not laugh at the idea?” That’s the question.
MATT: Was the idea to just constantly search for recently filed divorces? How are they going to keep track of it? Even if they found out that a couple got divorced, how are they going to collect on it?
NASIR: And we’re talking about years later, right?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I suppose people are going to remember that, if they get divorced, they’re going to have to pay $10,000. But, when people divorce, from a financial perspective, it’s a mess, right? Most of the time, both parties lose money – or at least one party. I should say, a collective community property, there’s a lot of money lost. There’s money lost on attorneys, a lot of credit cards get left unpaid, credit goes down. In other words, there’ll be other debts. Let alone, of course, people that are borrowing this money – so-called borrowing – may not have been in a very good financial condition anyway. Also, a lot of divorces are caused by financial stress.
MATT: Ah, that’s the point I had.
NASIR: Oh, okay, you did? Okay.
MATT: You brought up a good point before that and, obviously, the people that were going to do this needed the money so they might not be in the best financial position. But the thing I was going to say was I thought that – t...
The guys break down the rapid growth of HR Software company Zenefits and why it is now facing aninvestigation from the California Department of Insurance. (Photo: Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic)
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: This week, we are covering – what did I call it? Rapid-rise startups or rapid-growth startups? And the problems that they face with that.
MATT: Yeah. Well, the one today is I guess they both technically fall into that category but I think the one today is a much greater version of that. Wednesday’s episode, I don’t think it was over that long of a period and I don’t know how much growth they’ve had in terms of financial…
NASIR: Yeah, that’s true.
MATT: Today, we’re talking about Zenefits which had some pretty substantial growth.
NASIR: Yeah, three-year-old company, I think last year – 2015 – they had a $4 billion – with a B as in “boy” – valuation.
MATT: Yeah, reached $1 million at the end of 2013. They have a subscription-based software with health insurance but $1 million by the end of 2013 – not bad in year one. This is revenue. $20 million late 2015 and then $100 million projected late 2015. Like you said, $4 billion valuation based on half a billion dollars they raised somewhat recently. That’s pretty rapid growth, I’d say, for many sort of characterization.
NASIR: Yeah, I would say so.
MATT: The way I see it is basically they’re health insurance brokers that basically help out companies and I think they started off fairly small and then, at some point, in terms of the companies they were assisting, they started ramping up to these bigger companies. Obviously, bigger companies, more employees, more opportunity so you can charge more because it was subscription-based. But, more or less, they kind of broker or intermediary in helping these companies figure out the convoluted and complex issue of health benefits for their employees.
NASIR: Yeah, pretty much. They’re basically insurance brokers and I think that’s the best way to characterize them but the novelty of what they do is they provide a software that helps small businesses manage these kind of benefits and so-called Zenefits. It is difficult for small businesses to kind of wrap it around and they make it easy, especially with the paper work and things like that – everything from onboarding an employee to terminating them and how that works. Even most, frankly, employment attorneys don’t necessarily know that stuff because it’s a lot of logistical issues and forms and filings and things like that and so they make it easy for you. But the catch is the software is free and so, of course, how they make their money is through the actual brokering of the insurance policies.
MATT: Yeah, and I shouldn’t have said specifically health insurance. That’s kind of what got them into trouble. It’s more of a greater HR – they call themselves an HR platform – payroll benefits, time-keeping, other compliance issues, things like that. They are much more than just basically a broker for insurance but that’s really what got them into trouble. Let’s see. When did this happen? Their CEO just stepped down.
NASIR: It was like February 8 so about ten days ago or so, yeah – around that time.
MATT: Once you look in a little bit deeper into this, you can see some other issues. But, I think, kind of the big thing here – at least the thing that really drove him to stepping away as CEO – is there was an investigation. Where are they based out of?
NASIR: I wanted to say Seattle – no, California-based.
MATT: I was going to say Seattle, too. Then, I remembered that was the other company we’re talking about. Well, they operate in California and Washington State. But, basically, there was an inquiry or an investigation in California.
NASIR: San Francisco.
MATT: That they’d created macros that allowed the employees of Zenefi...
Nasir and Matt welcome Leiza Dolghih to discuss a former vice president of Life Time Fitness that used company resources toopen a competing gym. Check out Leiza Dolghih's blog here at www.northtexaslegalnews.com.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matthew Staub, and today we are covering non-competes again for the second time this week. Well, the first time wasn’t really non-compete related but it was tangentially related.
MATT: Yeah, Monday’s episode, I guess it fell under the non-compete umbrella. We have a guest today – first time having a guess in a while – Leiza Dolghih. She is a litigation attorney out of Dallas, specializing in a few areas here – one which being unfair competition, trade secrets, and non-competes. The reason we’re having her on today is she specializes in this area and we’re talking about a non-compete agreement that was actually held to be enforceable here in Texas and I think it’s going to be a real help to have her on the episode today and discuss.
NASIR: It’s one thing for us to talk about transactional work of actually drafting these non-competes but litigating is a whole different issue. So, she’s actually an employment litigation attorney. Leiza, welcome to our podcast! LEIZA: Thank you, guys! Thank you for inviting me.
NASIR: I know this is a hard question to start out with, and we’re going to get to our topic, specifically what’s going on, but you’re in Texas, our firm’s based out of California. Non-competes in California are just you just don’t see them and, when you do see them, you know there’s going to be a problem because the court’s not going to enforce it. What is going on in Texas? Why do they tolerate these non-competes? LEIZA: Well, you know, as we say, it’s not that they tolerate. Actually, for most non-competes, we have a non-compete statute that says that non-compete agreements are allowed as long as they’re reasonable and there are a few other requirements that you have to meet. I feel fairly recently the way that courts interpreted the statutes is they made it very hard for employers to enforce their agreements. Well, that changed about five years ago. The courts came out with a new interpretation and it’s slowly catching on. The employers are now realizing that they can actually use the agreement to tie up their employees. A lot of employees are still under the impression that these agreements are not enforceable so they sign them, you know, without giving it a second thought. Of course, when they part ways, it becomes a big issue. So, I’m seeing disagreements constantly. I’m seeing them across all industries and I’m seeing all kinds of language ranging from something very ridiculous – you know, five years you can’t work anywhere in the country – to very specific limitations and everything in-between. So, Texas, I mean, they have a very good – or we have a very good – body of law on this issue.
NASIR: Yeah, but you’re right about those year terms. I mean, you get a wide range of what people do and we’ll talk about what we find reasonable and how to actually determine that which I have a feeling we’re not going to get a straight answer from you on that but let’s talk about what’s going on. Actually, it’s a Houston case, right? What’s going on with this? What is it? Global Gym? LEIZA: Right. Well, it actually involves Life Time Fitness. Are you guys aware of that chain?
NASIR: No, I’m just trying to think, I just joined Equinox but I talked about that in another episode. I’ve never heard of that. LEIZA: It’s a higher-end gym that also has a spa built in. In this case, it’s in Houston. A vice-president and his wife were working for a Life Time Fitness location that was very profitable and the VP was interested in opening his own competing spa which is, you know, it’s okay, it’s allowed. You can do that as long as he doesn’t violate his...
Nasir and Matt discuss a rare win for California employers and when they can seek expense reimbursement for voluntary employee training.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Episode 253. This is a monumental episode. I think it’s the highest episode number we’ve ever done.
MATT: I don’t know. It could be.
NASIR: I think so.
MATT: You’re just saying that because I’m recording this from a plane, right? Physically, the highest I’ve ever been up off the ground.
NASIR: Altitude-wise, it’s the highest.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Correct, exactly.
MATT: Definitely 253 is the highest number-wise because we record going up. But, yeah, I think altitude-wise, this has to be the highest. But we’ve actually evened it out because I think you said you were in Death Valley recording this so I don’t know. Who knows?
NASIR: So, two milestones, definitely put it in the books. But, today, what are we talking about today, Matt? Give us a little taste of the topic here.
MATT: People may not have listened to this before or might not be in California or experienced any sort of business or competition in California. The general idea is any sort of restraint against competition – I’ll use the word “competition” generally not enforceable and we’ve talked about different ways where, you know, it can be considered that and with trade secrets, you know, things like that.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: We had a decision – and this was end of January here – that kind of changed this a little bit. Let me just get into kind of the facts behind this. I’m just going to abbreviate. UPI is how they abbreviate it but USS-POSCO Industries, they faced a vacancy in this certain type of skilled worker that they need – if someone really is interested, maintenance, technical, electrical MTE workers. Here’s what they did; they needed to find these people. It’s a highly skilled area so they needed to train these people which, generally speaking, if you have employees and you’re going to train them, you have to compensate them for that. This program they created, 135 weeks of instruction, 90 weeks of job training, and 45 weeks of classroom work – pretty substantial. Cost was also pretty substantial; $46,000 per employee that they estimated this program cost.
NASIR: Geez.
MATT: It’s pretty significant. I mean, I think that’s higher than the median family income in San Diego last year which is crazy. During this time, the employees still got paid their regular wages. This was kind of in addition to train them, I assume, for this higher level or more technical side of it. If they completed the program, they would be assigned to this MTE vacancy and that was that. But the thing to keep in mind here is participation in this was voluntary because they still had their normal position, but this would be a higher skilled position where I assume they would get much higher pay than they did before. I don’t know the exact numbers but I think that’s safe to say.
NASIR: Do you know if the training was while they were working or was it outside? The reason I’m asking is because you mentioned, generally, if you’re training an employee, you have to pay them – unless, like, there’s a four-factor test, right? If it’s voluntarily, if it’s outside of regular work hours, and not directly related to the employee’s job, and that the employee doesn’t perform any productive work during that. It’s a little ambiguous about that but it seems like these guys did it during their employment and they were paid their regular wage. And so, really, the main factor we’re talking about here is that it’s voluntary. It may not have been enough to not pay them for that training time but we’re talking about something a little bit different here.
MATT: No, and that’s a good point. That’s why one of the important things to see here is that it was, in fact,
Nasir and Matt talk about Yahoo's quarterly performance review system andwhy it was flawed from day one.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha, and…
MATT: I wasn’t quick enough there. My name is Matt Staub. You gave me a fraction of a second to say something and I hesitated.
NASIR: Well, I give you a one out of five then in your performance review.
MATT: Ah, well, very pertinent to what we’re talking about today.
NASIR: Yeah, that’ what I do.
MATT: That could end up being all right based on this stacked ranking system. I believe it’s kind of a bell curve on how all of this works but was it the QPR Quarterly Progress Report?
NASIR: Yeah, this makes my eyes roll. It’s some kind of corporate program that it needs an acronym to it.
MATT: Well, yeah, this isn’t the first time this has been implemented and I think some other big companies have run into similar issues before but one thing that Marissa Mayer did when she came into Yahoo was install these quarterly performance reviews. What did I say, “quarterly progress report”? I was one-third of the way correct.
NASIR: You got the quarterly correct.
MATT: Well, I got the QPR. I just hadn’t opened up the article yet to remember what it was. So, they have this rating system to rank the employees and there’s a couple of issues that are going on here. One, well, the person that ultimately brought the lawsuit is claiming a couple of things but one of which is that this stacked ranking system is just unfair in general. Two, I think this probably would be the bigger one, the scores or this rating system was manipulated and there’s a few issues with that but it was manipulated to then I guess give some sort of legitimate grounds for terminating people and the number of people that were terminated is also another problem involved in all this but it all kind of comes back to this rating system. I mean, I don’t know how much you want to talk about that and the actual rating system itself on how fair it is.
NASIR: Well, yeah, let’s talk… The rating system is like, it’s so silly. Honestly, it really represents Yahoo as a company because I don’t think it’s ironic – or I don’t think it’s a coincidence, I should say – that around the time that the stack ranking – like, which Matt said, it’s literally a one to five rating, bell curve – that means only so many people can get fives, only so many people can get fours, et cetera, and one, and most everyone’s going to get threes. And so, this system was pretty much abolished by Microsoft and GE. As they were ditching it, Yahoo was starting it. It’s very reminiscent to Yahoo as a company. I mean, they always seem to be kind of late in the game. Frankly, if you’re kind of late to the game compared to Microsoft and GE, I mean, that’s telling you something.
MATT: Yeah, and it just reminds me and I know there are some schools that this is the way they do all their classes. I took a class in college – some accounting course, I can’t remember which one – it was the same sort of concept. It was like, well, you’re going to take the exams and the top ten percent are going to get an A – or maybe it was the top twenty percent – the next thirty are going to get a B, the next thirty are going to get a C, ten percent D, and ten percent fail. So, ten percent automatically failed every single exam. To be fair, I thought that was ridiculous until the exams all ended up being tough so definitely more than ten percent of people failed every exam so it kind of worked itself out in that aspect.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But, in terms of people’s jobs, I mean, I don’t know what percent applies here but let’s say everyone that worked for Yahoo was a good to great employee – which probably wasn’t the case, it definitely wasn’t the case but let’s say it was – you have to throw people into this bottom. I mean, there’s a top, there’s a middle, and there’s a bottom.
The guys take the court to discuss the recent lawsuit against a video game company claiming copyright infringement over tattoos on NBA players' bodies.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And I have zero tattoos. How many tattoos do you have?
MATT: 32.
NASIR: 32. Actually, you know, I just read, by the way – I don’t know what made me think of this but – someone ranked the best football cities and I think San Diego is ranked, like, 34 or 32 or something like that. I don’t know how it goes, but there’s only like, 30-something teams in the country, right?
MATT: Yeah. Well, there’s 32 teams so I hope they weren’t 34th.
NASIR: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was 32.
MATT: Well, so there’s a couple of things – well, it wouldn’t matter because they’re either going to count Saint Louis or they’re going to count Los Angeles. But New York has two teams.
NASIR: Does that count as two cities? No, they did best or worse cities.
MATT: They played different spots.
NASIR: Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Well, let’s not analyze it too much. The point is that you have the same number of tattoos as the rank of San Diego in their fan base.
MATT: Well, you figured it out. I have all 32 NFL logos tattooed.
NASIR: Okay, perfect. Well, actually, I mean, that may be a copyright violation. Did you think about that before you put it on?
MATT: Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because it’s something I did want to bring up. It’s kind of a second layer. If this episode was an onion, this would be the second layer of what I was going to discuss here.
NASIR: What if it was an orange? Same thing – second layer?
MATT: Maybe. It could just be the peel or the rind – whatever that is.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: Yeah, but the actual juice of this episode is the deal with the tattoos. It’s something I never thought about before. You know, when I go out and get my 32 tattoos, you know, obviously, it’s on my body, but who owns the tattoo of the artwork that’s done on the individual? I never really thought about it at all until I saw this lawsuit this past week with the NBA. Well, I don’t think it’s even with the NBA. I don’t think there’s any players involved either. I think the actual lawsuit is…
NASIR: With the videogame maker, right?
MATT: Yeah, the creators of NBA 2K are getting sued by this company that did the tattoos.
NASIR: They bought the license or the copyright ownership from all these tattoo artists, actually.
MATT: Okay. Is that who it is?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Are they the company that employed or the house artist that did it?
NASIR: No, I think what they did was they wanted to license out these tattoo images – who knows why? Maybe other people wanted to get these same images as a fan. And so, I think it was Solid Oak Sketches. They purchased. They went to these different tattoo artists and actually bought the rights to that particular art piece – that copyright image.
MATT: I saw that there were these licensing agreements from the artists and this company that ultimately sued but the point is this company sued NBA 2K – whoever has the ownership in that – for copyright infringement because what this game is doing is it has all these NBA players and, you know, it’s 2016 so it gets better. The graphics get better every year.
NASIR: By the way, that’s debatable. If anyone plays sports games, it’s like, “Yeah, you can see one more freckle than you did before.” Well, this is my area, right? At least we’re getting into videogames and you can talk the sports stuff. But, from the videogame perspective, it’s kind of frustrating because, you know, especially with Madden, it’s like every year they come up with something new and try to make the graphics a little bit better but, really, you know, we’re still pretty far from where we need to be, I think. I mean, really, we want just realistic, you know,
Nasir and Matt celebrate episode 250 by discussing the Department of Labor opinion about joint employment and how to distinguish between horizontal and vertical joint employment.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Regally – uh, regally? Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. I’m your king, Nasir Pasha, and this is where we talk about… I don’t know, I’m so off now. This is the podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: I’m Matt Staub and I thought I was on mute for a second – all sorts of off.
NASIR: We’re so off. Horrible beginning but we’re going to keep recording.
MATT: We’ll be fine.
NASIR: I think that’s actually the first mistake we’ve ever had in this podcast now that I think about it.
MATT: It’s not bad. This is the 250th episode so one mistake every 250, I’ll take that. It’s a pretty good success rate.
NASIR: Did we forget to do something special for 250?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Of course.
MATT: I just had lunch with a couple of people and they asked about the podcast. They actually asked – I’m not making this up.
NASIR: Okay, yeah.
MATT: I said, “Well, yeah, we’re actually recording 250 later today.” It seemed pretty impressive when I said that to them.
NASIR: Not as impressive now that we’re actually in it.
MATT: 300 will be pretty big because that’s your favorite movie.
NASIR: Mostly the second one, though. What is it – 301? I don’t know.
MATT: Is that a parody?
NASIR: No, there was a sequel to it. It’s horrible. Not that the first one’s that great, too. I mean, I think the first one, you know, didn’t have much of substance to it but it was kind of eye candy, you know?
MATT: Well, when we talk about employment law, we usually talk about the same few things. It’s obviously employees and independent contractors.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Wrongful termination, discrimination, things like that. What we’re going to talk about today, I think is going to become a pretty big issue in the employment front and I don’t think it gets talked about too often and maybe that’s the reason that we – just this past week or two weeks ago – the Department of Labor came out with this. It’s not new law; it’s really just an explanation or it goes into more detail about the topic of joint employment which I don’t think many businesses are even aware of this – outside of the ones that probably fit the idea.
NASIR: Even if they’re not aware of it, I think more and more businesses are entering this world and where these types of relationships kind of occur is where you have one person, an employee, that has so-called loyalties or obligations or are being controlled by two different entities. Where that line is drawn and what kind of liability that’s exposed is what really the Department of Labor has kind of shared their opinion on.
MATT: I think that’s a good way to describe it or to sum it up very briefly is when more than one business is involved in the work being performed by somebody and they might possibly have two separate employers and that’s when the whole joint employment analysis comes into play. This isn’t a situation where, you know, I have my normal 9 to 5 job during the day and then I go moonlight at night working wherever.
NASIR: Burger King?
MATT: I was trying to pick somewhere that’s open… I guess it’s open late? I don’t know. I don’t know the last time I’ve been to Burger King.
NASIR: Wait, you do work at Burger King, don’t you?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I thought that’s what you do in the evenings. I always call you and I always hear people talking in the background, ordering French fries. But, yeah, that’s completely different because, obviously, the owner of Burger King – or I should say Burger King and the other employer – really have no relation to each other so we’re talking about real true joint employment. And so, the Department of Labor has – and we’ll talk about the significance of this in a second but let’s just figure out, okay,
Nasir and Matt discussthe different waysthat Netflix and 24 Hour Fitness handled backing out of grandfather pricing to customers.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Today, we’re covering a very interesting topic, but you’re going to have wait to see what it is.
MATT: I can see that you think subscription-based or monthly pricing or whatever you want to call it is an interesting topic.
NASIR: Well, honestly, I didn’t name the topic because I wasn’t sure exactly how to summarize the topic. I just know we get to talk about Netflix and 24 Hour Fitness.
MATT: We’ll get into the Netflix part of it first. I guess, for people that pay or for people that have been signed up, 2014 or before that, they were paying $7.99 a month which I believe is what I pay. I’m not positive but I think that’s when I signed up. I don’t know. I don’t even know when I signed up.
NASIR: I know I used to pay $7.99 a month but I kept giving away my username and password to family and friends that I ended up using Netflix one of these days and it said that there was too many users on or something like that so I upgraded from there to where you can pay more to have access to more screens or whatever. But I’m pretty sure I was paying $7.99. I don’t know what I’m paying now. It’s probably like a billion dollars per month.
MATT: Probably not that much because I think it’s only going up to, well, the most someone was paying was $9.99 a month.
NASIR: Oh, good. I can afford that.
MATT: Yeah, that’s what the more recent people are paying. Now that I think about it, I want to say… I don’t know if it was Netflix or maybe it was somewhere else that put up a promotion somewhat recently of “sign up now and you can get this lower rate” and I’ll get to why that’s relevant but what Netflix has now come out and said is, “Anyone that’s paying $7.99 a month, it’s going to get bumped up to $9.99 a month. You know, the silver lining is we’re going to still give you two full years of that $7.99.” I guess I shouldn’t say that fully. You can stay on the $7.99 a month plan but you’re only getting standard definition. For anyone that wants to watch in HD which has got to most people, it’s going to go up to $9.99.
NASIR: So, it’s effectively a downgrade though because, with $7.99, you had access to HD, right?
MATT: Right.
NASIR: It is a downgrade.
MATT: It is definitely a downgrade. You could technically still stay on $7.99 a month, though. You just get a lesser version of what you had.
NASIR: Got it.
MATT: But they’re giving you two years before they do that so they’re giving you a little bit of notice here and it is a month to month arrangement so I guess you could still jump on the $7.99 a month for two years and then back out if you’re really upset about the $2.00 per month increase which is what, $24.00 a year?
NASIR: Approximately.
MATT: But it’s the principle of the thing and I think that’s why a lot of people are complaining about it now as, “Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a $7.99-a-month arrangement. You’re supposed to be grandfathered into this price. Why do I have to pay more for this now?” and we’re going to get into 24 Hour Fitness which might be one of the bigger culprits of this scheme but, to me, they’re giving you the two years of kind of a buffer to figure out if you want to stay on or not. I mean, that’s about as fair as you’re going to get.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s reasonable, and it’s a couple of dollars, like you said, approximately $24.00 more per year if you’re doing your math correctly. I can’t verify that but, yeah, I mean, it’s reasonable and, frankly, I’m pretty sure, without looking at the contract, I mean, Netflix is month to month and we can cancel at any time and, therefore, so can they and they can increase the price at any time. And so,
Nasir and Matt throw the pigskin around in discussing the Minnesota Vikings' allegations that Wells Fargo is photobombing their new U.S. Bank Stadium. Nasir also gives the Chargers a proper eulogy.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to another football episode even though the season’s ending.
MATT: Well, I mean, actually, it’s not really ending. I mean, we’re kind of going right into the most exciting part of the year. I guess, for you, it’s ending because (1) your local team just got crushed last weekend – I guess, by the time this comes out, the previous weekend – lost 30-0 at home. And then, your favorite team is no longer going to exist anymore. So, I guess, for you, it really is ending.
NASIR: It’s true. It’s been a bad year for myself and football. I’ve pretty much given up on the Chargers. Of course, my wife’s upset at me about it because it feels like I don’t have any loyalty but, hey, the Chargers have given no loyalty to me and they’re moving to Los Angeles now – or at least that’s what they’re trying to do. I think, as of today, there might be a chance that there might be one more year here until they make a deal with St. Louis which would be a very awkward year, by the way.
MATT: I don’t get how they’re expecting that to go over. I mean, from my perspective, the people I’ve spoken to that are big Chargers fans in San Diego have kind of already said their goodbyes and they’ve given into the fact that the Chargers are going to be gone. So, now, it’s possible they might come back for this weird in-between year before they go to LA. I just can’t see people signing up for that – the season ticketholders. I don’t know. The real die-hards might a lot of people are just going to back out of that.
NASIR: I think the ones that are not going to root for the Los Angeles Chargers – or whatever they’re going to be named – are probably not going to be too kind to them this next year if they stay in San Diego. But there is going to be a portion of fans – and, apparently, including my wife – that are going to follow the Chargers to Los Angeles and good luck to them.
MATT: What it’s going to be is next year it’s the same thing. It’s going to be in LA and it’s basically going to be a gigantic game for all the away fans because both San Diego and LA are cities with a lot of people not from there. So, whatever team is playing there, they’re going to load the stadium with their fans and that’s what it’s going to be.
NASIR: And then, ten years from now, they’ll probably come back from Los Angeles after failing there.
MATT: Well, I think the interest is still there in San Diego if they would have been able to build a new stadium but too late, I guess.
NASIR: Yeah, too late.
MATT: So, let’s talk about another stadium that actually is getting built – I believe it’s going to be ready for next season – that’s in Minnesota. Was it US Bank?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Stadium? US Bank Arena? It’s probably US Bank Stadium, I’m guessing that’s what it’s called.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: That’s important because they’re going to have this nice, big, new, fancy stadium with the US Bank branded on top of it. It’s going to look really nice in the aerial.
NASIR: It’s a rooftop, of course.
MATT: Yeah, it’s going to look really nice in the aerial photos. One thing that’s happening – and I think these other towers are getting built or maybe they were getting built at the time when US Bank Stadium got approved – is Wells Fargo is also building or has these high-rises I think that are seven-stories high – something to that effect. And so, let me back up a little bit. The Vikings are building the stadium and basically went around to the neighboring businesses – Iguess entered into agreements with them in terms of signage, things like that – whilst one of the nearby buildings is Wells...
Nasir explains his experience at a local sandwich shop, Relish Fine Foods, and the guys speculate as to how the cafe is restricted from allowing customers to eat on the premises.
Check out the Relish website here:www.relishhouston.com
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we coiver business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, this episode – I feel like I was about to go in a more formal introduction like, “In this episode, we’re going to talk about…” but when do we ever do that?
MATT: Not often.
NASIR: Not often.
MATT: Or maybe ever I guess. I don’t know if we have.
NASIR: Yeah, just look at the title and people know what we’re talking about, whatever the title may be.
MATT: This isn’t a TV show where you do a preview.
NASIR: Yeah, an introduction or a preview and then they show clips of the podcast.
MATT: Yes, some podcasts do have… ours aren’t long enough so it wouldn’t really make sense but some of them will have a line or two from the episode at the beginning.
NASIR: Yeah, I remember Zero did that, I think, did they? I’m trying to remember. Or maybe they did it for the past episode. We should have an update from the last episode even though one episode has nothing to do with the other.
MATT: We recorded two back-to-back. I don’t know how much of an update we could do from one to the other.
NASIR: Well, we can give an update of what’s happened with that fundraiser on GoFundMe for the last story. They’ve raised $5.00 more.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Anyway, I guess I should start out with this, right?
MATT: Yeah, this is all you. I can sit back on this one.
NASIR: Okay. Well, don’t sit back too much because you’re the one who usually does the intro. Anyway, there’s a restaurant – by the way, using the word “restaurant,” I use it very loosely – there’s a place where you buy food, okay? It’s around the corner from the office and it’s called Relish, I think. it’s been there for as long as I’ve been living here – which hasn’t been long – a few years, at least. It’s this food establishment. It’s kind of like a deli but not really. A lot of fresh ingredients and food and, also, it’s a little pricey. It’s in a nice neighborhood or whatever. I go there the other day and they have this flyer on one of the walls near the cash register and, of course, I don’t read this until they ask me, you know, I order my sandwich and they me, “To go or for here?” and I say, “To go.” I read this flyer and it says, “To our valued customers, we are sorry to inform you that food may not be consumed on these premises.” Of course, I’m thinking, “Okay, I guess I can’t eat here, but then why did they ask me whether I should eat here or not?” And then, they say, “This is due to a provision in our lease that our landlord and other food tenants on the property have decided to strictly enforce. We will be open for takeaway until further notice,” and then, in the next paragraph, it says, “We are actively seeking a different location close-by where this will not be the case. We look forward to continuing to serve you and hope to find a new location very soon. Thank you for understanding. – Relish Team.” Of course, then I look to my right and left and I see there were some tables there. There was never that much seating in the first place and there was a couple of tables there with chairs – like, high chairs, but those high chairs are gone – but then they have stools like at Starbucks or whatever, they have a bar on the window and they have a bunch of stools and I see a couple of people sitting there, eating, with their bags. So, of course, I’m confused. I overhear somebody, he’s like, “Oh, can we eat here?” “Yeah, we just have to pack it to go.” I was like, “Okay, that’s weird.” Then, I was like, “Oh, so you guys are moving?” They’re like, “Yeah, we’ve moving,” and they told me they were moving down… it’s actually not that close-by but relatively close-by.
Nasir and Matt kick off 2016 by discussing how one Indianapolis bar responded to a negative post on its Facebook page.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, please, forgive Matt because he just informed me that he’s rearranging his room. I’m not sure what that has to do with the podcast but, for some reason, it was important to tell me about it so I thought I’d share that with you as well.
MATT: Well, just in case, I thought you’d have more excitement for, well, none of the episodes ran in 2016 yet, I don’t think.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, we’re back! 2016. I think every year we talk about, you know, when it’s not okay to say “Happy New Year” but, I think, yeah, at least for right now, being the first week of January, this coming out the second week, I think we can say this is the happy new year episode.
MATT: We’re recording on the seventh so, I think, anything under a week, you’re fine.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I think you’re safe. And so, good thing, we’re talking about the New Year because we have a New Year’s based story to discuss for today.
NASIR: Exactly.
MATT: We’ve been off a couple of weeks now, I think. there’s been a lot of really good legal-related things that have happened – none of which have been right up our alley – but this one’s pretty interesting and it comes from, I guess, my home city in a way – Indianapolis – and a place I’ve actually been to so I’m somewhat familiar with it. Let me tell you what happened. There’s this restaurant bar in Indianapolis called Kilroys and I don’t know what the situation was for New Year’s. I’m guessing they just had a bunch of people there. It’s a pretty popular bar and restaurant as is so I’m imagining it was pretty packed. I guess what happened was, an older woman – it’s up for debate how old she was, reading through the story and some other ones…
NASIR: Like, they can’t find her birth certificate?
MATT: Well… So, the first couple of things I’ve seen – at least in the response from the owner or the manager – was she was over 70 years old, but then I saw somewhere else she was only 57 but we’ll say over 50.
NASIR: Oh, okay.
MATT: So, it was a woman over 50, apparently she had a heart attack. They had to bring in people to come in and work on her in the middle of this big thing, terrible thing.
NASIR: Wow. Way to kill the New Year’s, huh?
MATT: Yeah. So, this girl that was at the bar was not happy with the situation – and I’m trying to see what time she wrote this because I bet it’s, yeah – she wrote it at 1:51 a.m. New Year’s Day so a couple of hours after and most likely with a couple of drinks in her probably, I would have to guess. She wrote this scathing review, just incredibly upset about what happened. I’m not going to read the whole review but basically…
NASIR: Read some of it at least, yeah.
MATT: Yeah, I’m going to pick and choose.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: She says she’s never going to come back, after the way her and her friends spent over $700 to have their meal ruined by watching a dead person being wheeled out from an overdose. “My night’s been ruined.” Blah blah blah. I mean, that’s basically the gist of it, I think. Basically, she’s saying, “My night was ruined because somebody overdosed in the bar and had to be taken out and they died and it was a terrible event.” I don’t know why she would assume somebody overdosed at a bar but I guess that’s for her to make any effort to see who it was or whatever. So, she complains, writes this message on Facebook – this is on their Facebook page, you know, less than two hours into the New Year – and, at the time this was screenshotted, there was only a few reviews – sorry, a few comments. I’d imagine there was a lot more than that.
NASIR: Actually, it was taken down.
MATT: Yeah, and now I’m trying to find the one. The point is, the manager ended up writing a response to this.
The guys welcome Edreace Purmul to discuss Quentin Tarantino's problem with Hollywood's Cinerama Domeallegedly backing out of its agreement to show his movie in lieu of Star Wars.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/_pd6yO-jBRo[/youtube]
Edreace Purmul graduated from San Diego State University’s Film and Business school in 2006. His first debut into the cinema limelight incidentally was also his first film attempt post-graduation. His micro-budget feature film MOZLYM received immediate international acclaim and interest for its controversial and socially conscious appeal. MOZLYM received a Nomination for Best Picture in 2008 at the Cairo International Film Festival and won the Audience Favorite award at Riverside International Film Festival. It also was selected for official competition at International Film Festival Thailand, South Africa Film Festival, and British Film Festival of Los Angeles, where Purmul received multiple nominations for Best First Time Director.
Check out Edreace'slatest film here!
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and this time we’re joined with a Star Wars expert, Matt Staub, right?
MATT: You know, you’ve said many different things for me. This was probably the one that’s farthest from the truth.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I’m trying to think of some of the other ones you’ve said for me in the past like make-up expert. I think mine might be closer to that than Star Wars expert, unfortunately. So, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to offer on this but we’ll see what happens.
NASIR: No. In fact, I’m pretty sure we talked last week about covering this episode and you’ve only seen the old ones which is forgivable because the new ones aren’t as good and we can kind of get into that discussion but it seems like you weren’t too familiar with it so I went ahead and got my own expert – since I knew you’d be lacking – my good friend, Edreace Purmul. He’s an independent filmmaker in San Diego. Edreace, are you there? EDREACE: Yes, I am!
NASIR: Nice. Welcome to the podcast. EDREACE: Thank you guys for having me.
NASIR: No problem. So, Edreace, Star Wars… This new film, is it going to be good, bad, or to be determined? EDREACE: Star Wars is kind of one of those unique – I guess you could say – sagas or series that the properties that it carries in terms of fan base and how it’s made and who’s behind it is very different than something that’s a little bit more consecutive because it’s spread out over the span of, you know, we’re talking 1976, it had its own fan base. George Lucas had his own – you know, he has his take on what he wanted to do with it and, really, the first Star Wars was not really called Episode IV. That’s not how it started. He actually just created the idea and didn’t really think about if this thing became a sequel. And so, after it kind of struck gold, then he started to kind of look at it and say, “Okay, let’s map it out.” But then, thirty years later, there’s a reboot and there’s another trilogy that’s part of the same clause, I guess, but you have completely different takes on it and you have a lot of jaded Star Wars fans who are like, “This is not the Star Wars I remember.” It got to a point where, you know, one of the reasons why Lucas even claims he left and basically sold it to Disney was he kind of lost control over what he thought was his own creative vision because the world had kind of owned it at this point and they were telling him, “You should have done this and you should have done that.” I think him kind of surrendering the reins to J.J. Abrams and Disney, it’s probably just going to feel different, in my opinion. I know J.J. Abrams, one of his goals was to try to really make it feel like the Star Wars that inspired him when he was young. I think he saw Star Wars when he was like eleven or something. And so, there’s a little bit of hope I guess for some of the older Star Wars fans ...
Nasir and Matt discuss new laws that will go into effect for 2016 and how employers should adjust their practices accordingly.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha. Welcoming my co-host who happens to be an expert on time travel of what’s going to happen in the future.
MATT: Yeah, Matt Staub. I guess it kind of makes sense.
NASIR: Kinda?
MATT: Well, I’m looking forward to this episode because you were just going to tell me all the new laws for 2016 and I was going to comment on them I believe was the plan.
NASIR: Let me just open this big book of new law. I mean, we’re focusing on some of the labor laws for California only. Granted, California is crazy but, if you have employees in multiple states but just if you have one employee in California, then there’s a lot of new issues you have to deal with.
MATT: Actually, that’s a question a lot of clients ask. “Are there any new labor laws that I need to be aware of for the new year?” Just a common time that new things get implemented.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Obviously, there’s a whole slew of laws that get passed and are new every year but the labor laws in particular are the ones that we usually talk about and we’re going to talk about a little bit of that and then there’s some other laws – ah, I guess it relates to labor, too.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Which actually is way more interesting than some of these California ones and compared to previous, you know, at least the last couple of years, because I think we’ve done this, for the couple of years we’ve done the podcast I think this’ll be the third end of the year we’ve been doing this and I think this is the third end-of-the-year we’ve done new laws for the next year.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I’d say, at least from the California side on the labor law, this is definitely the tamest.
NASIR: That’s true, but there’s a lot of little things and, if someone asks what laws they need to know, there’s not a lot of laws that are passing that are really crucial to an employer but there are a lot of little things that have been passed that kind of adds a headache for us, I suppose.
MATT: Yeah, this isn’t like last year or I guess the beginning of 2015 when the paid sick leave was obviously really big in California.
NASIR: And I think minimum wage was around that time, too.
MATT: Yeah. So, there’s a couple of big things. I mean, to me, from the employer’s side, the biggest law to me is one we’ve already discussed previously this year – at least we touched on it from what I remember. I don’t know if there’s a bill – Bill 258, I don’t think that’s very helpful, whatever this is called.
NASIR: That’s how I reference it.
MATT: There’s a lot to it. One of the things is this equality in pay regardless of gender and we touched on this before and, thinking about it a little bit since then, the way it’s kind of laid out is employers are I think still are going to be able to get by on this – at least when I say “this,” I mean paying men and women different amounts despite the fact that they can’t. At least initially, just reading through some of these criteria, the idea is men and women, if they’re performing substantially similar work have to get paid the say. You know, they can’t have a difference in pay. But employers can base things on seniority – okay, that’s fine; merit system – that’s kind of vague; a system that measures earning by quantity or quality of production – quantity is much more concrete than quality of production, that’s pretty subjective; and then a bona fide factor other than sex such as education, training, experience. My point is there’s a lot there. It’s not a loophole I would say but there’s a lot of wiggle room for employers. I think it’ll help a little bit but I still can see employers can find ways around this.
NASIR: Oh, absolutely. Frankly though, I don’t think the law is going to fix that problem, right?
The guys end the week by talking about the New York startup Dog Parkerthat allows owners to leave their dogs in fancy cages. They also discuss the treats surrounding the company's longevity.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. My name is Nasir Pasha and we’re welcoming our co-host, the dog whisperer of San Diego, California.
MATT: Yeah, Matt Staub. I wish I was a dog whisperer. It’d be cool.
NASIR: We just have to whisper to a dog. That’s it.
MATT: But, yeah, if I knew what my dog was thinking at all times, it would just be nonsense.
NASIR: Yeah, I would assume so. I mean, they’re smart animals but, at the end, they’re still just an animal. I really do sometimes wish I can talk to animals. Those faces seem to present so much personality yet they still do the dumbest animalistic things, you know?
MATT: Yeah. You said it. I mean, dogs are pretty smart but my dog still does the same stupid mistakes all the time. It’s like he never learns.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I mean, he can do really smart things but he also just does the dumbest things every single day. Like, every day.
NASIR: It’s like we’re impressed but, at the same time, we’re still disappointed as if we’re expecting something more, you know.
MATT: It’s my training perhaps.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I don’t know how I feel about this business. You were the one that told me about it.
NASIR: I didn’t find it.
MATT: Yeah. Well, Chris was the one who found it, right? We’ll give her credit.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I liked the idea in theory because I have thought about this before but then I kind of watched the video and it was a little bit sad almost and then I started reading comments on other people’s stories on it and it was such a backlash that I flipped back to where I was originally and was for it.
NASIR: You’re saying the protestors, the negative response made you more positive for it.
MATT: Yeah, and I’ll get into why later so just remind me but let me explain what this is first.
NASIR: Yeah, explain what it is.
MATT: We’ll link it because you’ll see the video and so it’s not just some dungeon that this is but basically I believe it’s only in Brooklyn right now – or at least in NYC – and it is I don’t want to call it a kennel but it’s basically a very nice cage – or not even a cage but an enclosed area – kind of like a locker but with a window.
NASIR: It’s like a box. I would say a metal box with a vertical window with some holes in it.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And I think there’s holes all around, right?
MATT: Yeah, there’s holes in it so the dogs can breathe. Well, I guess it doesn’t even have to be just dogs. It doesn’t say. But, yeah, it’s basically, let’s say you’re going to the store and you have your dog with you, instead of tying the dog up outside and going in, this would allow you to take your card, get access in, the dog goes in there, they’re locked in there until you come back out and get the dog. You know, they’ve apparently worked on a bunch of things to make it operate well with the holes in it so they can breathe and I guess they don’t do it if it’s below a certain temperature or above a certain temperature – the extreme ones. There’s a whole bunch of other things but I liked this concept because I’ve taken my dog by myself before and had to go in somewhere. I’m just worried that someone’s going to steal my dog or do something stupid. I’m just over-concerned about it so I guess this is one way to prevent that. But, like I said, after I watched the video, I guess the dog would sit there anyways and look like that, all sad, but it’s kind of they’re just locked in this box and I can see dogs really freaking out – you know, if they weren’t used to something like this. Here’s the thing. Kids go up, they’re going to tap on the glass, but then kids are going to go up and pet dogs, too.
NASIR: They may be more inclined if it’s indoors. Like,
Nasir and Matt pass the rock around to discuss the lifetime deal that Lebron James signed with Nike and how the deal is likely structured.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and we’re welcoming our co-host. What kind of expert is he? He is a shoe expert, not a basketball expert, not what you were thinking.
MATT: I don’t know anything about basketball but I know a lot about shoes. Matt Staub here.
NASIR: You are a basketball… I don’t know about expert. I don’t know whether you’d call yourself an expert but you’re definitely into basketball more than I am.
MATT: I would say I know more about basketball than most people do.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: I think that’s fair to say.
NASIR: In the world or in the United States? Like, what’s your criteria?
MATT: I mean, definitely in the world because, well, it’s getting a little bit different but it’s pretty US-focused. I would think basketball has to be extremely popular in the US compared to other places.
NASIR: Yeah, I would say that.
MATT: You know, it’s gaining a little bit of traction worldwide. You definitely see a lot more international players in the NBA so it’s always fun. But it’s funny you said the shoe thing because that was one of the things I was wondering about this when I was looking into it. For those non-basketball news-related people, Lebron James signed what’s being called a lifetime deal with Nike – Lebron James being a basketball player, Nike being a shoe and other apparel company.
NASIR: Definitely explain what Nike is but, yeah, first of its kind. I don’t think it’s happened in Nike’s history. Frankly, it hasn’t happened… I can’t think of any like-contract in the sports industry even. Can you?
MATT: A long time ago, the huge deal that was done was I believe, if I remember correctly, Magic Johnson signed a 25-year deal with the Lakers for $25 million – one million a year for 25 years.
NASIR: What?
MATT: Which, obviously, is nothing now. I don’t know if that’s even like the veterans’ minimum per year but no one plays 25 years either so, obviously, they were buying more than just his basketball time.
NASIR: Sure.
MATT: But I think David Beckham – which is more up your alley with the soccer thing – I think he might have signed something that resembled or was rumored to be a lifetime deal with Adidas? Reebok? I don’t know. I forget. But, yeah, this isn’t very common, if it’s ever happened at all. I mean, not even Michael Jordan who has been with Nike forever has done anything like this – probably because he can always justify he’s worth more every year. But this is a pretty interesting deal. I think Lebron was signed right out of high school in 2003 by Nike which also was the times when you could go straight from the high school to the NBA. They’ve basically had him at every point that’s been a professional and I guess, for the entire time…
NASIR: And for the rest of his life.
MATT: Yeah, not even just playing, that’s the thing. It’s not that this only goes to when he retires. It’s a lifetime deal which might sound silly to some people but Michael Jordan’s shoes are selling just as much if not more than they did when he played. You know, there’s definitely value in this deal even after Lebron retires.
NASIR: I mean, there’s just so many issues here. By the way, David Beckham did sign a lifetime contract that’s said to be worth around $130 million or so with Adidas and I think this Nike one is supposed to be worth what? I think everyone’s ballparking it but $500 million?
MATT: Yeah, the numbers that were thrown around were 400 to 500 million and there was a source close to Lebron that said it’s worth well more than that so I don’t know if we’ll ever find out how much it is. I mean, it’s at least half a billion dollars probably so that’s pretty good pay-out for him.
NASIR: Yeah, obviously he doesn’t get all that in one day.
Nasir and Matt discuss Mark Zuckerberg's decision to take two months of paternity leave, his pledge to donate99% of his Facebook shares to charity, and the alternative motive of Gravity's CEO to drastically raise the salary of allemployees.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and we’re joined here with our maternity expert.
MATT: Paternity expert, right?
NASIR: Uh, no, you’re an expert in mothers expecting or having babies.
MATT: All right. Matt Staub, yeah, I’m here, which doesn’t apply to what we’re talking about today.
NASIR: No.
MATT: Your go-to is just listing expertise of mine in areas I have, well, I guess, I mean, it has a little bit to do today but not the topic.
NASIR: It’s the closest I can get.
MATT: Well, I mean, you could say “expert in MySpace.” I feel like that’s closer.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: I was looking, you know, we’re going to talk mostly about Facebook – well, mostly about Mark Zuckerberg but do you know the last time we talked in detail about Facebook? Do you remember? This is Episode 241. It’s been a while.
NASIR: Maybe one of their acquisitions of Instagram or something? I don’t know.
MATT: The one I found when I searched our previous ones was the malicious prosecution lawsuit they were trying to file against DLA Piper who represented that guy who claimed 84 percent ownership of the company who I looked up and now they describe him as “now fugitive businessman.” It hasn’t gone well for him post-lawsuit.
NASIR: Did we ever find out what’s happened to that lawsuit?
MATT: Well, I just looked, and this was earlier in the year because Facebook filed that malicious prosecution suit against DLA Piper and the judge refused…
NASIR: The law firm, yeah.
MATT: I think the judge refused to throw it out.
NASIR: Okay. So, it looks like the case is going on.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Yeah, that was an interesting story.
MATT: You know, you think about it, and we talk about this all the time but why would Facebook even bother with it at this point? But this is a good example. They need to set the precedent that they’re not going to put up with this stuff. They obviously have the money to handle it.
NASIR: Definitely makes a law firm think twice about bringing something like that again.
MATT: So, Facebook, you know, there’s a couple of things here and Mark Zuckerberg and it’s been in the news a lot the last couple of weeks and there’s a couple of things. The first was what you had mentioned earlier at the beginning. They had their kid a couple of days ago, I think – earlier this week of recording, right?
NASIR: I think it was more than a couple of days but, yeah, definitely recently.
MATT: Yeah. And so, he had come out and said that he is going to take a two-month paternal leave, I believe.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Which is pretty crazy and I believe I saw that the company offers up to four months of paid paternal leave so that’s pretty big. But I think one of the big things a lot of people are discussing is, you know, this is a big step towards acceptance of this sort of leave for the men because I think there’s some sort of stigma attached to men taking time off after the birth of their child. People might look at that in a different way as opposed to the mother who would do it. But I’m sure there’s been many instances of the father who wanted to do this and just felt so obligated that they couldn’t. This is clearly a step in that right direction for more men to do this.
NASIR: Yeah. But, at the same time, it’s almost crazy to think that a CEO of a company would be able to take let alone a week even let alone two months off of their job whether it’s a male or a female, right? Obviously, Zuckerberg is probably in a little more unique position. I think all of our status updates will still go through whether Zuckerberg is on the job or not. My assumption is that he’s in a little bit more of a privileged po...
Despite already having legislation that requires employers to allow for extended leave, a recent push for this leave to be “paid” is steadily emerging. Family leave, often accompanied by medical leave, is something that has come to the forefront in the last couple months in the United States. While it has been part of employment law for some time, there has been a recent push to incorporate pay into already guaranteed time off work. Keep in mind that family leave can involve “paid” and/or “non-paid” family leave. In addition to federal and state law, individual employers may enact their own policy that provides for better coverage required by law. Many look at family leave and believe it is only for recent mothers. This is far from true as it can be used by everyone in a wide range of circumstances. Depending on which law you interpret, it can include time to take care of a family member who is sick, or for medical conditions you may yourself be suffering from. “Depending on the law” is the key phrase here as there are many that apply.
Federal law on family leave: Legislation enacted in 1993 became the cornerstone for family leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (better known as “FMLA”) was enacted as a way to guarantee workers the right to take extended leave without fear of losing their jobs. Prior to that time, it was not uncommon for someone who took extended leave to be replaced and not have a job to return to. The law allows employees to take up to 12 weeks per year under certain circumstances, while protecting them from termination while they are away. Certain provisions must be met prior, such as an employee meeting specific hour rules before they are eligible. FMLA is NOT paid time off work. It is in place to protect people from losing their job in the event of an extended absence. What typically happens is a person’s benefits (sick time, vacation, etc.) are depleted during their time away. This allows them to continue receiving pay while they are not working. Once they are out of benefits, they are still afforded the time off (up to the 12 weeks), but will not receive pay unless the employer does so voluntarily. FMLA has helped many who may have otherwise been unwilling to take the time off for fear of losing their jobs.
Each state has individual laws on family leave In addition to FMLA, individual states have their own laws concerning family leave. Currently, there are only three states that required “paid” family leave – California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. In 2007, the state of Washington passed paid family leave legislation, but it was never implemented. The law was subsequently repealed, leaving only the above three mentioned states with required paid family leave. The District of Columbia is the most recent to attempt legislation requiring paid family leave, calling for up to 16 weeks of paid leave for the birth of a child, a medical condition, or to care for a family member. The states that do require paid leave are able to fund such programs through payroll taxes deducted from employees. In California, employees are only eligible if they participate in the state’s disability insurance program or some type of voluntary plan. This means that they are not automatically covered unless they voluntarily participate. Here are links to additional information on family leave laws by state. If your state is not listed below, make sure to check your state’s government website as laws are constantly changing.
California – Paid Family Leave Act Connecticut – Family & Medical Leave Act District of Columbia – Family and Medical Leave Act Hawaii – Hawaii Family Leave Maine – Family Medical Leave Requirements Minnesota – Parental Leave Act New Jersey – Family Leave Insurance Oregon - Oregon Family Leave Act Rhode Island – Rhode Island Parental and Family Medical Leave Act Vermont – Parental and Family Leave Washington – Washington State Family Leave Act
Nasir and Matt recap how some shopping mallsrequired stores to be open on Thanksgiving.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. We are starting an hour later than we originally scheduled, but you don’t know that.
MATT: And, really, neither did I until I looked at the clock.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, and my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and I guess we’re technically starting earlier.
NASIR: Because of the holidays, that’s true.
MATT: Yeah, we’re a day early – a day and an hour early. We won’t reveal what day or time we normally record.
NASIR: That’s a secret.
MATT: I think it’s pretty obvious we’re recording dead middle of Thanksgiving Day.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Sitting in a table, surrounded by thirty people.
NASIR: I have actually turkey in my mouth right now.
MATT: Well, I guess, by the time this comes out, it’ll be past Thanksgiving.
NASIR: I’m sure, like, at this time, all the local news channels will be doing the stories of all the chaos from last Friday and people running each other over, et cetera. But we’re not going to do that.
MATT: Yeah, and you won’t be there, obviously, because you opted outside.
NASIR: By the time this came out, I definitely opted outside. Hopefully, I hashtagged #optoutside in something or other. It may rain that day but, either way, I’ll be outside.
MATT: Yeah, you can still be outside when it’s raining. That’s fine.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, we’ll be hiking – you know, West Texas. Don’t stalk me there.
MATT: So, what we’re going to talk about, it’s pretty interesting and, you know, I never really thought about this being the possibility before but, I don’t know, to me, malls – shopping malls – are kind of going out of style, almost, it seems like.
NASIR: I think the traditional one is. But then, again, I mean, I have Galleria Mall right next to, you know, I’m right in the middle of the Galleria and it’s a pretty famous mall – at least in Houston – and it’s a very traditional indoor mall but it’s just huge and it has a bunch of stores. But I agree with you; that kind of style does seem to be kind of old or out of fashion.
MATT: Yeah, and the reason I said “the typical shopping mall,” it’s different from obviously like a strip mall or even the open air – is it called “open air malls”? Is that what those are called?
NASIR: Yeah, like in Fashion Valley Mall or Mission Valley Mall.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: What’s the one downtown? Horton Plaza.
MATT: Yeah, but that’s the point. You know, for those, every store has its own entrance into the store – well, I guess it’s the same case for shopping malls. In shopping malls, you have to go through some sort of department store, usually, in order to get to the actual other stores, right?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: That’s the way you get in most of the time. I guess, sometimes, there are other ways. But, anyways, this is in Concord, California – the Sun Valley Shopping Center. I guess the department stores which they’re referring to as kind of the anchors of the shopping mall were going to be open on Thanksgiving Day so the mall is making these other stores that are not the main anchors of the shopping mall also be open on Thanksgiving Day. I believe, in this example, they are required to be open from 6:00 p.m. until at least midnight on Thanksgiving Day with the option of remaining open until 5:00 a.m. the next morning. This wasn’t a “Hey, this is a suggestion because there’s going to be a lot of foot traffic, et cetera.” This is the owner saying all these stores are required to be open from 6:00 p.m. to midnight whether you like it or not which I have a few questions about but, from a reasonableness standpoint, this can’t go over too well with a lot of these stores, I would think.
NASIR: Yeah, for some of them, it may be a surprise. Let’s just give some benefit of the doubt that they can legally do this, but how can a landlord make you stay open and,
Nasir and Matt get in the Thanksgiving spiritby discussing In-N-Out Burger suing DoorDash for delivering their food and recreating their logo.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and, joining with me is our food delivery expert.
MATT: Matt Staub. All right, I’d take that. I mean, I don’t know about expert but at least it’s more accurate than normal. Off to a good start, I guess.
NASIR: By the way, I don’t know how I’m going to finish this episode. Not only am I hungry again, of course, but I haven’t eaten anything today. I think I had some gummy bears and I just got done with a run so this is going to be a tough episode for me.
MATT: I don’t know how you did that.
NASIR: You don’t know or why?
MATT: Running without having any sort of… so, you’re working on, like, negative calories for now?
NASIR: I don’t like running on a full stomach. That’s ideal for me, anyway.
MATT: Well, there is a middle ground where you eat at normal times during the day and then go running at a more reasonable time after but…
NASIR: That’s true. That requires reasonableness.
MATT: Yeah, I guess so. That’s definitely not what DoorDash did in this recent lawsuit that was filed and it was even worse than I first thought that was reported actually. I did a little bit deeper digging.
NASIR: Even when we first recorded this episode?
MATT: Yeah. Well, yeah.
NASIR: This is our second try. I mean, I was so sick last week that I don’t know what… I think I did record the episode, I just didn’t save it. So, this is our round two of it but bigger and better, right?
MATT: Yeah, hopefully. I mean, I don’t remember how the last one went.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I’ll just assume it’s better. So, DoorDash, what they are is…
NASIR: Wait, wait, wait, should I record this episode, too?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Let me hit record.
MATT: Yeah, preferably. They’re a food delivery service. Think of it as Uber but for food, I guess, in a way. I guess people can figure out what a food delivery service is. I don’t need to explain it.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s better out for a while. That’s an independent third-party food delivery service.
MATT: I think, actually, the last time we got a delivery, it was a pizza delivery. We found out later they used a third party and it went so poorly that I have since not had a food delivery. I mean, it’s been at least three years, I think.
NASIR: Really?
MATT: I would just prefer to go out and do it myself as opposed to relying on somebody and have to pay them extra. It’s not that difficult to go do it, in my opinion.
NASIR: Well, this is definitely a side-track but getting deliveries in buildings are always complicated. And then, if you order it in the evening, it can take, like, two hours sometimes – at least in this area. You’re right, there are some complications, but I guess that’s what DoorDash is trying to solve – that problem.
MATT: I think the idea is that all these restaurants, the majority of restaurants don’t have a delivery service through their restaurant so DoorDash is acting as an intermediary between the two saying, now, every restaurant or mini-restaurants can now deliver food to the customers – apparently, whether they agree to it or not which seems to be the issue here with In-N-Out, amongst a couple of other things. Basically, what they did was put In-N-Out as one of their possible delivery restaurants without In-N-Out’s consent and started delivering their food. In April of 2014, In-N-Out asked DoorDash to not only stop delivering their food but stop using their logo. I’ll get into that in a minute but just keep that in mind. No response. May of 2014, In-N-Out sent a follow-up letter.
NASIR: By the way, that no response is a big deal.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I mean, when you get a cease and desist letter from a national corporation, maybe if it’s a rinky-dinky law firm or business or whatever,
Nasir and Matt discuss Small Business Saturday,the involvement of American Express, andhow to participate if you are a small business.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and, today, we are here with our expert on small businesses and the law – which is actually true.
MATT: Yeah, Matt Staub. Yeah, it’s probably the closes one we’ve had so far.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: We usually talk about this every year – or at least the years we’ve been doing the podcast. Actually, no, every year – it just wasn’t recorded in previous years.
NASIR: That’s true; we always talk about it but we don’t always record our conversation.
MATT: Yeah, it started in 2010 so this would be the fifth year. Wait.
NASIR: Well, yeah, no…
MATT: Sixth year.
NASIR: Yeah, you’re right, sixth year. Dang it! I can’t do my math.
MATT: Yeah, Small Business Saturday which falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving – two days after Thanksgiving. Small Business Saturday and Thanksgiving create the sandwich around Black Friday and then the thousand other days we’ve talked about – Cyber Monday. There’s a Tuesday now, right? Didn’t we just talk about this last week?
NASIR: A Tuesday? Yeah, for something else, right?
MATT: Yeah, it’s ridiculous.
NASIR: Giving Tuesday I think it is?
MATT: Okay. Well, that’s not ridiculous but…
NASIR: Yeah, I know you’re against that, and I think there’s also Buy Nothing Day. What day is that? Is that the Sunday?
MATT: You’re a big advocate of Opt Outside on Friday.
NASIR: Oh, I’m definitely doing that.
MATT: So much so that you went to REI last weekend after we recorded the podcast.
NASIR: I know, it was just happenstance that I was, you know, by one so I was like, “I might as well head on in,” and I’m like, “Hey!” I asked everyone if they heard my podcast episode and they said… I just actually got kicked out but, anyway, Small Business Saturday… actually, most people don’t know, well, I don’t know, I think most people don’t know this was actually started by American Express. In fact, so much so that Small Business Saturday is actually a registered trademark of American Express which is very ironic because American Express is very far from any kind of small business. They are definitely trying to show their so-called support for small businesses.
MATT: Well, that was my first thought. How many small businesses even accept American Express? It can’t be many.
NASIR: No, you’re right, because American Express is classically more expensive for businesses to accept compared to others. But, at the same time, in the past, and this is why I’m wondering how much they actually support small businesses this year because, in the past, they used to give basically customers – I think it was customers, right? They gave a $10.00 statement credit for businesses that were participating in the program and that was a big incentive for us consumers to actually go out that Saturday and use our Amex cards to actually purchase.
MATT: There’s a couple of things at play here. You know, what you just mentioned (1) American Express just made up this day and now it’s the sixth year it’s been around, and I think it’s had some pretty good success at the numbers. An estimated $14.3 billion spent at small independent businesses last year – good chunk of money that, you know, five years in. But, you’re right, they did use to give; it was up to three $10.00 credits to the cardholders of American Express at these qualified small businesses. But I guess it wasn’t worth it for American Express anymore and they’ve scrapped this offer but now they’re saying instead, “We’re going to increase support and resources to small businesses” – whatever that means, I’m not really sure. I guess we’ll just have to see.
NASIR: Well, from what I’m looking at, they do have, once you register and if you have certain qualifications as a business,
The guys kick off the week by discussing the Federal law thatwould prevent companies from using non-disparagement clauses. They also discuss how to detect whether Yelp reviews are fake.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and, joining us today is our expert on non-disparagement clauses aka “gag clauses.”
MATT: Yeah, I always have to be an expert in something. I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: That’s right. So, Matt, I mean, what makes you the expert in this area?
MATT: Well, I think it all kind of started when I just used to give a ton of…
NASIR: Disparaging reviews?
MATT: I used to go into businesses and buy a product or pay for services or say I was going to pay for services or buy a product and then, once I finally got the product or the services were performed, I could pay you and write something terrible about your business or you could just give me the product or service for free. That’s where it all kind of started.
NASIR: Okay. Basically, you blackmailed businesses?
MATT: Oh, I wouldn’t say blackmail.
NASIR: No, yeah, you just call it some type of mail but…
MATT: Yeah, you know. We’ve definitely talked about this before – at least on the California side.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: If I remember correctly, initially, there was some sort of partial ban and then it got fully banned. I don’t remember the language but, right now in California, it’s been fully banned. We’re talking about non-disparagement clauses.
NASIR: Yeah, you might want to tell everyone what was banned.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: They may think otherwise. But, yeah, non-disparagement clauses are those clauses and those agreements which basically say, “Okay, by signing this contract, you can’t say anything bad about us in the public or in general – in private too. “I mean, you can make it pretty general. Obviously, at first glance, it’s like, “Okay, wait a minute, I mean, I can’t speak?” That’s kind of encroaching on freedom of speech and things like that. But, classically, what is a confidentiality clause? I mean, that’s basically what it is. It’s for you to stop spreading information. It’s not like there’s no precedence of actually enforcing these kinds of non-disparagement clauses but, of course, as we’ve seen, it can be definitely abused by businesses.
MATT: Yeah, and it can. I mean, I’ll read the… because it’s fairly short – at least this part of it – this is the Civil Code in California.
NASIR: Wait, are you going to read the entire Civil Code?
MATT: No, yeah, Section 1 – Definitions, probably. This is 1670.8 A1. “A contract or proposed contract for the sale or lease of consumer goods or services may not include a provision waiving the customer’s right to make any statement regarding the seller or lessor or its employees or agents or…” This is terribly written. “Or concerning the goods or services. It shall be unlawful to threaten or seek to enforce a provision made…” I don’t even know why I’m reading this.
NASIR: I’d tell you, you should have just started at Section 1. That would have been probably better, more interesting.
MATT: Basically, the gist of it is you can’t threaten some sort of penalty against the customer for writing a review. I mean, I think that was the idea behind it.
NASIR: Yeah, and this goes back to I think one of the most publicized case on this was about two years ago – end of 2013. I don’t know if you remember the company but basically they sued their customers on this clause that basically said that, if you leave a bad review or basically disparage us, then you owe us a liquidation damage of $5,000 or so.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: They ended up suing and became this big case. Since then, there’s been other cases like this where some courts have said, “Okay, this is unconscionable, this is ridiculous. This is encroaching on this and that.” But I think most judges have been kind of reluctant to really get involved with two parties th...
Nasir and Matt discuss Amazon's creative move avoid having to hire drivers as employees and why it hasalready gotten sued.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and, today, we’re joined with our prompt delivery expert…
MATT: Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matt Staub. Once again, a master of everything and a jack of none.
MATT: It’s easy to be a delivery expert. You know, it’s pretty simple. You pick up what you’re delivering, you get to the destination, and you drop it off, and then that’s it.
NASIR: Well, I mean, you make it sound so easy, obviously. I mean, you’re the expert but it’s complicated for us.
MATT: You buy a lot of things online.
NASIR: I do. There was a time where, like, I think we’ve calmed down now but we just get something every day and we don’t even remember what we ordered. It’s great because it’s almost like you’re birthday because you’re opening presents like, “Oh, what’s this?” “Oh, yeah, the…” whatever we ordered.
MATT: Cat-based things.
NASIR: Yeah, cat food.
MATT: So, this service that launched a couple of months ago in LA and I think it was in New York City possibly even as early as late last year – definitely early this year – that would kind of help you out in that situation where Amazon Prime now – because it delivers things in one and two-hour delivery times. If you ordered something, I think you would remember it by the time it showed up in an hour or two hours.
NASIR: That’s true. It solves that big problem that most people have.
MATT: Yeah, of remembering what you ordered. In LA, they launched, I believe it was August this year. Guess what? It didn’t take too long for them to get sued over it. They did try to solve the issue that we’ve talked about many times with the employees versus independent contractors. Not to rehash that too much but, you know, obviously, there’s a lot of discussion going on that these drivers, these delivery drivers should be employees according to some people. Companies like Amazon and Uber believe they should be independent contractors. And so, what did Amazon do? This is something I wasn’t even aware they did until this lawsuit just got filed I believe this week. It’s kind of creative. They hired this company. I assumed it’s called Scoobies?
NASIR: Yeah, something Scooby Doo.
MATT: Scoobies. They hired Scoobies which is just a courier service. Amazon contracted with them and then Scoobies, the courier service, has the actual drivers which unsurprisingly are independent contractors. The drivers in this situation are still independent contractors just one degree away from Amazon Prime which, of course, didn’t result in them not being named in this class action lawsuit that just got filed. Like I said, I mean, by the time this comes out, about a week ago.
NASIR: Days ago. By the way, Scoobies, I think, like you mentioned, is a courier service so they’ve been operating for a while so it’s not like this is something new for them on this classification issue of drivers. And so, that’s why I’m a little suspicious of the claim itself of how accurate or legit it is but let’s just, for the sake of discussion and, as we always do, let’s assume that they’re correct. What’s interesting is that, okay, as Matt explained, you have Amazon hiring Scoobies who’s hiring other independent contractors, and then those independent contractors are suing Scoobies and Amazon saying that they are their employers. That’s interesting because, you know, we’ve talked about classification of employees and independent contractors probably every day on the podcast since the dawn of time it comes up. But I think this is the first time we really got to this issue. That means that, if you hire a third-party vendor and they hire independent contractors and they mess up, then in theory you could be liable for that misclassification and that doesn’t seem correct, right?
MATT: It doesn’t but,
The guys take this Monday to discuss the motivation behind REI making the decision to close stores and its website on Black Friday. #OPTOUTSIDE
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and we are welcomed here today with our outdoors expert.
MATT: I’m at expert in everything, according to you, which is fine. Actually, very little things of actual value, but I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Being an outdoorsman is definitely a skill.
MATT: If there’s a whole list of boxes I could check and I could check as many as I want to be an expert in certain categories, I’d probably choose outdoor knowledge because you never know. I mean, it’s always good to be able to do things in the outdoors in case a bad situation arises and you get stranded somewhere.
NASIR: I think I would be called an “indoorsman,” actually. I am an expert in all things indoors. No, that’s not true. I actually love the outdoors.
MATT: Coming from the person who probably 90 percent of the time we record this, your lights go off while recording indoors.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But an expert nonetheless.
NASIR: That’s because the motion sensor which I have been too lazy to fix is too far from me so, the place where I record, if I’m too still, then it goes off. That’s part of the effect.
MATT: REI seems like something, a store you would like.
NASIR: I love that store, absolutely, and I found out, I’ve never been to it but, out here in Texas, there’s a store called The Academy or something and I think it’s something similar. I haven’t actually been there but it has a bunch of outdoor stuff and things like that.
MATT: Yeah. You’re probably more of the outdoors expert than I am but I’ve been to REI a handful of times. It’s got some pretty cool stuff. But, if you like stuff like camping or hiking, things like that, then this is right up your alley, if you haven’t been.
NASIR: It is expensive though. I mean, it tends to be sometimes twice as expensive as things that you can get the same thing online and so forth. But it’s quality stuff, obviously,
MATT: I don’t know if “obvious” is the right word. You know, just because something’s expensive doesn’t mean that it’s quality.
NASIR: Well, that’s my rule.
MATT: Well, maybe the reason stuff’s still expensive is because they close down on major shopping days, which is exactly what’s happening here. It might be something that listeners might have heard in the news, I think. Not only are they doing this but they’re pushing this whole marketing campaign – actually, like a full brand redesign over this opt out.
NASIR: Opt outside.
MATT: Opt outside, yeah.
NASIR: You’re talking about, yeah, the hashtag.
MATT: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’d be one thing to close your doors on the Friday after Thanksgiving – which they are – but the interesting thing too is they’re also I believe shutting down sales on their website that Friday which I guess you need people to work for customer service type stuff to run the website but it seems like that would be a lot more personnel than just people in the stores.
NASIR: Well, how often does any online store close? Or does it ever, right? I mean, it’s a pretty unique thing to see and, I just realized, I think I’m actually going to be opting outside to use their marketing lingo and buy into it a little bit this Black Friday because my wife and I are traveling in West Texas and we plan on hiking trails back there so, on that Friday, I’m sure I’m going to be outside. I don’t know how I should celebrate. I guess I should tag them in some social media post so that it can help with their marketing.
MATT: Yeah. Well, we’ll be on the lookout for that. This campaign’s a little bit flawed in the fact that a lot of spots are pretty cold the day after Thanksgiving so I don’t know how many people are necessarily wanting to go outside but…
NASIR: True, very true. Well, I mean,
Nasir and Matt discuss how a Houston nightclub is facing claims of discrimination for charging customers different cover charges based on their race.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and here we have our expert on clubs and nightlife in Houston, Texas.
MATT: That’s you?
NASIR: No, that’s you.
MATT: I’m not in Houston. I’m Matt Staub. I’m definitely not in Houston.
NASIR: No, but you’re an expert in clubs and nightlife in Houston, that’s why we got you on. If you’re not, then I don’t even know why, I thought that was what you were bringing to the table here.
MATT: That’s the guest, yeah. Well, I think I’ll be able to do a better job than their attorney that was interviewed for this.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: We’re too deep into it now and I had an awesome start to this episode and now it’s too late.
NASIR: No, let’s just all just restart. Okay. I say something like, “Welcome to the podcast. We’re awesome and I’m Nasir Pasha.”
MATT: And I was going to say, “Houston, we have a problem.”
NASIR: But, if you say that, it’s like, every time Houston comes up, then you could say that.
MATT: It doesn’t come up that often.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: This is a pretty interesting case – it’s not a case, I guess, but it’s a pretty interesting d rgeur Teko oafe that happened. As the Houston nightclub expert, I first heard about this weeks ago but there was rumors of racism in these nightclubs meaning that they were giving preferential treatment to basically it sounds like preferential treatment to white people in charging other ethnicities certain money, things like that to get in, VIP, et cetera. A local news station, Channel 2 Investigates, tested this out and they sent groups of people at different times of the night to a few different clubs. I think most of them were okay but there was one, GasLamp, this is where they really ran into a problem. What they did is they sent a group of white people, a group of black females – both of those groups didn’t have to pay any money. They sent a group of Hispanic females, I think they got in free as well but had to pay…
NASIR: The VIP or something?
MATT: They sent black males in, I think they had to pay a cover just to get in. So, it got increasingly worse. They were even asking follow-up questions with the bouncer and things like that. Basically, at the end of the night or whenever they all gathered together the next day, they looked at it and said all the white people basically got in for free and got full access to everything and the non-white people, some of which got in for free as well, some of which had to pay extra to be in the VIP, some of which had to pay just to get into the nightclub, so this is kind of a problem that we’re not going to put up with. What happens is they ask the owner of the nightclub and he says something along the lines of, “We don’t charge money to good-looking people to pay in,” and then their lawyer comes in and says a bunch of bad stuff saying, amongst other things, you know, “We want successful people in here.”
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Also, misquoting the law multiple times but basically that was the one statement I heard is, “We just want successful people in here. We want good-looking girls in here. And so, we can do whatever we want basically,” and there’s a lot of problems with this but that’s kind of where we start.
NASIR: That’s what happened in the last couple of weeks but this actually goes back about a month ago. There were these three attorneys. I think they were all black.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And, somehow, they noticed this was going on. I guess they sat outside and just watched every white person, according to them, white person get in for free and non-white being charged, et cetera. And then, they made a hoopla about it on social media and it got picked up by the press and their Yelp page, the GasLamp’s Yelp page went crazy and so forth.
The guys discuss Starbucks firing a deaf employee and what is considered a reasonable accommodation for someone requiring a sign language interpreter.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and I have a Jolly Rancher in my mouth.
MATT: Could have just waited, and I’m Matt Staub, and I’m saying you could have just waited for however long it takes.
NASIR: I thought it would be melted by now.
MATT: What flavor?
NASIR: I don’t know if it melts. It’s sour apple.
MATT: Oh.
NASIR: I think the best flavor.
MATT: The worst, probably.
NASIR: Really? That’s the best. It’s the only one I think I really like.
MATT: Well, if you ever noticed – actually, I don’t know – maybe the green ones but it seems like every time someone has Jolly Ranchers on their desk or like, when you walk into a building, it’s always grape. No one ever has the grape ones.
NASIR: I actually like the grape and the green ones. All the red ones kind of just mash into each other like watermelon and cherry.
MATT: Yeah, you can’t decipher one. It’s just red. I mean, it should just be colors – cherry, strawberry, watermelon, raspberry.
NASIR: And blue.
MATT: Yeah. Blue is usually raspberry, I think.
NASIR: Yeah, but blue tastes unnatural – not that any of these others taste natural but…
MATT: Well, at least the sour apples are usually green.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Not that the skin of the apple is produced in the Jolly Ranchers but, yeah, blue raspberry is obviously very unnatural.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly.
MATT: Not that any of them are very authentically flavored in terms of juice. Anyway, I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about today. Let me make sure. Nope, we’re not.
NASIR: Any smooth transition into this? I don’t think so.
MATT: No. I mean, there probably is, but I’m not going to even go for it. This is pretty interesting. I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about a sign language related issue before.
NASIR: No, and I know we haven’t because, if we did, I would have definitely mentioned that I took a couple of semesters of sign language in college which was awesome. I still know some of the basics so I can kind of eavesdrop on a lot of people’s conversations from a distance which is very rude and taboo.
MATT: Why did you take those classes?
NASIR: I have no idea. In fact, my wife asked me the same thing. Like, “I don’t know why you took those classes.” I met my wife in a foreign language class so I didn’t need it for a language credit. I think I just did it because I was interested in it.
MATT: That’s what I was going to ask because, my wife, they had to take some sort of language class and she opted for sign language but that wasn’t the case with you, I guess.
NASIR: No, I’ve taken first year languages – many, many different languages. I’m not fluent in any other language but I’ve taken a lot of first for like one year or so.
MATT: You basically can say “my name is…” in every language.
NASIR: Precisely.
MATT: “How are you?” and then just nothing.
NASIR: Correct – which I don’t know which is better – which I would rather be.
MATT: Fluent in one. Well, I guess fluent in multiple languages. I assume you’re fluent at least in English.
NASIR: Barely.
MATT: All right.
NASIR: I can say my name then that’s it. I can do an introduction of a podcast.
MATT: Ah. Well, anyway, this is a sign language based story we’re talking about which actually falls under disability which we’ll get to but let me tell some back story. This Starbucks in Arizona and I’ve read a couple of different stories on this so I’m going to pull the facts from one of them and, if it happens to be off, then I’ll blame this specific article but there’s a woman that worked at Starbucks from 2007 to 2014. That’s a pretty good amount of time. She was doing sign language from the beginning of 2007 throughout the duration of her employment and so she was working there, no problems.
The guys close out the week by talking about Urban Outfitters asking salaried employees to volunteer their time on the weekend and how employers can get free work out of salaried employees.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and, again, we’re joined with our fashion guru, our aficionado. Some would say an expert, others would say my co-host.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. I guess it’s kind of fashion-related, I suppose.
NASIR: It’s not? Oh.
MATT: I guess, as much as we’ll ever get into it.
NASIR: Well, I mean, no, you’re the expert. You tell me.
MATT: They do sell more than clothes at these places, I believe.
NASIR: Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know much about this stuff so, yeah, please, tell us.
MATT: Well, I haven’t been to one in a long time – Urban Outfitters – which I guess they also own Anthropologie and Free People. I feel like I’ve been to Anthropologie before. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Urban Outfitters, I don’t even know where they’re headquartered but this happened in Pennsylvania. Somebody sent an email out recently basically saying salaried employees were urged to work side by side with paid workers to pack and ship orders as a team-building activity. I was going to make it sound nicer than that but, I mean, it’s just kind of silly. The people are getting paid by the hour, okay, it makes sense for them. But what about these salaried employees who I’m assuming they aren’t working in the fulfilment center most of the time – or ever.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: These are people not even doing a job they normally do asked to volunteer and come in on the weekends – this weekend. Slightly better than being told they have to come. Basically, what this amounts to is salary workers being asked to volunteer their time for free which could create a problem.
NASIR: But that is a little bit editorialized.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Because the company would probably say, “Okay, they’re not coming in to work for free. These salaried employees are coming in voluntarily to work on this particular day,” because they’re still getting paid, right? I mean, they’re paid a salary whether they work 50 hours or 40 hours, they get paid the same amount.
MATT: Right. And so, people, I think a lot of times people think that, once they’re paid a salary, that the exempt/non-exempt issue doesn’t come into play. I think that’s probably a pretty common thought, wouldn’t you say so?
NASIR: Oh, yeah, and people don’t even realize, you can actually be a salary non-exempt. It’s not common. I don’t know why some people do it but I don’t particularly like it. Yeah, salary non-exempt employee.
MATT: Yeah, what that means is you can still get paid a salary and still get overtime pay which is really the best of both worlds, I guess.
NASIR: Yeah. Really, it can be problematic. That often happens, okay, “Look, I’m just going to pay you X amount for 40 hours a week and that’s it,” and there’s no expectation of overtime. But then, there’s that occasional week or two that goes over 40 hours and you’re like, you kind of just brush it to the side but it ends up being a problem down the line.
MATT: Yeah, and you still have to pay. If that’s the case, you have to pay it out regardless of whether you told them to leave or not. You know, why is that not being brought up in this instance? And so, the exempt/non-exempt issue that we’re just talking about, amongst other requirements, there is a minimum salary threshold. In Pennsylvania where this was, it’s only $23,660 annually.
NASIR: Yeah, and that’s actually a federal minimum – or $23,660 or $23,600?
MATT: $23,660 is what I have here.
NASIR: I thought the federal is $600 and maybe Pennsylvania is $60.00 more? I don’t know.
MATT: Well, no, according to what I’m reading here which I think was pulled from the state website earlier, Pennsylvania maintains a test to determine exemption,
Nasir and Matt discuss the new legislation thatallows for healthcare workers in California to waive a meal period on longer shifts.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business, our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Hello!
MATT: Hi.
NASIR: So…
MATT: So, you jinxed the Houston Astros.
NASIR: I know.
MATT: Actually, the whole state of Texas because both Texas teams just full-on collapsed the last couple of days – Houston in Game 4 and then the Rangers in Game 5, the deciding game.
NASIR: Oh, the Rangers, yeah.
MATT: Yeah, both of them just full-on collapsed, pretty much your fault, I’m assuming.
NASIR: I actually, yeah, I definitely caused that. I’ll take credit for that.
MATT: There was a period of time it was looking like an all-Texas ALCS and then, like I said, both teams just blew it.
NASIR: Yeah. Sorry to hear.
MATT: Did you see the thing with… I think it was the governor? I don’t know. He posted something.
NASIR: Abbott?
MATT: Yeah, that’s who it was. He posted something. I know you didn’t watch or I’m assuming you didn’t.
NASIR: No.
MATT: Game 4, the Astros had a big lead at home, like, four runs with a couple of innings left so they had a very good chance of winning. And so, the governor posted something about like, “Congrats on advancing to the next round!” and then they ended up losing. So, it was a big thing.
NASIR: I’m reading it now, yeah. “Hoping for an all-Texas ALCS. Looking at you, Rangers.” Why would he do that? I mean, especially in baseball, you never know.
MATT: Someone else probably wrote that for him but I don’t know.
NASIR: Yeah, most likely, and I guess he deleted it, of course.
MATT: I think he should have just doubled down on it and owned up to it and posted it again at the beginning of Game 5 but a pretty rough one for Houston.
NASIR: Yeah, I’m seeing if he apologized or something. What was the explanation? Is Sam Brownback someone significant? Is he the governor?
MATT: Maybe.
NASIR: Kansas governor Sam Brownback, he was like, “Congrats to the Royals. Not so fast, my friend, Gov. Abbott. See you Wednesday. #takethecrown” which I assume is some kind of code word for an assassination attempt on our Queen in England.
MATT: I think you pieced it together. Well, just like baseball is a very number-intensive game, this is going to be a number-intensive podcast. There’s lots of numbers that are going to be thrown out so get your calculators out – well, probably not calculators but get something out – pen and paper, only if you’re in California, though.
NASIR: Actually, you just need to have the numbers 30, 8, 12, and maybe 6 memorized and you’ll be good. Basically, there was recent legislation about two weeks ago that was signed by Governor Jerry Brown. He signed a bunch of bills that day but this is one of them. It basically made clear this very kind of confusing period for healthcare workers – or I should say “healthcare employers” – in California because, basically, there’s this laws in California that require meal periods and we can kind of talk about how that works but there was also a wage order created by an administrative body that basically said, “Okay, for healthcare workers, if an employee works for more than twelve hours, you can actually waive that second meal period or one of the two so long as it’s a written agreement signed and voluntarily waived by the employee.” And so, this case back in I think early this year or late last year, some healthcare worker sued basically saying, “Hey, the law states in statute that you can only waive it if it’s less than twelve hours – not more than twelve hours – so this is in conflict. I don’t care what this other administrative body of California says, that’s not proper.” The court ended up agreeing and it was appealed and they actually won. Now, it basically created this very strange circumstance for these heal...
Nasir and Matt discuss the passage of the California Fair Pay Act and how it aims to end gender based pay inequality. They also talk abouthow certain industries will be more affected by this new law than others.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, today, we are covering a new law in California that just passed despite Matt’s strong objections. You know, this actually passed unanimously, 39-0, but, Matt, I remember he wrote me an email that day of. He was like, “If I was in the California Senate that day, I would have voted no.” It would have been the sole “nay” vote.
MATT: I don’t know if I should even be on the rest of this episode. Actually, I need to be on so I can defend myself against these allegations but it’s pretty impressive it was 39-0.
NASIR: I guess that was for the California Senate back in August 31st.
MATT: Yeah, I did see that, though.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Unanimous passage. Yeah, we’re talking about the California Fair Pay Act. It’s not talking about the state fair. It’s talking about fair pay between men and women. I mean, there’s a few specifics on this. I’ll run through them and we can just discuss it here. I think these first couple of things are probably the biggest things. It’s requiring that men and women receive equal pay for what is now substantially similar work regardless of whether they work at the same physical location. In the past, I believe it was just defined as the same work, yeah.
NASIR: Yeah. Just so everyone’s clear, this is not, I mean, it’s new and it’s not new in the sense that, you know, always before you couldn’t discriminate between men and women. But, in order to prove discrimination or to violate the law, the burden of proof was not easy to prove, in other words, because, you know, same work and then, well, go ahead. I think you’re listing out some of the other changes.
MATT: Yeah, no, but you’re right – same work is pretty vague. Just to go with that, substantially similar work means the positive skill, effort, responsibility performed under similar working conditions but need not be the exact same job. I think that’s a much more defined way of putting it than just same work which I think pretty much anyone can get around unless two people are doing the exact same thing. That’s point number one. The other big thing is this business justification defense. It modified that. Inserted by employers to accept an otherwise prohibited pay discrepancy from the equal pay requirement based on a recognized justification. We’re talking about things like seniority system, merit system, a system that measures earnings, by quality or quantity of production, or a bona fide factor other than sex such as education, training, experience. Let’s see, there was one other part of this. The employer has to establish. It kind of shifts the burden on the employer almost to establish that this business justification for unequal pay is accounted for the entire wage discrepancy that exists and also was reasonably relied upon by the employer. If anyone’s still following what I said…
NASIR: No, it’s a kind of subtle thing and so it’s not easy to follow, actually, because there was actually this rule of a business justification defense, basically. That’s been there, too. But the difference is, for example, you know, they made it clear that, okay, if there’s two people, similar work, but one is senior to the other, then them being seniors is a business justification for giving them a higher salary. Now, that’s fine but, in the past, let’s say that you have two people – a woman that’s been there for five years, a man that’s been there for six years – same job but, because of that extra year, he’s being paid double salary – that may not make sense under the new law because the entire wage discrepancy has to be justified in the sense that maybe that more senior male...
Nasir and Matt discuss the scandal involving an employee of DraftKings winning a contest for competitor FanDuel and why this has sparked a discussion on gambling and insider trading.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we have a huge problem because I have a list of articles that we’re covering but no title so I’ve no idea what we’re doing. Who was responsible for putting the title in? Matt, was that you?
MATT: Possibly. You know, I almost wrote something up there and then I didn’t. I usually just copy and paste from an article. So, this is big for you because you’re probably oblivious to…
NASIR: Oblivious?
MATT: Right now, what do you think is going on where you’re located? Are there any sports happening today?
NASIR: You know, what’s funny is – if he’s listening, it’s going to be funny – I was in the elevator with somebody today. He’s like, “Hey, are you going to watch the games tonight?” and I’m like, “What games?” Yeah, as a pure accident, I am aware that the Astros and the Texans are playing – not each other.
MATT: No, it’d be interesting.
NASIR: It would be interesting, and I saw a bunch of people wearing Texas jerseys out and I’m like, “Man, it’s kind of odd.” It’s like, not Sunday, and I realized it was a Thursday night game.
MATT: There’s a Thursday night game every week so the Texans are playing. That’s not that big of a deal but the Astros are in the playoffs. They won the other night in this weird one game wildcard. They’re actually playing right now as we record. I guess both of those games will be going on while we record but I’m guessing you probably can’t name one player on the Astros.
NASIR: Of course, I can name one player on the Astros.
MATT: I hope you Google and say someone who’s retired.
NASIR: Yeah. I mean, isn’t Scott Kazmir going to pitch Game 2 tonight?
MATT: Well, it’s Game 1 tonight.
NASIR: I mean, that’s what I mean. Oh, no, I meant he’s going to actually pitch Game 2.
MATT: It’s possible, yeah. It’s only funny because he’s been on the team for probably a couple of months because he got traded in the middle of the season.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, of course, I know. Actually, you know, I know we’re covering fantasy sports but, you know, fantasy football, I get, but fantasy baseball, with so many games per year, that’s too much.
MATT: That’s why I led into this sports-related question and I don’t know, I would assume they have some sort of baseball… Fantasy sports, we’re talking about specifically DraftKings and FanDuel which fantasy sports used to be you’d have a team, you’d pick your team, you’d basically go with that team throughout the year, adding or dropping players, making trades. These companies – and I think there are some more out there too but these are probably the two biggest ones – DraftKings and FanDuel – for football, it’s huge because basically what you do, from what I understand – I’ve never played – is you have an allotted amount of money of your salary or your payroll and you pick whatever players in the different positions and you have to come in under the payroll and there’s some contest every Sunday because there’s one game every week per team in NFL. You take the total points and they have this big contest and I think it’s either a million dollars or close to a million dollars for the first place every week.
NASIR: At least not FanDuel but…
MATT: DraftKings.
NASIR: Don’t they advertise a million dollars?
MATT: Yeah. I mean, I should know since there’s about a billion commercials between the two, if you watch any sports channels. So, here’s what happened. There was an employee who worked for DraftKings. Like I said, these are two different companies. He worked for DraftKings and I guess he’s privy to some information on, you know, who is selecting what players for this big contest and I’ll get to that ...
Nasir and Matt talk about JustFab's crazy valuation for a company that offerssubscription based clothes. They also get into topics of the evils of subscription model pricing and cancellation policies.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I would say you’re like the fashion guru of the two of us, wouldn’t you say?
MATT: Well, first of all, I knew you were going to say that. I was about to say something because I knew you were going there and, two, I would disagree with that. I think you’re more fashionable than I am.
NASIR: Well, no, that assumes that I’m making my own fashionable decisions. I would say that you make your own fashion decisions in a very fabulous way – just fab way.
MATT: Just fab? Okay. Now I got you because that’s what we’re talking about – JustFab which apparently is a start-up worth one billion dollars. I’d never even heard of it so it’s kind of crazy how it can be worth that much. I guess I also don’t buy any clothes or anything like that online.
NASIR: But you’re right. There shouldn’t be anything worth a billion dollars that we haven’t heard about. That’s just wrong.
MATT: Yeah. Well, I think we can explain why they’re worth so much with the kind of their business practices and it all kind of stems from… it sounds like, well, there’s a bunch of different things going on with them but one of the things is this subscription model that they kind of lock these customers into but, you know, just going back a bit about the history of the company, I mean, it looks like they started off more so with diet pills and wrinkle creams, using free trials, and then locking people, and this is something that’s not new to them. That’s why, any time I see a free trial, I’m always hesitant and I rarely ever actually sign up for it. If I do, I make sure that it doesn’t automatically roll into an automatic reoccurring subscription because that’s when you get locked in and end up having to pay and you forget about it and that’s a lot of money out of your pocket for something that was supposed to be a free trial. That’s what they started doing here with these diet pills. Eventually, they moved on to more fashion clothing items, things like that. But then, they did a couple of curious things and I’m not even fully sure how exactly this works. It’s a subscription model to buy something like shoes. They pay for the subscription model. This one person was saying, “I thought I was getting a good deal on shoes and I didn’t realize that I was signing up for a subscription that would be difficult to cancel. I was trying to buy one pair of shoes. Instead of that, I got signed up for a VIP club which charges me $40 every month,” and basically, you know, it was apparently difficult for this one person to get out of it. They just tried to do a one-time transaction and ended up getting caught up into a month-to-month – or I assume month-to-month – at least some sort of subscription where it probably took them a while to get out of. I’m sure there was long times of notice you had to give before terminating the subscription, things like that. And so, do that with one person, okay; do that with a lot of people, I think that’s how you kind of get to that one billion dollar mark.
NASIR: Yeah, the subscription model for products and services, it’s in every business now. I mean, pick any service – whether it is transportation to selling any kind of products online – there’s a subscription for that. I think one of the most famous ones is that razor club, right?
MATT: Dollar Shave Club.
NASIR: Dollar Shave Club or whatever. I think they seem to be one of the most successful – well, I don’t know compared to JustFab or not. But I think the problem with it – and I don’t believe the other subscription models do this – is that you only have a five-day window to cancel.
The guys kick off the week by discussing why the Federal Aviation Administration shutdown a startup trying to be the Uber for flights and how the company is trying to fight back.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Hello! Welcome. That’s how I’m going start to our podcast from now on. No, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I was thinking, like, I feel like I’m starting a phone call so I have to say hello and you have to say hello.
MATT: Does that happen on a phone call? Both people say hello? I think it’s just one, right?
NASIR: No, I don’t know. I thought you say hello and the other person says hello back, no? I guess that doesn’t happen.
MATT: You call me, I would say, “Hello,” and you wouldn’t go, “Hello.” You would say…
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: At least I don’t think so. I guess you could.
NASIR: I may start doing that but it might get confusing and they may think it’s a question like, “Are you there?”
MATT: In the days of answering machines, the best one I ever came up with was, you know, it would ring and then there must have been a beep or else it wouldn’t work but the answering machine would start and I would just say, “Hello?” and I would wait, like, ten seconds, and then I would say, “Sorry, we’re not here right now…” you know, whatever, and so they would be like, mid-sentence into talking because they thought someone was answering.
NASIR: Those were the worst. So, you were one of those guys, huh?
MATT: Unfortunately. I mean, I guess you could do it with voicemail, but I think there’s too many beeps and noises nowadays where I think it wouldn’t work.
NASIR: Yeah. I remember I used to, on voicemails on cell phones, I would get caught on that too with people like you.
MATT: Most people text nowadays so phone calls are a thing of the past.
NASIR: I usually text “hello” first. “Hello! Are you there?”
MATT: That’s a good way to start and then I write back, “Hello.”
NASIR: And then, I start talking. “How are you?”
MATT: So, I don’t know if you’d heard about this. I hadn’t heard about this company prior to reading some of these stories or seeing this lawsuit.
NASIR: No, I haven’t. For some reason, I thought it probably exists because it’s almost obvious now but I didn’t know the actual company.
MATT: I’m assuming they’re called Flytenow. That seems like that makes sense but…
NASIR: Well, I’m pretty sure they just misspelled “flight.”
MATT: Problem number one.
NASIR: But I do think that’s how it’s pronounced.
MATT: Well, that’s how they were able to go under the radar for a little bit before the FAA shut them down. Maybe they were just searching flight-based companies. So, Flytenow, it’s an I guess you could call it a flight sharing company – something like Uber or anything in the sharing community is obviously really big right now.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: The difference being that a lot more people have driver’s licenses as opposed to a pilot’s license so it’s a little bit different.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: How it worked and I believe it looks like it is still up and running. Is it still up and running?
NASIR: Well, it seems like their website’s up and running but then, on some of their releases, they say they have suspended operations. Maybe their marketing is such that they haven’t. 7
MATT: I mean, just getting to that, they started this company, this flight-sharing company where basically pilots and non-pilots could get together and go from one destination to the next and possibly a round-trip too but just essentially sharing the costs of that so kind of an everybody wins situation. The Federal Aviation Administration, the US government agency, basically said, “Well, this is unacceptable,” and they shut it down. That’s why I was wondering about whether it was still up and running or not. They shut the website down but the site is operating. I haven’t tried to book a flight to see if it actually – ...
Nasir and Matt talk about a judge in New York awarding a business owner $1,000 as a result of a bad Yelp review left by a disgruntled customer. They also discuss a recent lawsuit appeal made against Yelp and how Yelp determines what reviews are hidden.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And someone keeps calling me while I’m doing this podcast. Third time and it’s from North Carolina. I don’t know who it is. I don’t know anyone from North Carolina.
MATT: Well, it’s not who we’re talking about today because it’s not in North Carolina.
NASIR: Okay, good.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: That was my first thought – they were trying to call us, they’ll talk about them, which would have been a good sign – that means we have a good story.
MATT: Well, I don’t know. I don’t know which side of this story would… I guess probably the reviewer. Actually, I don’t know. I don’t know which side would want us to talk about this story less. We can decide later but, basically, here’s what happened. Woman contacted this company, Mr Sandless, to refinish the floors in her living room and dining room for $695 which, depending on what they did, that’s actually a really good price.
NASIR: Yeah, I think so.
MATT: I would take that up and, of course, how much space there is, but it seems like a good deal.
NASIR: Yeah, that probably matters most but yeah.
MATT: So, she wasn’t satisfied with how the work went. She, of course, does what a lot of people do nowadays and went on Yelp and posted a review. It wasn’t that favorable for the business, used some words like “scam” and “robs customers,” “scam liar bleep something.” I don’t know if she actually edited it out herself or they just did that in the article.
NASIR: I think it says “scam liar…” I don’t know.
MATT: I know what it’s saying. I don’t know if the article edited it or if she edited it.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: If you write something obscene, you know, usually that’s grounds for having it taken down but, anyway…
NASIR: I think Yelp’s policy is they don’t allow foul language in there so the reviewer herself might have edited it.
MATT: That’s my guess. So, she posts this and, you know, there’s different ways to resolve these issues but she ends up getting sued by the company she hired to do the work and the worst part is, for her, that the judge found that she’s liable for $1,000 because some of the words she used – like “scam,” “con artist,” “robs,” – implies that the actions were criminal wrongdoings rather than someone who just normal breach of contract. This was in Staten Island so a very isolated case, isolated jurisdiction, but it’s very interesting that a judge would rule, you know, decide: “Actually, the business gets $1,000 because this poster is insinuating that there was criminal acts that were done.” Obviously, there’s nothing criminal here. Well, based on what we know.
NASIR: And I think this lady is appealing or I don’t know how practical that is, that seems ridiculous to me that she’s appealing, just pay the $1,000 but, you know, I think every judge in the country, with the same facts, at least they should rule in the same manner – obviously, no judge is perfect – but that’s what I think should happen. But let’s think from the reviewer’s perspective for a second. I hate doing it but let’s do it. You know, using a word like “scam,” “liar,” and things like this is very hyperbolic, obviously.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But so is, when you say, “Oh, I’m going to kill you!” et cetera, like, everyone should know, you can’t say those things, right? Even hyperbolically, you can’t say it, especially in writing. Everyone knows, when you put it in writing – whether it’s in an email or online review – it can be viewed much more differently. So, even if she meant that, when she says it’s a scam, liar, or whatever, she’s not necessarily saying that she was scammed ...
The guys discuss a wedding venue that took deposits for weddings that were set for dates after the venue was going to close. They also discuss return policies and good customer service.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And here we are today once again. We missed a whole week. But you didn’t record. I thought you were going to record by yourself or with your imaginary friend.
MATT: I did, but it was so bad that our editor refused to actually edit it and put it up.
NASIR: Oh, okay.
MATT: We’ll do the thing that the Wu Tang Clan did and put out one version of it of a CD that sold for $5 million or something crazy like that.
NASIR: I think that’s a great idea.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But for right now it’s in the archives.
MATT: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that’s what they did. They took something that was twenty years old or something like that and only produced one version and had an 88-year copyright on it and all this nonsense.
NASIR: Very good.
MATT: Well, speaking of nonsense – let’s see – I’m sure that probably applies.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I would say that probably one of the most… People say the most important day – but I would say probably one of the most worrisome days – I mean, I guess I wasn’t too worried but I think a lot of people that put time and money into weddings, it’s probably one of the most stressful days they’re going to encounter just because so many things have to go right and everyone wants everything to be perfect and lots of people show up, everyone you know, things like that. So, what if you put a deposit down on a wedding venue but the wedding venue didn’t exist by the time you had your wedding? Do you think that would be a problem?
NASIR: For me? No. I mean, I’m pretty resourceful. But, for most people, yes, of course, it would be.
MATT: Yeah. That’s basically what happened here and this was in Washington State. There was a bunch of couples. I mean, it was more than just one because I believe it was a bunch of them on this case here, but a bunch of couples put down money for this venue for wedding receptions. The problem is the people that operated the venue knew it was going to be shutting down but took the deposits anyway. I think these people probably found out prior to the wedding actually taking place because the venue shut down. I mean, maybe not for the ones right away, but for the ones down the road a little bit of notice, but still they took the deposits knowing that they weren’t going to be operating whenever that wedding date was set and probably what happened was the couples were more upset with the fact that they have to scramble and find another venue than the money side of it, but then, of course, the money side of it came into play as well and there was a pretty hefty default judgment for this venue that didn’t even show up to the hearing.
NASIR: What’s interesting, the reason they didn’t actually return these deposits is they depended upon this clause in their agreement which is basically force majeure which is a fancy word. I think it’s French but, for some reason, attorneys still use it. I’m sure it may have a Latin root of some sort which a lot of legal terms come from but usually it means some kind of act or force that’s outside the control of the parties. Usually, the legal term of “act of god” or some kind of war or riot or things like that – fire, hurricane, things like that – come into play which is why, apparently, what the company first did is they sent out an email basically saying that there was some kind of electrical fire therefore the venue is not available. We’re laughing because, later on, they found out that fire story was bogus and an email was later sent that says, “This was not a problem with the building. It was the landlord who chose to end our lease, ending our business.
Nasir and Matt close out the week by talking about the woman that was refused a haircut at a barbershop because itwas described as a men's only business.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and sometimes we cover haircuts as well.
NASIR: That was a great lead-in to our story which is our barber’s episode, actually – our annual barber gratitude episode of the year. September is haircut month, I believe.
MATT: I don’t know if you did this on purpose.
NASIR: First of all, I do everything on purpose, unless I do it on accident and it’s not good.
MATT: So, the term “barber,” I’ve heard people say that A”barber” is only for people that cut men’s hair. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.
NASIR: I think that’s the implication.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: When someone says “barber” or “barber shop,” they’re referring to a male – not necessarily a male haircutter but a haircutter for men.
MATT: See, I never know because you’ll hear “hair cutter” or “hair stylist.” I never know what to say so I just say “the girl that cuts my hair.” It always sounds awkward, but that’s the only way I know how to describe it.
NASIR: I always say “the person that cuts my hair” because who knows if it’s a man or a woman?
MATT: You don’t see gender or you’re better than I am.
NASIR: What I say is just “the animate object that cuts my hair, just in case it’s a robot.”
MATT: Yeah, anyone that listened to our last episode, you went into, after your Bank of America experience, you went to a virtual haircutting spot where it was just a person on a camera and they robot-cut your hair.
NASIR: Or they directed me how to cut my own hair.
MATT: That’s be impressive. So, I didn’t even look to where this was located. Oh, Pennsylvania.
NASIR: Of course. It’s in the title but okay.
MATT: Yeah, I didn’t look at the title. We have this self-described “high-end gentleman’s barbershop” – at least it’s how it’s described on its website – and, basically, long story short, they had a woman who came into the barbershop to get a haircut, specifically a fade, and she was turned away because they said that – and the funny part is the person that turned her away was a woman – they only cut exclusively men’s haircuts. It was funny because it was a woman who turned this woman away but, like they said, “we are a gentleman’s barbershop. We only cut men’s hair and you will not be able to get your hair cut here.” It’s kind of a slap on the wrist, a $750 fine which I guess adds up for haircuts, but I think they did pretty well with that. I mean, if that’s what the fine is, I think they can handle that.
NASIR: Yeah, of course, they can handle it. Well, actually, I had a barber tell me, it’s like, you know, he happened to be male and obviously trained. Actually, no, she was female. Now that I remember who told me this, she was saying that a lot of stylists are not trained to cut men’s hair. I mean, apparently, there’s a better market or more money in styling women’s hair than men’s, but a lot of times, when they go to training and whatever school they go to – barber school or what-have-you – they spend very little time on learning how to cut men’s hair and I think, for our purposes, I think, you know, physically, the heads are the same but, just from a perspective of the types of haircuts that men get versus women, I think that’s what we’re talking about here.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: It goes to this concept of why this particular woman went to this gentlemen’s barbershop because she wanted to get a fade which was more traditionally for a men’s style haircut so it kind of fits that kind of concept that you’re going to the barber that is trained in that kind of type of haircut.
MATT: Yeah. I mean, not to generalize or do any sort of stereotyping but, typically, men’s haircuts are shorter.
NASIR: That’s so sexist.
Nasir and Matt discuss the rise of telecommuting in the workforce and relay some pros and cons for both employees and employers.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha, where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. Welcome to our midnight episode.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. That was an old school introduction by you.
NASIR: Well, yeah, I mean, I feel like I’m going back in time with how late we’re recording this.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I’m actually half-asleep right now.
MATT: Which half?
NASIR: Well, my legs are in my bed in pajamas right now and I’m just yawning like crazy.
MATT: That would be pretty sad if you were actually recording a podcast like that.
NASIR: Practically. I went home, had dinner, changed, and then came back to the office in shorts and a t-shirt. Well, that’s what I do for you guys, just to produce quality episodes.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Today, we’re talking about telecommuting, telecommuting… what are we talking about? I’m so off, I’m sorry.
MATT: You said it twice – telecommuting.
NASIR: Yeah, telecommuting. Yeah, exactly. There is a trend. Let’s face it, this has been going on for a while of moving your workforce to a telecommuting workforce or select employees that may request it in doing so and the legal implications of that and so forth.
MATT: Yeah, you did mention it’s a trend. I saw some numbers somewhere which dated a couple years back – obviously the increase. Obviously, when technology gets better and people have different tastes with things, I mean, it’s just bound to happen. I’m sure it’s like all things – employers, it’s just something they need to get used to and, once they get used to it, then yeah. If it makes sense for the employees they’re asking to telecommute, then great.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Or it could be great. I mean, from the employer perspective, they might think, “Oh, this is great. I free up more space in the office. It’s one less thing to worry about.” But it actually could be quite the opposite and it could actually end up being more work for the employer having an employee work from home.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, no doubt. Obviously, the reason there is a trend is because of technology. I mean, that’s the driving force behind it and, sometimes, like you said, it can be an advantage but I think a lot of times, employers forget that these telecommuters are still employees so the rules of creating a safe work environment and issues with meal periods, breaks, overtime still apply. But, you know, speaking of technology, and this kind of relates to what we’re talking about, you know, what is actually telecommuting? Because, usually, we think telecommuting is working from home but I went to Bank of America today and so I walk in, I’m trying to find where the actual tellers are and I can’t find them. There’s a kiosk in the center of the room and it’s this woman and she’s, like, welcoming and I’m, like, trying to figure out where to go and I’m like, “This isn’t a normal Bank of America, is it?” and she’s like, “No, it’s not,” and she kind of directs me to this big computer system that’s waist-high and I look down and it’s a screen with someone staring at me with this Bank of America background logo and apparently it’s a real person and she’s probably basically telecommuting from wherever she’s filming from and has a camera on me and is basically performing as a bank teller. It was a very surreal, weird experience. I wanted to bring my wife just to come and look at this amazing branch of Bank of America. I thought it was neat. I don’t know.
MATT: Knowing your wife, I’m sure she wouldn’t have a blast getting dragged to a bank to check out a person on video.
NASIR: I literally got on my phone. I didn’t do it and she probably is glad I didn’t. I got on my phone to text her about it but don’t text and drive.
MATT: You didn’t mention that the Bank of America was on space or somewhere in the future,
The guys go with deuces wild in an episode discussing whySoulCycle is being accused of "robbing customers" by selling certificates that are used to purchase classes.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our Wednesday episode, my second favorite next to Monday’s episode.
MATT: Deuces wild today – 222.
NASIR: Wow! 222nd episode, that’s amazing.
MATT: I wonder if we can make this episode 2:22 or 22:22.
NASIR: Or can we somehow come up with an excuse to make it another clip show, the 222.
MATT: Probably, it makes the most sense.
NASIR: Probably. Let’s do 22:02 or 22.2 minutes, that is difficult.
MATT: Yeah. Still, even if we tried, it probably wouldn’t work out, but we’ll see what happens after we’re done recording and see where it’s at. We’re going to talk about this company, SoulCycle. I guess it’s in the process of an IPO or registering, right?
NASIR: Yeah, it’s registered. It hasn’t come out yet. Have you heard of this or no?
MATT: You know, I have because it’s pretty popular in LA.
NASIR: I’ve heard of the cycling classes and stuff like that but I’ve never heard of SoulCycle specifically.
MATT: I’ve heard of a couple companies or a couple of businesses, yeah, that are this and it was either this one or something similar to it. It was probably this one if it’s this popular and, you know, about to go public. There was the class action lawsuit that was filed pretty recently, I believe – August 25th.
NASIR: Yeah, August 25th.
MATT: At least by when we’re recording this. This class action lawsuit that was filed and they took it a little bit vicious basically saying that the company robs customers by requiring them to buy certificates for classes with unreasonably short expiration periods. One example in particular, this customer in California paid $30.00 for a future class which probably is a rip-off but that’s fine. $30.00 for a cycling class that she basically couldn’t end up using because, like she was saying, the expiration time was unreasonably short and I think they give some more details.
NASIR: I think, for one class, it’s like 30 days or something to that effect.
MATT: Single classes expire within 30 days – that’s not unreasonably short by any means, but anyways. A series of five classes expires within 45 days – that’s what? Every nine days. Still, plenty of time to use that. That’s kind of what they’re hanging their hat on and I guess the bigger thing is a couple of other aspects of it, too. One, they’re saying it violates the Credit Card Accountability and Disclosures Act. None of the packages available are longer than a year. They were making the argument that these certificates which are the words of SoulCycle – not even the customer’s – these certificates are gift certificates which we’ve discussed before are not allowed to have expiration dates shorter than five years under the law.
NASIR: And, by the way, it’s funny that this came out because, literally two weeks ago, I was almost about to go with my wife to one of these things but, from what I know, you have to reserve ahead of time and that’s kind of one of the allegations I believe too was that, even if it’s 30 days in theory, what if there’s no space available because it’s so busy and so forth, or it’s so hard for you to plan ahead of time and so reserving last minute may not work for you, and then on top of that you have this possible statutory violation for the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility Act which has specific requirements and how gift certificates work. Of course, the question is: “Is this a gift certificate?” But pretty much it meets the definition. I mean, they can call it whatever they want – a voucher or a ticket or what-have-you – but it seems to fit that definition where you’re buying something in the future. I mean,
The guys discuss the lawsuit filed by PhantomAlert against Waze concerning accusations of data scraping a database.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And here we are today on another episode. Today’s Monday – my favorite episode day, second to Wednesday.
MATT: In the top two.
NASIR: Yeah, top two of the week.
MATT: Well, that’s good. You’re the one that kind of discovered this.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Were you familiar with it beforehand?
NASIR: Actually, it’s funny enough, how I found out about this, I happened to look at Google Maps and I was navigating somewhere and it said that there was a traffic incident reported by Waze and Waze is kind of like a navigating app but it’s really cool on road trips because what it’ll do is it’ll tell you if there is an accident in front of you or if there is a cop, a speed trap, and how it works is that you can actually report – like, if you see a police officer, you can say, “Okay, I just saw a police officer,” and hit a button and then it’s basically reporting it to the app and now everyone else sees it and so now there’s this kind of social aspect to reporting the traffic and different incidences or even attractions and so forth. And so, their data became so valuable because of the users that Google Maps actually acquired them for their data, of course, to integrate within Google Maps. Those of you who use Google Maps pretty regularly, you’ve already noticed in the past six months how much more information you have as far as traffic data. I remember in San Diego, it used to show those red, yellow, and green lines for traffic data only on highways because that’s the only way it had sensors. If you were in another city that wasn’t as advanced, you would have no traffic data whatsoever. But, now, you have traffic data on side streets and pretty much every street that has enough people based upon this kind of reporting data from Waze and other sources as well.
MATT: I think that’s pretty common. At least I’m one of the few people that uses – or at least I feel like I am – that have an iPhone and use the actual Maps app that comes on there. I mean, people complain about it all the time. I never have problems with it. It works just fine for me.
NASIR: I think it had problems in the beginning but that’s it, you know, because I think when Apple decided to, if you recall, I think at one point they said, “Okay, we’re going to not list Google Maps on the store at all,” and they had some backlash with that so I think it was more of a PR thing that anything else.
MATT: Yeah, and I guess Waze, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam, you let people know so, maybe down the road, when you’re trying to decide where to go, someone might do the same for you.
NASIR: Well, what’s neat about it is, if you have the program running – I think this is how it works – it’ll actually record how fast you’re going and things like that so it can actually record average traffic pace.
MATT: Yeah, that’s what I was trying to figure out. Is that what all these little weird creatures are that look like Kirby?
NASIR: Yeah, Kirby, from Nintendo, I believe.
MATT: Is that what these things are?
NASIR: Uh, I guess. They’re basically little dialogue bubbles with smiley faces on it, if you can picture that, if you’ve never seen them before.
MATT: Yeah, but some of them are Kirbys and then there’s like a dog. Anyways…
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: There’s Waze and there’s another site called Phantom Alert which looks to be a similar thing. one of the problems I have with them is it’s like, “Oh, DUI checkpoint.” It’s like, “Well, if someone should get a DUI, we don’t need to be telling people.
NASIR: Yeah, speeding is one thing, but DUI traps are a different thing, that’s true.
MATT: You’re causing more harm than you are doing good by letting people avoid DUI checkpoints. Anyway,
Nasir and Matt talk about the difference between a delivery fee and a tip and why a New York Pizza Hut may owe its drivers some money. They also discuss how the minimum wage increase has affected tipping.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our annual pizza episode which we celebrate every month.
MATT: Annual. What’s the word for…?
NASIR: Monthly?
MATT: Yeah, I mean, like, bimonthly two, trimonthly…
NASIR: Biannually?
MATT: I don’t know. What’s twelve?
NASIR: Twelvely? N, that’s not right at all.
MATT: Sure there’s a word for it. We’ll figure it out before the end of the episode. I’ll look it up when you’re saying something or vice versa. Yeah, you’ve been wanting to talk about… we’ve been scouring the interwebs for a pizza-related legal story for a month now because you really want to talk about it and then we had some that’s at least a little bit and it deals with Pizza Hut which I know we talked about before too but this is a pretty interesting thing that happened. This was in New York. What happened here was a couple of delivery drivers – and then it looks like it might turn into class action lawsuit, or at least that what they’re discussing right now, the possibility of it but – two delivery drivers for Pizza Hut are suing the company, claiming that delivery fees – and I’m using the word “delivery fees,” we’ll get into this but – the tips versus delivery fee is an issue and we’ll get into that but they’re saying that these delivery fees should be money that goes to the delivery drivers and instead company or the employer – aka Pizza Hut – is keeping them. What is exactly is happening? You call in to Pizza Hut, you order your whatever, and they say, “All right, delivery… “
NASIR: Wait, wait, wait… what do you order?
MATT: I don’t know I haven’t been to Pizza Hut in a while. I like pepperoni jalapeno is pretty good. I think that was the Philip Rivers thing. Did you see that? Not to get too far. You know Philip Rivers?
NASIR: No. Yeah. I know Philip Rivers, yeah, quarter back of the San Diego Chargers.
MATT: Yes, he got a big contract a couple of weeks ago, making him one of the highest-paid players guaranteed money wise – like, just an insane amount of money. He was at the press conference and they were like, “Well, what did you do with the money? What did you do after you found out?” He was like, “Well, I guess I’m Domino’s, Domino’s Pizza.” It was like, “Okay. Like, what you get?” He’s like, “Oh, pepperoni and jalapeno and black olive is my choice.”
NASIR: Wait, was it a commercial or was it a press conference?
MATT: This was his actual press conference. They asked him what he did to celebrate he said he ordered Domino’s.
NASIR: That’s funny!
MATT: I guess he also has like eight kids or something crazy like that so maybe it makes sense.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But anyways, that’s what I’d get. Pepperoni jalapeno is pretty good but, man, you got me off- track now. Okay. You call Pizza Hut, you get this and they say, “Pick up or delivery?” You say delivery and they say, “All right. Well, there is a delivery fee of $3.00 or whatever it is.” I don’t know the actual amount.
NASIR: I think it was $2.00 and now it’s $3.00, I think.
MATT: Okay. So, you say yes and then pizza’s made, delivery guy or girl goes out to deliver the pizza and some people might look at that and be like, “Oh! I already paid the delivery fee. I don’t need to tip. This is the tip.” While others say the delivery fee is something or the tip is something that’s on top of the delivery fee. You probably wouldn’t know this unless you delivered pizzas like I did but it’s something a lot of people probably just don’t even know about. What happened here – in New York at least – they distinguish between “delivery fee” and a tip or gratuity and so the delivery fee can b...
Nasir and Matt revisit the Ashley Madison scandal for a third time to discuss data breaches, class action lawsuits, and fraudulent accounts.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: Did you say Nasir Pasha?
NASIR: No, I said Nasir Pasha.
MATT: Well, I’m Matt Staub, but it sounded like you said Sir Pasha.
NASIR: Yes, Nasir Sir Pasha.
MATT: You’ve reached another level of royalty, I guess.
NASIR: I was at one level of royalty but I got to the next level of royalty.
MATT: Yeah, you were at one then you went to two.
NASIR: Oh, very good. Well, life is short, Matt. You should have an affair and then get caught with it.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: That’s my advice.
MATT: They cancel each other out so then you’re at square one.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly.
MATT: Well, I think that’s what a lot of men were trying to do. Well, let me step back. I don’t think any men were trying to get caught but a lot of men were.
NASIR: But, in a way, were they though? They weren’t; they were just asking for it, no?
MATT: No, they were asking for it, but we’re talking about the Ashley Madison stuff again just because we have to because there are so many things going on.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But I don’t see how any reasonable person could sign up for that and be like, “Yeah, this could definitely work out.” I mean, I don’t think they were expecting this massive leak of information or all the accounts that got signed up.
NASIR: No.
MATT: Just who are the people that were signing up with their work account?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Why would these people ever do that? I don’t really understand it.
NASIR: Exactly. There’s a lot of issues here and hopefully we get to cover it all. One of the main things that these class action lawsuits that are coming out now, there’s one in California that’s pretty big and another one in Toronto – that’s where the company is based – and they’re suing them – not only Ashley Madison but the parent company as well. Basically, if you paid $19.00, you would get your data deleted. Apparently, they were doing some of it, but there were some accounts according to the California lawsuit that weren’t scrubbed. But, if you look at even what they did purport to scrub, in the raw data that was released, they don’t quite delete the whole email address; they just delete the first part of it which is pretty strange. And then, second, apparently, they also include the GPS location of where you’re at and what your likes and dislikes are so it is anonymized to a certain degree – at least the default is – but, even then, they say that there were some accounts that weren’t deleted at all or somehow their personal information was still identifiable.
MATT: Yeah, which is not surprising because that seems like how everything was run with this company from the get-go. I mean, one thing I thought that was funny that came out was, you know, they advertised this 70 to 30 split male-to-female which isn’t too great but, you know, it’s still decent.
NASIR: Believable.
MATT: Yeah, but after all this information’s been coming out, they’re saying it’s more akin to a 95 to 5 split with the 5 percent of females pretty much not even using the account.
NASIR: And then, 50 percent of that 5 percent were actually men.
MATT: Yeah, I mean, we don’t know for sure yet but what’s believed is this is what happens and I think there’s pretty good evidence of it is that Ashley Madison was just creating these fake female accounts to ramp up the numbers and now that’s just one of the many deceitful things that this company did.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Now, I mean, it’s one thing to have the data hacked into and all dumped out but, you know, that’s one problem. But now they’re really digging into the company and seeing all these other fraudulent things that have occurred. I saw some pretty sizeable numbers. I mean, the class actions alone,
Nasir and Matt close out the week by discussing the fallout of Jared the Subway guy and how his sponsorship will impactthe company.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Eat fresh. Subway.
MATT: You got it.
NASIR: Sad story but we have to cover it.
MATT: Yeah. Well, probably not too much will happen between when we record and when this episode gets released. I think most of it has kind of fallen out. For those of you that don’t know, Jared Fogle, he’s definitely one of, probably the biggest spokesman. They have athletes all the time.
NASIR: They do, yeah.
MATT: But I think everybody knows who he is – the guy who lost over 200 pounds or something like that, you know. Basically, he was obese and would walk to Subway every day. Unfortunately, at my alma mater but that’s fine. He would walk back and forth every day, get whatever, I forget what the subs he got. He got a six-inch turkey sub for lunch and a foot-long veggie for dinner or something, I don’t know. Walked there and lost a bunch of weight, become famous. Well, he’s still going to be famous but he’s probably not going to be with Subway any time soon because he got dinged and he’s going to enter a guilty plea now – at least as of reading this – for child pornography charges. I think his foundation that he had, the guy who was running that I think got brought in for similar charges earlier in the year, maybe last year, tried to kill himself in prison, didn’t work.
NASIR: Yeah, if you read the details, I don’t really want to get into it because the details will just make you sick.
MATT: Pretty rough.
NASIR: But it’s not only child pornography but also illicit sexual conduct with a minor.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: At least that’s what he’s pleading guilty to but, even with the pornography that he had, apparently, it had to do with that founder. Anyway, that’s not the big point of all of this but just really sickening all around. But, nonetheless, I mean, what the heck do you do from Subway’s perspective? I mean, this guy, I mean, I think his net worth now – I don’t know now but at the top of his game – was around $15 million or so, according to the New York Daily News a few years ago. They were paying him quite a bit of money. You know, Subway has had huge success since then. I mean, they’ve had other successes with their $5.00 foot-long promotion and so forth but this guy was Subway, you know. If you asked who the spokesperson was, it would be Jared. Now, they had him do a pretty quick exit and they found, I think, when he was first arrested which was about a month ago is when they first heard about this and they ceased their relationship.
MATT: Yeah, and like you said, I mean, this happens all the time, it just happened with someone that – well, in Donald Trump’s case, he was more of a prominent figure.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: If you recall back to – I don’t even know how many years it’s been – I think 2008 if I call the Tiger Woods stuff.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s right. He lost sponsorships too but they brought them back, right, eventually?
MATT: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think Subway’s bringing…
NASIR: No, they’re not bringing him back. Well, Lance Armstrong lost a bunch of deals after they found out he admitted to doping or whatever the story is. I don’t remember.
MATT: Yeah, I’m thinking like Michael Vick and stuff too. But this is an instance where it’s one guy who I’m sure he probably actually has other or he had other sponsorships, but he’s basically known for being the sponsor of one company – not vice versa.
NASIR: I don’t think so. I don’t guarantee it but I bet you that Subway made an exclusive deal with him because, again, he was Subway.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I’ve had clients that have had celebrity sponsorships. It’s not an uncommon way for marketing, even for small businesses,
Nasir and Matt discuss a variety of topics the legalities of filming people for a reality TV show to releases to Shark Tank.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha, and you are listening to the best episode ever.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and I hope that’s correct or it turns out to be correct.
NASIR: Actually, I’m nervous about this episode because it’s about reality TV and it’s your favorite genre so I just don’t want to mess it up.
MATT: My favorite genre? Uh, I don’t know about genre. I mean, if sports is a TV genre, that’d definitely be favorite.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, sports.
MATT: I mean, after that, I like comedy more than… I think that’s very well-documented on it podcast.
NASIR: Do you know what the best show on television is right now? By the way, if my family’s listening, they already know the answer to this question because I say it all the time – best show on television, do you have a guess?
MATT: According to you?
NASIR: No, just period.
MATT: I can guess but it’s not going to be right.
NASIR: It’s a reality show and it’s a comedy show and the name of the show is Impractical Jokers.
MATT: Yeah, you’ve told me this before.
NASIR: I have told you this before – best show on television, hands down. Anyone who says otherwise, I will correct them. You can just let me know and I’ll correct you.
MATT: You know, you did tell me that before and I watched it and it was actually, I’d never seen it before, I just thought it was going to be really stupid and it was better than I thought. I wouldn’t go “best show” but…
NASIR: I don’t know. It’s the only show that I can just be like, put it on and just enjoy, you know. But we’re not here to talk about that – I want to but we’re not.
MATT: We’re not?
NASIR: No.
MATT: That’s all I prepared for. I had all these pranks ready. So, this show, I didn’t even look at… is it NY Med? Yeah, NY Med is a reality show and I’ve never seen it. I knew there was a Boston one that was similar that was on so it’s basically like a real-life ER or Grey’s Anatomy – except probably a lot less or probably a lot more realistic – but it’s this reality show called NY Med and it’s shooting footage of an emergency room essentially – or it was in this instance – and it actually caught some footage of someone in the ER, a patient, passing away and I guess that showed up on the show. Of course, they wouldn’t have obviously gotten the person who passed away’s permission but they didn’t get permission from the family or anyone. They just kind of put it in there and kind of went on with their business and I don’t think the family even knew they were shooting it until the video showed up on TV, I believe.
NASIR: No. Apparently, they just found out which is weird in itself, of course.
MATT: Yeah, I wonder why they were watching. So, they did some procedural of what’s happened so far. They sued ABC and the hospital and actually the judge has already dismissed that so they’re in appellate court in New York right now, state court.
NASIR: The faces I think were unrecognizable so people don’t actually know who they are. You know, if you’re in the medical industry, the first thing you’re thinking about is HIPAA which is a statute that basically protects the private information of patients. But one thing that everyone knows about HIPAA is that, if you de-identify the information – because HIPAA information or medical charts and so forth – that data becomes very valuable but, in order to share it, sometimes, what they do is they just de-identify the patient information by taking away the name and any kind of other identifiable information and then you can typically transfer it freely. There’s conditions to that but the point is that, in the reality show context, you put a little blurred face in there and then you should be good, and I think that’s where the court kind of came down to and where the...
The guys close out the week by talking about the Houston based restaurant that failed to make a donation to a local food bank and latertried to rectify the situation by running an unapproved fundraiser.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the business news. My name is Nasir Pasha and also joining us…
MATT: Is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Very good. We just got done with Restaurant Week a couple of weeks ago in Houston. When’s Restaurant Week in San Diego? I can’t remember.
MATT: There’s a full-blown restaurant week and then there is some sort of half restaurant week or something or a pre-restaurant week but it’s not really… I don’t know. But I never participated because I don’t eat desserts.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, it’s always like a three-course. I’m sure everyone’s aware. I usually go to restaurants during Restaurant Week but never order the fixed menu.
MATT: The prefixed? Yeah.
NASIR: It’s usually at least a three-course meal, right? Sometimes it’s five or what-have-you, depending on the restaurant you go to.
MATT: Yeah. Usually, you’re looking at an appetite… like, an appetizer/starter, an entrée, and a dessert. And so, I’m not a big appetizer fan. I don’t eat desserts – period. For me, it doesn’t really make sense.
NASIR: Period?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I don’t eat desserts – question mark. I do eat desserts. Actually, it looks like San Diego Restaurant Week is coming in in a month. In fact, they have one month, seven days, two hours, thirty minutes, and four, three, two, one seconds.
MATT: By the time this episode comes out, it’ll be closer.
NASIR: Yeah. Why are we talking about this again?
MATT: We’re talking about it because, in your backyard, in Houston, have you been to the Sparrow Bar + Cookshop?
NASIR: No, it doesn’t sound like my cup of tea anyway.
MATT: Well, yeah, it does. I mean, you like cool, trendy places.
NASIR: I guess that’s true. I don’t like that it has a plus sign within the name. Like, how do you pronounce that? “Sparrow Bar plus Cookshop?” Just thinking about putting it into my Google to search for it or telling people, “Oh, meet us at…” I guess it’s just Sparrow and then it says Bar and Cookshop. Anyway…
MATT: It’s because you don’t like math so the plus sign, you’re confused.
NASIR: Yeah, there’s no equal sign. Where is the solution? If it gave me the solution, then I’d be fine.
MATT: Yeah. So, this Sparrow Bar + Cookshop put on or announced a $45.00 prefixed menu in August to help raise money for the Houston Food Bank. The only problem is this fell outside of the Houston Restaurant Week so people were thinking, “Well, that’s kind of weird. I mean, usually, we do this $45.00 prefix or whatever the prefix menu during Restaurant Week like everyone else does.” Then, people did some digging and found out that, back in 2013, there was supposed to be a donation made to the Houston Food Bank. There in fact was not a donation made so the belief was that this $45.00 prefix menu was to cover that donation from two years prior. Also, I guess there’s guidelines for the food bank and you can’t use a charity’s name without their permission and failing to disclose how much of the $45.00 will be donated – both of which SB+C failed to do, didn’t get permission, and did not disclose how much would be donated.
NASIR: What’s interesting is that, apparently, the person that wrote this article tried to get comment from the chef who apparently is some famous chef – or I don’t know if famous – she won Top Chef Masters Veteran, Monica Pope – it’s the person that owns it, I guess. But she was on vacation so she couldn’t comment. It’s hard to know exactly what happened here. All we know is that this Houston Food Bank didn’t actually receive any funds. By the way, Houston Restaurant Week is actually Houston Restaurant Weeks. Apparently, it lasts for like, I don’t know…
MATT: 52 weeks.
NASIR: It’s 52 weeks a year.
Nasir and Matt discuss how racism led to employees getting fired and another instance where a judge overturned a decision to terminate a racist employee.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Okay. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our program. I’m excited today because we get to talk about racism – my favorite topic.
MATT: Your favorite topic?
NASIR: Well, every podcast topic is my favorite topic.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: That’s how I justify that comment.
MATT: So, right off the bat, I’m a little curious about this story that we’re going to start with. I guess there was a manager at a Lowe’s in Virginia and they had an African American delivery truck driver and I guess assuming a white customer was not happy with the fact that the black driver was the one making the deliveries so that person requested that they have a white driver do the deliveries. My first question is – before we get too deep into it – like, how many deliveries from Lowe’s is someone getting where this is an actual issue? I don’t know if that’s going to be answered in this but that was my first question. And so, the customer makes the request in asking if someone else can be the delivery person that was white. When the manager of Lowe’s asked why and she said, “Because you’re black.”
NASIR: I think you’re misreading it.
MATT: Oh, that’s the manager.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s the manager, because actually what happened was some woman was I guess inside the store and I guess they knew beforehand because apparently she wouldn’t deal with any of the black customer service representatives or salesmen. And so, when she had a delivery, they already knew beforehand that she didn’t want any black delivery drivers for her particular delivery. For some reason, I picture an old, old woman but I suppose it could be young, too. That’s just I guess my image of it.
MATT: Now you’re running into age problems.
NASIR: Ageist?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Is it better to be a racist or to be an ageist?
MATT: I think it’s worse to be racist because, if you’re ageist, the older people are going to die off sooner than the…
NASIR: Wrong answer. They’re both equally bad.
MATT: Oh.
NASIR: It was a trick question.
MATT: That’s fine. I’m sticking with my answer.
NASIR: All kind of prejudice is wrong, Matt.
MATT: If you’re ageist and you’re against older people, eventually, you will become older presumably and it doesn’t work the other way where, if you’re against one race, you’re most likely not going to become the other race throughout time.
NASIR: You could be against younger people and you’re no longer going to be younger either so, even though you once were, it’s like you’ve transitioned out. It’s like, “Okay, I’m better than that now, I’m no longer five years old.”
MATT: Or maybe you’re just against anyone who’s not your age?
NASIR: Also very similar. Well, anyway, back to racism…
MATT: So, we had this incident with this customer and the manager – I mean, they say the customer is always right but I think this was one of those times where the manager has to step in and say something. I think it’s worth losing this one customer over this issue because the manager ended up going forward with it and, as a result, this manager – and I believe two others involved, right? – ended up getting terminated as a result.
NASIR: Yeah, and it’s weird. Of course, the conversation you were referencing is that conversation with the driver and one of the managers. It’s like, “Okay, well, why can’t I just go?” and this is according to the driver and he describes the manager as telling him that, “Oh, it’s because you’re black.” Of course, that’s probably the worst answer you can respond to that question. I kind of understand it because it’s like, you know, “This lady is being unreasonable or whatever. I just want to do my job.
Nasir and Matt close out the week by talking about the Indian restaurant in New York City that was fined for trying to hire an Indian waiter or waitress.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha and I’m hungry.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub and I was actually going to comment; I could tell that you were because you, you know, it was straight business when you ran through that intro. It’s not going to get any easier for you because we’re talking about a restaurant.
NASIR: And all these articles have nice pictures of Indian food on it.
MATT: What are they called? Above the fold?
NASIR: Yeah, like header image. I’m literally staring at that right now, by the way.
MATT: What is that dish?
NASIR: It looks like it’s a standard chicken tikka or masala or a buttered chicken masala. I’m not sure which.
MATT: I was thinking masala but I wasn’t sure. I don’t know. It’s not pizza so I don’t know.
NASIR: I’m no expert though.
MATT: It’s either pizza or other for me.
NASIR: I was looking for some pizza episodes for today.
MATT: We’ll try to bring one in next week. Anyways, we have this Indian restaurant and it put up an ad for an experienced Indian waiter or waitress. Okay. It did this in October 2013. And then…
NASIR: Wait. Wait, if you’re listening to this, pause and think about that and see if you can tell if there’s something wrong with that posting. By the way, it’s okay if you don’t get it because it’s not obvious.
MATT: So, we have an Indian restaurant. It looks like a pretty authentic Indian restaurant looking for an experienced Indian waiter or waitress. As a result, the city’s Commission on Human Rights went after this restaurant and ended up, well, the fine was actually initially bigger. It got pushed down. It went after it to fine them because of, I guess, the discriminatory way that they put up the ad in terms of asking for an Indian waiter or waitress. Now, they did say waiter or waitress which actually is an issue I guess that could also be brought up. You can’t just put waitress; you have to put wait person. Like, actor or actress to me is kind of the same thing. I don’t really, you know…
NASIR: Can a waitress be a waiter and a waiter not be a waitress? Kind of like an actor be an actress but an actress can’t be an actor or vice versa?
MATT: People in the industry that are female in the acting industry call themselves “actors” and not “actresses.” Actresses, I guess, refers to a lesser. But isn’t it “best actress” in the Golden Globes and all that?
NASIR: I thought so. Maybe there was a connotation to it that we’re not aware of?
MATT: I don’t know.
NASIR: I used to be an actor for about 26 years or so then I quit because it got too Hollywood for me.
MATT: You were in all of those movies.
NASIR: Yeah, all of those. We don’t need to name them though.
MATT: Yeah, you were in all the Rocky movies.
NASIR: That’s about the right age, right timing for 26 years.
MATT: Well, let me finish this up here. So, they hit them with a fine. The law doesn’t allow ads that discriminate based on national origin. It ends up going to hearing. The funny part is – or one of the funny parts are – that, by the time that this hearing happened, it ended up being a year since the business had closed. So, the business wasn’t even open. It’s a pretty ridiculous premise to begin with and I guess the judge felt so bad that they reduced the fine from $7,500 to $5,000 – still saying that there was a discriminatory ad based on national origin even though it was an authentic Indian restaurant looking for an Indian waiter or waitress.
NASIR: Yeah. Let’s first talk about this commission because this is something unique – the New York City’s Commission on Human Rights. That’s not something very typical but is specifically in New York City. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else equivalent.
Nasir and Matt discuss the National Labor Review Board's challenge of an employer's social media policy andthe reason why the employer was able to prevail.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And that is all. I’m going to stop talking now because I tend to just… you pause and then I get nervous and then I don’t know what to say.
MATT: You come in so excited and then it’s just stage fright. You’ve only memorized that first line.
NASIR: Exactly. No, I might as well just end the podcast. I don’t know what I’m doing. I need a script.
MATT: I don’t think it’d be as exciting if we read straight off a script. It’d probably be more factually accurate but…
NASIR: Probably, instead of like, “Okay, what are we covering today?” Well, what are we covering today? Social media policies, right?
MATT: Yeah, social media policies and I guess employer policies in general. It kind of springs off this social media policy case. It’s actually, well, I’m a little bit surprised. It’s usually that it comes down pretty harsh on employers. We’ll see if everyone can follow me on this to explain the procedure of how this case worked. The general council on the NLRB – National Labor Review Board, I believe – they challenged an employer’s social media policy saying it was unlawful – basically saying it was too restrictive, prohibited protected activity – essentially free speech it looks like. General accounts of NLRB challenges this policy as unlawful which then went in front of an administrative law judge which decided that the policy was in fact not unlawful. Then, it was reviewed by the NLRB that affirmed the ALJ’s decision that the policy was not unlawful. Long story short, this policy of Landry’s Inc…
NASIR: Is not unlawful lawful.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Is that what it is?
MATT: Yeah. You know, I was reading something written by an attorney the other day and it had so many just negatives in it. It was just impossible to read. Like, “Just use clear language.”
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: It was a court decision so it was even worse.
NASIR: That’s even worse, yeah, written by a lawyer, still.
MATT: I think it might be worthwhile for me to read this policy – at least this section because it’s not that long. We’ll let the listeners decide. “While your free time is generally not subject to any restriction by the company, the company urges all employees not to post information regarding the company, their jobs, or other employees which could lead to morale issues in the workplace or detrimentally affect the company’s business. This can be accomplished by always thinking before you post, being civil to others and their opinions, and not posting personal information about others unless you have received their permission.”
NASIR: It’s actually a very well-written policy, believe it or not, and it’s proven to actually withstand its criticism. By the way, Landry, I guess they operate Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurants which I think I’m only familiar with, they always seem to be on piers across the country – San Francisco, Seattle, I think they have one here in Galveston, Texas, too.
MATT: You’re familiar with it because of Forrest Gump, I would assume.
NASIR: Oh, well, yeah, obviously, but I’m familiar with it as a restaurant. What’s funny about this – oh, not funny, it’s just frustrating, actually – the NLRB general council, in my opinion, this policy is pretty well-worded and yet still they challenged it and it just goes to show you, like, it doesn’t even matter what the law is sometimes. You have to be ready to defend yourself when it comes to these employment matters, especially from the NLRB.
MATT: I agree with you too and I’m reading through the general council’s sort of thought process through this and I’m not surprised by the things that he highlighted. He had issues with the language referencing morale an...
Nasir and Matt discuss the settlement from a class action lawsuit involving Nike and Apple for an underperforming product.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I am Matt Staub.
NASIR: Right on cue. Did you see how I pointed to you? I was going to do the “three, two…” with the silent one and then for you to go.
MATT: Always helpful.
NASIR: No problem. That’s why I’m here – to make sure you’re on-time.
MATT: Who do we talk about today? Cecil, the Lion?
NASIR: No, poor Cecil.
MATT: Oh.
NASIR: They still can’t find the dentist. I guess the authorities went to his door and knocked on the door and then he didn’t come out. Like, literally that was the article I read. Like, they don’t know where he is. But, if you’re just going to his house and knock on the door, that’s probably not the best way to find him.
MATT: “We saw his car. We saw somebody walk in five minutes earlier but, when we knocked, nobody answered. So, you can only assume he’s not there.” Well, no Cecil, the Lion. But, we are going to talk about these FuelBands.
NASIR: Yeah, Nike Fuel.
MATT: Nike Fuel. Do you have one of these? Did you buy this?
NASIR: No, I didn’t buy that version. Nike Fuel’s actually been out for a while, but I did know people that used to have it and I think that my dad ended up buying one, eventually, but what’s goofy about it, is that he would just shake his arm – and I’ve seen other people do that – and basically it acts like you are moving or whatever so you could reach your goal pretty quickly that way.
MATT: Well, that’s probably why we’re talking about it and there was this class action settlement, and not only Nike but Apple was involved as well in this too. So, let me get to the class action part of it, I guess, the settlement terms. Basically, the agreement is, if you bought a FuelBand from January 2012 through June 2015, you are going to be entitled to either a $15.00 payment or a $25.00 gift card which reminds me, I never received any Red Bulls.
NASIR: Yeah, I haven’t either. Sometimes it takes time.
MATT: I haven’t moved. I’m still here. Red Bull, if you’re listening, I haven’t got my two Red Bulls that are probably going to be not tasting very good because it’s going to be so hot and bottom of the barrel Red Bull. Anyways, there is this class action settlement and it kind of centers around this false advertising claim essentially saying that the things that it’s supposed to do – the FuelBands are supposed to do like, track steps and count calories – actually didn’t do that very accurately and that comes as no surprise based on what you just told me that you essentially move your wrist around and you’re burning tons of calories.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. There’s plenty of these things now. I had the FitBit when it came out – well, actually, after it came out about a year or two ago – and then now I have a Samsung Gear Fit that goes really well with my phone. But, frankly, I mean, these are all pretty useless when it comes to accuracy. In fact, when I was buying mine, I remember to figure out what was the most accurate. People would take like five or six arm bands and wear them for the day and they’d all have different numbers. So, I guess, in theory, one of them could be accurate. But, most likely, they weren’t and I think the most important thing is consistency because, just the nature of measuring steps and distances, it’s not a complete science – you know, it’s not a ruler where you’re measuring something in that respect. But, the problem is that, when you’re selling something – in other words, okay, they settled, right? Nike and Apple, they say that they want to avoid litigation costs so let’s just get rid of these guys and settle this lawsuit and that’s well and good and that possibly may be the case but there could have been liability here because, think about it,
Nasir and Matt discuss the staffing agency that is being accused of negligent retention of an employee who embezzled funds with the company she was placed with.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha, here in Houston, Texas.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, in an undisclosed location, not in Houston, Texas.
NASIR: Undisclosed, in the middle of the desert of San Diego which is a desert, by the way.
MATT: You know, it has been pretty warm. Today was pretty warm. Rumors are there’s going to be some more rain which it rained a couple of weekends ago. It’s pretty rare but, yeah, it never really happens.
NASIR: By the way, I think we should start a tradition. Every Monday episode, let’s talk about the weather for five minutes before we start.
MATT: It always is you mention something and I’m just staring at the window as I’m talking and usually noticing what the weather is like as I’m recording. It’s just kind of how it happens.
NASIR: Well, my wife is there right now, enjoying the weather.
MATT: Oh, is she?
NASIR: Hello to her.
MATT: It’s a big city so I probably won’t see her.
NASIR: Oh, just keep an eye out. You may run into her.
MATT: I’ll keep an eye out.
NASIR: But everything’s going on in Texas.
MATT: We got a Texas story to start off here. There was a staffing agency and a company. The staffing agency placed a certain employee with this company and what the details of it are basically the staffing agency placed this – I believe it was an accountant, or at least I’m assuming such because it was dealing with funds – but the person that they placed with this company embezzled $15 million over eight years which doesn’t even really seem possible. I mean, if you’re generating a lot of income, then okay. But, still, for any business, that’s still a decent chunk of change. I mean, that’s what? A little under $2 million a year that this person was able to embezzle out of the company.
NASIR: But what’s weird is… I think this was a “she,” right?
MATT: Yeah, she.
NASIR: She was placed as a receptionist and then she was promoted to the head of accounting.
MATT: Not even Pam Halpert could get all the way to accounting. She went from receptionist to sales. Actually, not to get too far off-track but wasn’t it Kevin who came in for a receptionist position or something? Maybe even like janitor? And Michael’s like, “You know, I had a hunch so I hired him as an accountant.”
NASIR: Exactly, and I suppose the “head of accounting” – who knows exactly what that means of how big this company is but $15 million, obviously, how you lose that money and not notice it, I’m sure it was a large enough company for that to happen.
MATT: I would think so. And so, there was this big theft of $15 million essentially and what the company was saying was this was the staffing agency that’s at fault here because they should have conducted a criminal background check on this individual because, in this instance, she did have a prior theft record. I mean, I’m sure it probably didn’t amount to $15 million in over eight years theft issue but, still, nonetheless, there was a criminal background. And so, the company was saying the staffing agency failed to notify them of this individual’s criminal record. I guess, at some point, they discovered it down the road – and I’m not sure exactly what that was – but that was kind of the bulk of their argument and the first thing you’re going to think of was, “Well, what was in the agreement between the staffing agency and the company?” Because that’s probably going to give us a good idea of who’s ultimately going to be responsible for this.
NASIR: By the way, I have more information now. You know, Jacob, our law clerk helped us research this and he linked some old article from back in 2012 and I’m just like, “Why is this relevant?” and it’s because this is the exact same embezzlement. Apparently,
The guys close out the week but talking about the data breach on the second largest dating website and why we may not see the lawsuit you would expect.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha, the host and co-host of Legally Smart Sound Business dotcom – not dotcom, the podcast.
MATT: Host and co-host.
NASIR: And also joining me is Matthew Staub.
MATT: Exactly. Don’t even have to say it.
NASIR: And who are you?
MATT: You already said it.
NASIR: Well, I mean, I said someone’s joining me. No one knows who you are though.
MATT: Oh, Matt Staub. You said my name, too.
NASIR: Yeah, but what are you doing here?
MATT: I’m co-host, not host.
NASIR: Co-host of the podcast.
MATT: Exactly.
NASIR: By the way, how did you do research for today’s topic? Did you do it on your computer while you were next to your significant other?
MATT: No. Actually, I think you had sent me a link about this earlier in the week so I already knew about it. My wife had seen it because she browses Yahoo! top stores for some reason – the only person that goes to Yahoo!
NASIR: No, my wife does too. In fact, she already knew it as well. I’ll ask her to find out how she found out about it.
MATT: We were sitting there and she’s like, “Oh, there’s a site for cheaters.” It’s like, “Yeah, we talked about this on the podcast.”
NASIR: Don’t you listen and take notes.
MATT: We definitely talked about this.
NASIR: We barely mentioned it, yeah.
MATT: Yeah, because her point was like, “Why wouldn’t the spouse just create an account and see if their other spouse is on there?” I was like, “I don’t even know how it works, to be honest.” I mean, maybe that could work but I think it’s secret.
NASIR: Yeah, I assume it’s anonymous or something.
MATT: It has to be. But we’re talking about…
NASIR: Or is it?
MATT: Well, yeah, it has to be based on what we’re talking about now.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, Ashley Madison, I guess they classified as a dating site because it’s considered the second-largest dating site.
NASIR: No way? Second-largest?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I’m so surprised, actually.
MATT: Behind match.com, 37 million users.
NASIR: Wow. No way. I honestly cannot believe that. That’s crazy.
MATT: With more than 37 million members worldwide, Ashley Madison claims to be the world’s second-largest dating website, only match.com has more or is bigger.
NASIR: Wow.
MATT: Yeah, pretty new site. The problem now is that the site was hacked and whoever has hacked it – or whomever has hacked it – is threatening to reveal the information of the users which is going to be a problem because now all these adulterers are going to be revealed to the general public. I guess it’s going to do something that’s going to match the information to find out names and addresses, et cetera. I mean, I don’t know the details of the actual threatened hack but this could pretty much be a game-changer. It probably is already a game-changer for this site. I bet it’s probably ruined now.
NASIR: Yeah. I mean, this has been heavily populized, no?
MATT: Publicized.
NASIR: Publicized. Populized… Publicized in the media to the extent that pretty much even people that didn’t know about the site now know about the site but know it as a place that, if you want to cheat on your spouse, your information is not necessarily private. The most interesting part about this and I think where we’re kind of covering this is that Ashley Madison apparently told its customers that, okay, if you pay $19.00 then they’re going to completely erase your profile information. The implication of that is that, okay, well, if I pay this extra amount then that means that pretty much your information is protected and it’s pretty much deleted. I can foresee this where – I don’t know – maybe your subpoenaed or Ashley Madison’s subpoenas for its records to some kind of legal issue, legal dispute,
Nasir and Matt discuss the EEOC decision that may prohibit gender discrimination before Congress passes its own law.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: What’s going on, Matt?
MATT: Uh, doing pretty well. We’re in the weird phase of San Diego weather where it’s either gloomy or humid or both so it’s unenjoyable… I mean, it’s probably way worse for you.
NASIR: I know it rained last week and the only reason I knew it rained is because I got all these pictures as if it was some kind of miracle in San Diego which it practically was, I suppose.
MATT: I mean, the rain, that’s pretty rare bit there was lightning and thunder which is extremely rare for San Diego.
NASIR: Pretty commonplace here in Houston except I don’t think we’ve had rain in the last thirty days which is… I don’t know if it’s unusual for the time but unusual in general.
MATT: Well, I’d still probably take this weather over yours.
NASIR: Yeah, I think so. I think that’s established as far as weather – Houston versus San Diego. That’s a good court case.
MATT: Houston versus San Diego. They’re suing over…
NASIR: Better weather.
MATT: All right. Enough of lame legal jokes. We’ve got a pretty interesting topic.
NASIR: No, let’s talk about the weather some more, that’s usually a good topic.
MATT: Yeah, also a good podcast subject. So, this is a topic that I think is obviously going to get a lot more mention here in the upcoming probably years. Actually, I could see this even being… maybe not this specifically or at least a little bit – this could be a big issue even in like the presidential election coming up – possibly. I don’t know. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
NASIR: Absolutely, I think so.
MATT: We’re going to talk about it I guess the employee-employer context. We’re dealing with employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. What that community and other advocates are trying to do is lift this federal prohibition on employment discrimination against the – like I said – based on sexual orientation or gender identity. But there was a recent EEOC – Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – decision that possibly could have already made this a non-issue – or at least some people are saying. Basically it’s saying that this is already illegal on the grounds of Title 7. What this ruling was I think there was a three to two I believe panel decision. It kind of all centers around “the sex” in Title 7. And so, what does that really mean? I think they had mentioned it’s included transgender in the past but that’s kind of what we’re getting to and it’s not interchangeable with sex and gender necessarily but there was a decision that outlaws discrimination on the basis of sex and the panel ruled that the job discrimination against gays violate this against this Title 7 under the Civil Rights Act. I don’t think that made any sense.
NASIR: We’ll get it out by automatic translator here. I think, first, to really understand the EEOC’s reasoning, I think you have to kind of take a look at what Title 7 was and Title 7 is a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and basically it specifically provides that employers cannot discriminate based upon gender but also religion, color, race, national origin. But what’s interesting is that there’s been previous rulings held that even the association thereof of an employee – for example, if the employee is associated with a person of a certain race or color or religion, then you can’t discriminate on that basis. The EEOC takes that same kind of logic and they say, “Well, if the Title 7 does that, then it also applies to gender as well.” So, if you’re associating yourself through your spouse or your partner as a same-sex partner or spouse, then discriminating based upon that same reason is also prohibited.
Nasir and Matt talk about the lawsuitalleging Zillow of copyright infringement even though it has a licensing agreement to use certain photographs.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we are here to tell you about business and the law.
MATT: And, for some reason, it got a lot hotter where I’m recording from the last episode to this one, and I don’t know what exactly happened but I don’t really like it.
NASIR: I think it’s the excitement in the air. Actually, I think everyone’s feeling it right now. I mean, I think, as soon as people started playing this, people are feeling the heat – just the excitement of this episode.
MATT: It must be.
NASIR: I’m pretty sure.
MATT: We’ve definitely talked about Zillow before – I had to have think, right?
NASIR: Yes, it’s “wolliz” backwards.
MATT: “Willoz” – I’m very aware of Zillow but I was not aware of Zillow Digs which I guess is their home improvement site.
NASIR: I think it’s new.
MATT: It has to be – well, I’d have guessed it’d have to be. I’ve never heard of it at all.
NASIR: Yeah, I’m pretty sure, yeah.
MATT: Well, in the context of what we’re going to discuss, it would make sense if it was new, if they’re just now bringing issue of it.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, what is that issue? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s going to be a copyright infringement issue. Let me give a little backstory on this – not a personal backstory but a backstory for this thing. There’s a company called VHT?
NASIR: Yeah, I’m sure it stands for something but that’s what the name says.
MATT: Yeah. So, VHT and then, of course, Zillow. So, VHT is in the business of essentially having a huge database of real estate photos. I think more than 4 million real estate photos – kind of everything – home exteriors and interiors, a whole bunch of different photos. But they have a licensing agreement with Zillow which allows Zillow to use the photos that VHT has on their site – on the regular Zillow site – they’re allowed to use the photos for the purposes of marketing the properties for sale which makes sense because, I mean, I guess Zillow is a way to find information on just finding information on a property but also the ideas to see which houses are for sale and learn more about them – kind of an open MLS to some degree for non-real estate people. So, Zillow Digs is the home improvement site that they have which VHT was aware of but they’re saying that, you know, this new thing was supposed to be for home improvement. It’s more for marketing, things like that. VHT was concerned because they were saying, “Well, this isn’t really for our purposes that we agreed to of marketing the properties for sale. This is the purpose of selling advertising or for design elements that you’re using our photographs,” and it really hasn’t been too many. I think they only said a little over 300 of their photographs have been used so it’s not like we’re talking about a lot but it gets into the question of, because there is this licensing agreement, and I guess we would need to know who it was between, if it was between VHT and Zillow and if Zillow is a parent company that wholly owns this other Zillow Digs or how exactly it’s set up. We’ll assume for this purpose that the agreement covers it – the licensing agreement. But the scope of the license that’s granted is really what’s an issue here. This is going to come up for any time that there are photos that are going to be licensed out because, if it’s not under the scope of the license, then we’re going to run into infringement issues.
NASIR: So, VHT, basically… I’m trying to think of other equivalents to this in like the music industry or what-have-you but basically, if you’re a real estate agent, you can call VHT and I’m not surprised if people have already heard this already but they’ll send a “VHT professional photographer” o...
Nasir and Matt discuss when businesses can display a customer's social security number and what to do if your social security number is shown on a letter or credit card receipt.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to those business news items. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to the best episode ever of Legally Sound Smart Business. Matt and I were just discussing prior that this is probably going to be our best so congratulations everyone, you’ve made it.
MATT: That’s also what we discuss before every episode though.
NASIR: That is true. I’m hoping this time we’ll make it. Or is every episode better than the next? So, the latest episode is always the best episode, is that what’s been going on?
MATT: It’s possible. I’d have to go back and listen.
NASIR: Okay. Let’s just do that now.
MATT: I’ll pause.
NASIR: And we’re back! So, what did we decide?
MATT: It was true.
NASIR: It was true, yeah. So, this one has to be the best one. Hopefully it’s not as good as the last one then.
MATT: Even the clip show episodes were somehow better than the previous versions of that.
NASIR: The previous ones? I think that makes sense. That really makes sense, yeah.
MATT: So, we’re going a talk about a couple of things here – one of which is social security numbers. I guess we’ve talked long enough that hopefully people aren’t going to turn off the rest of the episode, I guess. If we’re gotten them this far… well, I guess I’ll probably end up putting social security in the title so maybe that will turn people off as well but…
NASIR: Well, credit cards, too. We’ll talk about basically private information that you’re holding of your customers.
MATT: Well, I mean, there’s a couple of things. There’s getting something in the mail, getting a letter in the mail and, you know, what are the guidelines of when – if at all – can be your social security number on there? And then, two, using a credit card and you get the receipt back. I bet most people probably don’t even look for this every time that it comes up but, you know, we’ll discuss the laws in place with that as well. I guess we’ll start with the getting something in the mail and I guess this came up recently because the California EDD – Employment Development Department – was sending out letters in the mail and I guess people’s social security numbers were listed on there which, I’m trying to think, I mean, I deal with a lot of IRS stuff. I know there’s been social security numbers on there in the past which is fine if it falls under the exception that they’re allowed to put on that is, well, this is for California but California prohibits the printing of an individual’s social security number on any materials that are mailed out to the individual unless state or federal law requires a social security number to be on the document to be mailed. EDD’s argument here was it was a necessity for the social security number to be on there so we can ensure that the information is correct for the person it was sent to.
NASIR: And this California law is actually in many other states. I don’t know how many but it’s not atypical. But this whole EDD’s position that it’s somehow necessary, even if it is necessary now, why is it necessary? You know, there are ways to protect your identity and so forth. In fact, I was just reading this basically interview of this guy – and I think he was in Russia or maybe some Eastern European country – where his job was to basically make phone calls to these credit card companies posing as these victims of identity theft because the people that actually stole their credit card had needed further verification so his job was to basically take on the identity and pretend that they’re that individual. Of course, they do that by finding the social security number, other information, pulling the credit report somehow, and so, I mean,
Nasir and Matt discuss the recently firing of a popular Reddit employee that causedan uproar and questioned the status of Reddit's unpaid volunteers.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. I thought, for this episode, I would let you ask me anything.
NASIR: Oh, okay, AMA for Matthew Staub.
MATT: Yeah, AMA.
NASIR: When was your first pizza job? Oh, wait, we’ve heard that story fifty times.
MATT: Those of you not familiar with reddit, the reason I said the Ask Me Anything is there was some news – another thing people are going crazy about – last week…
NASIR: End of last week so, when this episode comes out, two weeks ago, I suppose.
MATT: Yeah. Basically, one of the employees who I believe was in-charge of the Ask Me Anything sub-reddit which is a forum – people go on there and they ask, “Ask me anything,” and then the people on reddit can ask them questions and they’ll answer them, that’s what that is.
NASIR: It’s one of the most popular subreddits. You know, some people may not be aware what reddit is so, just really quick, first, if you haven’t gone there, go ahead and go there. It’s reddit.com – pretty popular site, really interesting, you can kind of get lost into the different subreddits because they basically have a different subreddit for every topic that you can think of. And so, one of the most popular ones is a subreddit called IAMA and you’ll have many celebrities or different people that have certain specialties or in certain industries that will go on there for a couple of hours and basically answer a bunch of questions that you would ask. Very fascinating, actually.
MATT: Yeah, so the person that was responsible for managing the Ask Me Anything, they recently got fired and they thought it was possibly over this AMA that went awry with Jesse Jackson which I haven’t really read into that and saw what was so bad but that’s what people believe was the case of the termination but Ellen Pao, CEO of reddit and other say, “No, that’s definitely not the case,” and it kind of sparked not only a backlash with the people that visited reddit but the people that are managing a lot of these bigger subreddits did a thing where they made them go dark, causing even more of an outcry I guess from all the people involved.
NASIR: Yeah. Basically, it was like a period of nine hours where all these pretty popular reddits went dark. I missed it because, when I went on, it was like everyone was talking about how it went dark so I wasn’t really affected. But, apparently, what they mean is they make the subreddit private so that, unless you are permitted through the moderator, you can’t access it. The number of subreddits that actually went dark was such that it basically ended up being mostly the user population that couldn’t access the site.
MATT: Yeah, it’s obviously not good for reddit and, while it was only temporary, I mean, it was much bigger news after the fact than during, I think, from the broader population. But, for the people that are really into reddit, then they were probably outraged during that time. So, this person was an employee, I believe.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But it brings up the question – you know, I’m sure there’s going to be claims, some sort of wrongful termination, et cetera – but it brings up the idea of these other people that are moderating or these people that are moderating all these different subreddits – like you said, there’s probably thousands of them, right? At least hundreds.
NASIR: Definitely hundreds. I would definitely say thousands, if not tens of thousands.
MATT: Yeah. These people are volunteers – because you need moderators or else things get out of hand – maybe not for the obscure ones but for the ones that enough people go to, they have these people volunteering to essentially be the administrator of these different subreddits an...
Nasir and Matt discuss howmany companies maintain privacy policies which allow for the sale of personal data.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And thank you for joining us once again for a series of information and events which you can take in your consideration.
MATT: A series of letters that form into words which form into sentences and who knows what will happen from there…
NASIR: Which eventually forms a podcast episode.
MATT: Yeah, hopefully. We’ll see.
NASIR: At least that’s the objective.
MATT: If we have our personal data after this episode then we’ll have a podcast episode.
NASIR: Well, this personal data thing is crazy. I know you’re just leading into your transition but we’re talking about this because it’s somewhat dated. Everyone remembers the whole RadioShack bankruptcy and then basically sold everything from A to Z. We covered a little bit about it but what was not as publicized is what happened to the actual private data that they’ve collected for over 100 million customers, including everything from social security numbers to credit card numbers to everything in-between.
MATT: Well, luckily, for most people, they hadn’t shopped at RadioShack for a very long time so maybe there’s no personal data on file.
NASIR: Most of the people are probably dead by now of those 100 million customers.
MATT: It’s been at least ten years since I’ve been inside – probably fifteen years since I went to a RadioShack.
NASIR: You know those times where you just need a cable or something like that? I was giving a presentation in the middle of nowhere – when I say middle of nowhere, I didn’t know where I was – and I needed a cable so I had someone go in looking around and they ended up going to RadioShack and they brought in the wrong cable and they went back two or three times and they ended up not having the cable, of course, that I needed. I was like, “What’s the point of this store? I don’t get it.”
MATT: Well, at least it wasn’t your data. You had somebody else pay for it or buy it.
NASIR: True.
MATT: There was a bankruptcy case with RadioShack but it’s not just that. I mean, any sort of merger acquisition, asset sale, any sort of other transaction – let me get the data on this – the 100 biggest sites in the US, 85 of them included language in their privacy policy saying they could transfer user data if one of those triggering things happened – merger acquisition, asset sale, et cetera.
NASIR: And that’s 85 out of… you said 100?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: You know, what’s interesting about these privacy policies that are pretty much required – you know, California is one of the first and I think we’ve talked about it in the past, it’s one of the first states to actually require privacy policies – you can pretty much put whatever you want. A lot of times, like Matt said, they’ll say, “Okay, we won’t sell your data unless we are acquired,” or something like that – that’s best case scenario. But, a lot of times, you can just say that, “Yeah, we’re going to use your data and we’re going to use it for marketing purposes,” or they word it in such a way that may not be as egregious but, at the end of the day, allows them to do what they want.
MATT: Yeah, and similar to terms of service – probably even less so than terms of service – people don’t read the privacy policy on websites. I mean, typically, it’s either at the bottom of the page in the small link or you have to go to the site map and find it that way. It’s not something people openly go to – I mean, other than an attorney or someone really interested in tech-related stuff. I can’t see many other people going and checking that out.
NASIR: Which I think is not unreasonable because, you know, when you surf and enter in forms and so forth,
Nasir and Matt talk about theincident involving two driverless cars almost colliding and employer liability in using driverless cars.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to those business items. My nes—my—m—How did I get a stutter all of a sudden? My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. You know, I was actually thinking, right before that happened, I was like, “Wow. This is the first time you did two intros that were normal and you didn’t screw up on.”
NASIR: I know, Monday’s episode did come out a little too normal so I had to twist it up a little bit.
MATT: Yeah, you went all Porky Pig on us. Is that who that is?
NASIR: Yeah, pretty much. Porky Pig represents the stuttering community which, apparently, I’m ready to join.
MATT: So, we have a pretty interesting thing to talk about. Well, I don’t know. You were way more interested in this than I was. I’m not really sure why but I’ll give my summary and then you can give your summary of it. But, from what I can tell, it’s basically Delphi – I believe I’m pronouncing that correct – had a driverless car and Google had a driverless car. Apparently, they almost got into an accident, but they didn’t. That’s how I see this story. But you were way more intrigued about this thing than I was.
NASIR: Yes, that is accurate, I would say. The internet kind of got interested in this and maybe it was just kind of the time that I happened to be surfing because, you know, as we know, driverless cars are kind of coming about and really making its way into actual roads and, when you have two driverless cars almost get in an accident but they don’t, it’s as if, like, “Okay, we’re getting closer to that point where we just have a bunch of cars zipping around without people in the driver’s seat.”
MATT: From the accounts here, and I think both sides are kind of really downplaying this, especially Google – no, sorry – especially Delphi that says the vehicles didn’t even come close to one another because they actually had an official in one of the cars and basically said the Google car cut it off and the Delphi car took the appropriate action and didn’t change lanes and that was that. But I’m not sure how fast these were going but the Google cars that are driving around now are going, like, five miles an hour that are going around taking photos of Street View and everything. Even if they did hit each other, it’s not going to be significant by any means. But what about when it gets to the point – assuming it does get to the point – where these cars are going down the highway and there’s an issue of a lane change that’s obviously a much bigger issue at that point.
NASIR: I think they’re going faster than five miles per hour, right?
MATT: The instances of other issues where the Google car, the ones that do Street View and everything, have been in wrecks, I think they’ve every time said it was the fault of a human driver but the actual accidents have been very slow speeds that cars have been traveling. That’s why I assumed. They could have been going faster. I’m not really even sure.
NASIR: Well, actually, Google’s car, I think they’ve had three-plus accidents over the last few years of nonstop driving and all the accidents were – you’re right – they were caused by other drivers, actually. For example, the car would stop at a light and they’d be hit from behind or something to that effect. You know, whether they could have stopped later or whatever, given more room in the back, obviously, Google’s car isn’t responsible for that. But, anyway, the point is that I think they’re on regular roadways but it begs the question that, okay, what are some of the liability aspects that are going to come from these types of cars? And not only these types of cars but, also, what if your employees start driving these types of cars? Or, in general, what is the liability of your employees driving cars out there ...
Nasir and Matt discuss Obama's plan to increase the threshold for who can qualify for overtime pay.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And here we are on our 204th episode and I think we should be due for a recap episode in about, what, sixteen or so? So, I’m looking forward to that.
MATT: Yeah, if we did it like the first hundred, but I think we ran out of topics.
NASIR: Yeah, right!
MATT: We’re just going to talk about the things we talked about in the first episode and see if there’s anything new.
NASIR: Well, really, we should start with Episode 4 or whatever we covered in Episode 4 we could cover in 204.
MATT: Hmm.
NASIR: And see how it’s updated.
MATT: I’m trying to think what that was.
NASIR: I can look it up right now.
MATT: I think Phil Mickelson was Episode 6.
NASIR: Some memory there.
MATT: I don’t remember any of the other ones but, for some reason, the Mickelson one I think was 5 or 6 maybe. I don’t know. Are you actually looking it up?
NASIR: Yeah, I’ll let you know in a little bit.
MATT: It’s coming up on two years ago so I guess that would be a pretty impressive memory. So, President Obama has been in the news – not as much as maybe he used to be.
NASIR: By the way, starting the sentence with “President Obama in the news” is probably not that unique.
MATT: No, I know. I said “probably not as much as he used to be.”
NASIR: Oh, okay.
MATT: Because there’s the new presidential election so he’s kind of fading out.
NASIR: Episode 4, by the way, sauce versus crust – classic episode.
MATT: I should have known that. Now I’m ashamed. Let’s edit that out.
NASIR: Let’s edit that out?
MATT: I definitely remember that now.
NASIR: I don’t even know what you’re talking about with Phil Mickelson. I don’t even remember covering him – ever.
MATT: I’ll try to look it up.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, that was Episode 9.
MATT: Gosh, not bad. All right, enough of this.
NASIR: Anyway…
MATT: So, we’ve talked a lot about minimum wage and most of it has been not only just specific states but I guess more specific cities as well though we’ve talked about I know San Francisco. We mentioned recently the city in Washington State that changed their minimum wage but we haven’t talked too much about overtime pay and eligibility for it so, like I said, Obama’s administration’s coming to an end. This is the perfect time for him to kind of get some of these things in before he exits the White House and this is quite a change from just raising minimum wage a dollar or whatever it was. This deals with overtime pay and, now, on the federal level, he’s raising the threshold, the minimum threshold from what’s currently $23,660 to $50,440 so I guess that would be more than double the current amount that it’s at and so those people are now eligible to receive overtime pay within certain restrictions but I think I saw this as estimated to affect five million workers in the US. I think I saw that somewhere but pretty significant change to what it currently is.
NASIR: What’s the federal minimum wage now? I think that’s $8.25 I want to say? Actually, no, $7.25. So, $50,000 a year, that’s about three times… I’m trying to do my math which I’m horrible so $50,000 is about $24 an hour just to make it simple. That’s about, yeah, three and a half – almost three and a half – times the minimum wage which is a substantial increase. But let’s break down what this whole overtime exemption is. We’ve talked about independent contractors and employees and the differences between the two and it’s one of the most common misclassifications that employers can do. But the second is probably the difference between exempt and non-exempt. When we say exempt, it can mean a lot of things. But, generally, people mean that we’re referring specifically to exempt to overtime requirements so they may other exemptions ...
Nasir and Matt discuss theTexas Supreme Court decisionthat ruleda Texas employer was not liable for work-related injuries sustained to one of its employees.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome. Welcome to you all.
MATT: We’re in the 200s now so I think we’ve officially made it.
NASIR: We’ve officially made it. We should have just started with Episode 200. It would have been better for our egos.
MATT: Well, what’s crazy is there’s usually not a lot of podcasting news, but there was a bigger story this week with Marc Maron when he had Obama on. He didn’t put podcasting on the map but it was like a big moment for podcasting – or so I’m told or so I heard. But the crazy thing is he’s done over 500 episodes and he only releases once a week. Maybe he used to release more frequently but, I mean, to get in the 500s releasing once a week, he had to have done multiple episodes a week in the past. I know he was really early into the game but that’s insane.
NASIR: Well, it could be, I mean, if you think about it, it’s just ten years – 2005. That’s not crazy because podcasting has been around before 2005.
MATT: Yeah, it’s been around a lot longer because that lawsuit with the guys that had like a recording system claiming they were podcasting that ended up ultimately getting dropped because they realized there’s no money in podcasting. Joke’s on them.
NASIR: Could have fooled me.
MATT: Yeah, we’re making lots of money on this so I don’t know what they’re doing wrong.
NASIR: No.
MATT: So, we’re in your backyard for this one.
NASIR: You’re in my backyard right now?
MATT: I don’t know how close you are to the Supreme Court in Texas.
NASIR: It’s in Austin.
MATT: The story was in Dallas.
NASIR: Well, the Supreme Court’s in Austin.
MATT: Okay. Well, this story was in Dallas.
NASIR: I’ve actually never been in Dallas yet. I’ve pretty much been everywhere else except Dallas.
MATT: Everywhere in Texas? That seems impossible.
NASIR: That’s right. I stand behind that.
MATT: Okay. So, ultimately, it was a decision by the Texas Supreme Court and they were clarifying some previous decisions which we can get into the procedural side of it but, basically, here’s a rundown of what happened. There was a man who worked for a Kroger and there was a situation where I believe it was some sort of oil leaked through the ventilation and it was leaking onto the floor or something and so he was told to clean up the mess. And so, it seems like this might have happened some time in the past because it’s not the first time he’s done this task, I believe. What their protocol is for this is they use this powder absorbent that they call Spill Magic to clean this up – and I’m not exactly sure what this is but that’s what they used to do it.
NASIR: Spill Magic?
MATT: Yeah, Spill Magic.
NASIR: Of course. It’s actually the Spill Magic system – whatever that means. I assume it’s just like that powder that just absorbs spills.
MATT: Is that what you deducted when I said it was a powdery absorbent?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Fair enough.
NASIR: I’m just deducing from Spill Magic.
MATT: So, he’s cleaning this up and it’s going all right, no problems, and then at some point – I guess while he was mopping it up – he slips and falls and actually fractures his femur, dislocates his hip – some pretty rough injuries.
NASIR: Ouch.
MATT: Yeah, obviously not good. There’s some major medical issues. You know, there’s going to be some medical expenses involved. The kicker of this – and this is something that you can inform us about it – is Kroger didn’t have workers’ comp to cover this or there probably wouldn’t be an issue in the first place. Like I said, you can confirm this but it looks like in Texas you’re able to bypass the workers’ comp or there’s no requirement in some instances to h...
Nasir and Matt look back at the last 100 episodes.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our 200th plus one episode. Wait.
MATT: So, the idea was, this is #201. The idea was you can’t do a best of the first 200 if the episode is #200. That makes sense, right?
NASIR: Well, I was also thinking, like, is it one of those things where 201 is the 200th episode because we didn’t start at episode 0?
MATT: That’s not how math works.
NASIR: That’s not how math works. Well, I was thinking, you know, the year 2000 where people talked about the new millennium and, like, never mind, because there was no year zero. Anyway, welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to these business news items that we cover, and we’ve done it about a couple of hundred times minus a couple of episodes here and there which were also recap episodes, right? Yeah, I think we’ve done one recap episode, right?
MATT: Well, we did one on #20, I believe, because we were both gone or something.
NASIR: Yeah, we were both gone.
MATT: Then, we did one, I think 20 and 100 and then this one. There might be… I don’t remember.
NASIR: Like, a true recap like a replay, kind of like a TV show where they just splice a bunch of clips together. That’s basically what we’re going to do.
MATT: Ah, yeah. One, at most two, but definitely one because I remember doing it but, yeah, at most, two of them.
NASIR: The first one, yeah, I was out of town and you just did the intro for it. It was like episode 20 which I think we should do. We should do it for this 201st episode and then again 20 episodes later.
MATT: Just do a recap every 20 episodes. Well, that’s why the episodes are longer too. It’s made a little bit more sense.
NASIR: That’s also true. Well, anyway… what we have coming up are basically the most popular episodes that we’ve had in the last hundred episodes, I think, the best of, right?
MATT: Yeah, and I can probably give you a summary right now. it had to do with Uber, independent contractors, The Office, and pizza.
NASIR: And Yelp.
MATT: And Yelp.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Yeah, those five things.
NASIR: All right. Well, enjoy the show! []
MATT: We have a great episode today. We haven’t had a guest on in a while – at least it seems like it’s been a while – but we have Mark Faggiano with TaxJar, the founder and CEO of Taxjar. Did I get your name right, Mark? MARK: You did. Nice work. Good to be here, guys.
MATT: Well, yeah, thanks for being here.
NASIR: Yeah. So, taxjar.com is a company in San Diego but what’s interesting about what they do – and, obviously, Mark can speak more of it – is on sales tax and dealing with, especially from a small business perspective doing online e-commerce, I know a popular business that seems to be kind of sprouting up probably in the last few years – and, Mark, you can probably correct me if I’m wrong – is these kind of online sellers that are using Amazon to fulfil its shipment and basically use a shopping cart instead of setting up their own website. What about the sales tax implications in that? I think sales tax in general is just a mess of laws because you have to deal with how each states applies different taxes, depending upon where it’s being sold and who it’s being sold to. Mark, this is something you deal with every day, right? MARK: Yeah. So, to call it a mess is really an understatement. There’s probably some more words that you don’t want to use to better describe it but you’re exactly right. So, you know, five years ago, if we were having this conversation, if you talked to an online seller, they would probably say, “I’m an eBay seller” or “I just sell on eBay” and what’s really happened and where we’re at now is that folks are multichannel, right? They’re selling on eBay. They’re also selling on Amazon most likely. They also have their own website and they’re using a point-of-sale device. They’re using Square to go to a craft fair on a weekend or,
Nasir and Matt celebrate the 200th episode by discussing America's pastime and why the FBI has decided to get involved with a scandal in Major League Baseball.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha – first baseman.
MATT: Oh, no, I’m Matt Staub and, actually, I played first base because I’m left-handed.
NASIR: Oh, that’s just my last name – first baseman. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
MATT: I only really ever played first base and pitched for a little bit but I was mostly first base just because, if you’re left-handed, that’s pretty much the role you get thrown into just because it’s advantageous. You have the glove on your right hand and you can catch all the balls that are thrown from the rest of the infielders.
NASIR: I didn’t play much baseball but I think I was in the best position. Isn’t the best position in tee-ball right outfield? That’s what I was.
MATT: There’s probably four outfielders. Well, in regular baseball, there’s only three outfielders but there may be, like, a left, a right, a right center, and a left center.
NASIR: I’m pretty sure there was just three. I just remember – gosh, I hated that tee-ball. I did one season and it was horrible. I was a soccer guy.
MATT: Yeah. I mean, I liked baseball but focused on other sports after a while – not soccer.
NASIR: You were tennis and golf? You look like a tennis and golf guy.
MATT: Yeah, I play tennis. I liked playing golf but I was never really good at it. But, yeah, tennis was what I went with. No regrets for me – easier sport to play than baseball. All right. Well, this is a pretty interesting story. It kind of just came out of nowhere. By the time this goes up, it won’t be fresh in the news but, as of the day we’re recording this, this is still a pretty new story and I guess there could be a lot of things that happen between now and then, but the FBI’s gotten involved with one of the baseball teams in the Major League Baseball. The St. Louis Cardinals are investigating this hacking issue. Let me give a little background facts here. The current Astros general manager used to work for St. Louis Cardinals. I’m not sure in what capacity but he had developed this system that was used that they called Redbird – this computer network that he was a part of. Eventually, he left the Cardinals and went to the Astros and developed a similar style computer system that he called Ground Control and there’s a lot that goes into this. I guess one of the big things – for those of you who don’t know a lot about baseball – there’s all these different levels before you come up to the major leagues. This whole minor league system and there’s a strategy of when you bring players up because you don’t want to bring a player up too quick because he might just not be ready and then it ruins his… it’s a mental game after that and then it just ruins him for the rest of his career. So, part of it was they have this whole system in place of when to bring players up but they also have more confidential information as well such as trade proposals – stuff that would be a great thing to have if you’re trying to get inside information on a team. So, Houston set this up. As of right now when I’m going over this story, they don’t know who the people in the Cardinals organization was that did this, but they basically were like, “Oh, yeah, that guy that used to work for us, he had that master password list, let’s take a look at it.” They took a look at it and I guess one or multiple passwords lined up and they were able to hack into the Houston Astros system at that point because I guess he used the same password. I guess that’s a whole other issue of where that’s crossing the line in terms of hacking but, you know, they were able to gain access to basically a lot of confidential and proprietary information in one of their opposing team’s systems and, yeah,
Nasir and Matt discuss the decision handed down by the California Labor Commissioner that classified an Uber driver as an employee instead ofan independent contractor.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our Uber podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I hate how “uber” is an adjective as well as a company. I don’t like the company. I don’t like the adjective.
MATT: Well, I don’t know, I mean, I guess there’s probably some sort of connection to why they named it what they did, but I don’t know if it really.... I don’t know if they... I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t wait to read that transcript back when I just say “I don’t know” five times in a row.
NASIR: In fact, that’s the only reason we have a transcript – to laugh at you.
MATT: She could always cut it out I guess and make me look a little bit more intelligent.
NASIR: No.
MATT: Yeah, this is a double whammy because we’re talking about two things you don’t like – Uber and the whole independent contractor employee issue. If this podcast was live, we would be hitting the front page here because we’re quick to the scene but I guess, by the time this comes out, it’s going to be pretty delayed but that’s all right.
NASIR: Unfortunately, but that’s okay, yeah.
MATT: This shouldn’t be anything too big that happens legally between right now and when it comes out since they’re filing the appeal and waiting.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: Just different takes, I guess.
NASIR: So, what’s the news?
MATT: So, yeah, what happened exactly, decision handed down by the California labor commission. Long story short, one of their Uber drivers, she got this complaint trying to get unpaid wages reimbursement for expenses, liquidated damages, waiting time penalties – which what we just talked about recently – but she brought this against Uber and the California labor commission determined that she was, in fact, an employee of Uber and not an independent contractor like every single driver up until this point has been classified. In fact, they have a big group of I think over 1,000 employees in San Francisco but, other than that, that’s pretty much it, right? I mean, all of the drivers have been classified as contractors.
NASIR: Yeah, and when you say 1,000 employees, you’re not talking about the drivers. You’re talking about actual employees – probably in offices somewhere.
MATT: Right.
NASIR: So, when we’re reading this – and we’ve been talking about this – besides the independent contractor versus employee issue – we’ve been talking about that since the beginning of the podcast – but even the Uber issue, we’ve talked about class action lawsuits against them, we’ve talked about a bunch of cases against them. I’m pretty sure this is the first case – and I use the word “case” kind of lightly here and I’ll tell you why in a second – that has classified one of their drivers as an employee and the internet is going crazy off of it and I think it’s fair to start out with what’s Uber’s response in the statement because I think it’s very accurate and they say that the California labor commission’s ruling is non-binding and applies to a single driver. Let’s talk about what that means and I think this is important for those in California but also in other states that have administrative hearings which is basically this employee went to the California labor commission and, through their administrative hearing, you know, if you talk to any litigation attorney, it’s a very loosey-goosey kind of atmosphere. The rules of evidence aren’t as strict. You don’t actually need an attorney to represent you. I wouldn’t even be surprised if an attorney wasn’t representing the driver here.
MATT: Yeah, she was pro per.
NASIR: There you go and that’s not surprising. I think that employers should be conscious of this that, if you do have a violation, it’s not as if there’s this huge burden for emplo...
The guys close out the week by talking about the legal concerns of on-call employees in the retail industry and how states are working on legislature in support of these employees.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to the world of the law and business.
MATT: The world where we talk about one topic per episode, more or less.
NASIR: That’s right. Only Mondays and Wednesdays now though, right? This is our last episode for the week so make sure you guys pace yourselves.
MATT: So, will this be…? Oh, no, we’re well before the 4th of July weekend. I’m getting way ahead of myself.
NASIR: I know. It’s still June, man. It’s like the middle of June.
MATT: We’re on the second, third of June as we’re recording this so it wasn’t incredibly far off.
NASIR: Today’s not the second or third of June.
MATT: The second one-third of June.
NASIR: Oh, second… it’s going to be the second third of the month.
MATT: Yes.
NASIR: I know how everyone kind of refers to months and to split it up into thirds – that’s one way to do it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone do that but okay. No, actually, we’re going to be – let’s see – the third sixth of the month, I think, actually.
MATT: Yeah, that’s correct. Okay. First time getting something math-related correct on the show.
NASIR: Or actually what’s better is I think this episode’s coming out on the 17th 30th of the month.
MATT: All right. I’m going to move on to the topic here which I wasn’t even really aware this was going on – probably because I don’t work in retail – but we’ve all heard of on-call shifts, especially for doctors or surgeons – I guess surgeons are doctors – nurses.
NASIR: Lawyers – just start naming professions.
MATT: Police officers, maybe.
NASIR: Firemen.
MATT: Firemen, for sure, yes.
NASIR: Or women.
MATT: But, in retail, there’s a thing that’s apparently legal – or for now somewhat legal. It’s on-call workers. Basically, it’d be someone – there’s a whole slew of different stores that are being accused of this but we’ll just take the first one I see here. So, J. Crew, for example, has a list of the employees they have and they set their schedule for the week and maybe I get my shifts and I’m going to definitely work on Tuesday and Thursday but I’m on-call for Monday, Wednesday, Friday. What that means is I have to call the store close to an hour before – I know I saw two hours so we’ll say at least two hours before – to find out if I’m working that day because I’m scheduled to work from 4:00 to 9:00 but I don’t know until I call in at 2:00 pm which, as you can probably think, this causes a lot of problems for the employees because they can’t really schedule anything else during those times which, going back to the doctors and different professions, yeah, those people get compensated higher based on reasons like that. But, for the people in these retails jobs that might be making minimum wage or a little bit more, this is a huge issue because you can’t work another job. Maybe you want to go to school part-time, you can’t do that because you might have to work on a Wednesday night and when you have class. So, I could see how this would become a huge problem if I was in this position. Were you aware this was so rampant in the retail industry?
NASIR: I mean, on one hand, I understood that you could be called in last minute, but this whole concept of you have to actually call in. Like, they described one worker who worked at Bath & Body Works, she was a part-time worker but she would call literally an hour before. This is what she says. She calls an hour before, she lives 25 to 30 minutes away, and then they would put her on hold where she would have to wait to call the store several times before someone would pick up and then she says she would be looking at her watch,
Nasir and Matt discuss the FTC's precedent decision to go after a Kickstarter campaign that is alleged to have taken backers' money.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matthew Staub joining us once again with nice covered facial hair, I would like to add for the record.
MATT: Actually, the last time you said that – or I think probably the only other time you said that – we recorded and then I just hated it afterwards and immediately shaved. It’s not going to happen today but I just remembered that happened last time because you made that comment and then I don’t know if the episodes were even uploaded yet.
NASIR: Probably not. So, what are we covering today? It seems like, I mean, this is a common issue of ours – crowdfunding – but at least some good news coming from this issue. I mean, usually, we’re pretty critical of what’s going on. So, what happened this week?
MATT: Well, it’s good in one sense and it’s not necessarily bad. I guess it’s kind of bad as well so we’ll get to that. But it’s really the first of its kind as far as I’ve seen. The FTC is stepping in over one of these crowdfunding projects and I believe this one was done on Kickstarter. It is a board game that combines Monopoly and the science-fiction of H.P. Lovecraft – which I’m not familiar with that, I don’t know if you are.
NASIR: I have no idea what you just said. I just heard Monopoly.
MATT: Yeah, I think everyone knows what Monopoly is.
NASIR: It just seems like a version of Monopoly which frankly is not that original. It seems you can pretty much buy any kind of Monopoly version and I also noticed that, by the way, it doesn’t look like they got permission to use the Monopoly trademark or anything. I don’t know. I mean, I’m looking at the game now – the board game – it just looks like a Monopoly board game with different names.
MATT: Oh, I’ll get to that, but let me finish off the back story here. So, he puts his project up on Kickstarter and it actually was really, really successful. I think it raised 350 percent of its goal – a little under $123,000 for this project which, back in 2012, that’s pretty serious raise for a Kickstarter project.
NASIR: Let’s see. 1,246 backers, that’s not too shabby.
MATT: So, yeah, very successful. But what happened, of course, was no one got the actual game and you said the thing about Monopoly – the trademark infringement – and that was one of his excuses, saying he ran into legal problems.
NASIR: Oh, really? Interesting.
MATT: One of which if the company owns the rights to Monopoly and things like that. but what was found out after the fact was he was actually – I say “he,” I think it was all one guy who was doing this even though there might be other people.
NASIR: The back story does refer to other people that were helping but they deny any knowledge of what happened so they may have just been kind of on the side of things – maybe some designers here and there.
MATT: Yeah. And so, it looks like some things might have been used to develop the game – who knows? But he also was found that he was essentially taking the money from the Kickstarter campaign and using it on personal expenses. I think it talked about paying his rent.
NASIR: Did they actually find out that’s the case? Because I’m seeing some comments that people are actually saying that but I don’t know if they approved it yet, did they? But $100,000 is not that much money to create an entire board game. Take away the legal issues for a moment, right? Just $100,000 itself, that can go pretty quick in starting any business, let alone it’s looks like they have pieces that are pretty detailed and so you have to create the moulds and get that done and mass produce and then you have to ship and let’s say you have 1,000 or so backers, they paid about $100 each and so, you know,
The guys close out the week by talking about businesses dealing with hiring and firing obese employees.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And one of my favorite songs of Weird Al Yankovic is his parody of “I’m Bad” which is appropriately named “I’m Fat.” Do you agree? Yes or no?
MATT: I agree that is a parody. I don’t know. That song is pretty good. Yeah, I do remember it. He has a couple of good lines in there.
NASIR: Do you have a more favorite Weird Al Yankovic song? I’m not a big fan of his but, out of the songs that he has, I think that’s one of the best – at least the video is pretty good.
MATT: I mean, “Amish Paradise” is pretty good. It’s a classic.
NASIR: Ah, that’s true, and that’s a little bit later in our generation too.
MATT: “Eat It” – Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
NASIR: Oh, yeah, “Eat It” is good. I’ll go with a classic, “I’m Fat.”
MATT: So, why did you bring that up? Is it a disability to be overweight? I guess not even overweight. Obese is the classification we’re really looking at.
NASIR: I think everyone’s kind of settled that, okay, your weight, that’s not a disability. You could typically be discriminated against based upon your weight. But, obese, that kind of has a clinical association to it, right? Because that’s like a category of your BMI which we decided last week is worthless.
MATT: You said that, like, a second after I thought of it and I was going to bring that up, yeah. I think that is technically a way to calculate if someone is overweight. Like, it’s definitely overweight and I think obese is a category too. But you could be an NFL player and be classified as obese according to BMI. That’s why it’s dumb.
NASIR: To be fair, some of those guys are frankly obese. I mean, they are just huge.
MATT: The offensive linemen but not, like, J.J. Watt who’s a Houston guy for you. He’s not obese but I bet he probably qualifies as overweight or obese under that. Anyways, why is this an issue? Because let’s say you terminate someone as an employer and they come back and they say, “Oh, I have a disability under the ADA – obesity,” like, “Oh, well…” It’s that or you need to accommodate their disability at work too is another thing that comes. This all kind of falls under the same umbrella. Obesity isn’t a disability under the ABA and I think – let’s see – the EEOC is now saying it is, right?
NASIR: Yeah, I personally have always said that obesity can be considered a disability but depending on this or that, and this was maybe I think the last time I really looked into this issue is a couple of years ago but I think, more recently now, it’s trending to go the other way. It’s very hard to prove that obesity is a disability and one of the particular cases that I saw was the employee had a difficult time from a medical expert’s perspective to establish that obesity was somehow caused by some physiological disorder and that it didn’t have to do with any habits. And then, in the particular case that I saw, if you were obese when you came into the workplace and then fired right afterwards, then you can’t really say that you were terminated because of obesity or from some disability because you were already obese in the first place.
MATT: Yeah, and I think the difference with this disability or with obesity as a disability versus other items that would fall under disability is you can be born with a disability in terms of… let’s say, you know, you can’t walk. Like, that’s a disability you were born with or if you got into a car accident or something like that. Oftentimes, if you’re overweight or obese, I mean, you can have some sort of genetic issues as well but it kind of just falls on the individual and I think that’s why – this is kind of what you were alluding to – there needs to be some sort of symptom there and I think that’s kind of the key point ...
Nasir and Matt discuss the topic of price discrimination and how businesses are able to legally charge more to different customers.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to those business news articles that we cover on this podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: Terrible, and my name is Matt Staub.
NASIR: I’m trying to be descriptive to the thing that we’ve been doing for the past year and a half now.
MATT: That was straight up typical attorney talk right there – just way too many words to a conclusion.
NASIR: I fall into that trap too in my contract drafting, depending upon my mood. Sometimes, I want to try to impress with my writing skills.
MATT: Yeah, I always remember, if anyone’s seen your art of contracts presentation, how you take a huge paragraph and boil it down to like a couple of words, more or less.
NASIR: That’s classic.
MATT: Yeah, I enjoyed that. You know what I don’t enjoy is price discrimination though.
NASIR: I hate price discrimination!
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: We should talk about that.
MATT: Yeah. Well, I guess we can talk about it. People might be surprised that, in some cases, what they would label price discrimination might be acceptable. I guess it just depends on what their definition of price discrimination is but there is a way it can be seen, I guess, as legal. Really, this is getting back to my economics courses that I took many years ago. We’re looking at perfect versus imperfect price discrimination.
NASIR: What does that mean?
MATT: It’s basically, if you’re a business and someone comes to you, whatever price they’re willing to pay is what you should feasibly charge I guess is how I look at it.
NASIR: Oh, I got you, yeah.
MATT: Yeah, and imperfect is going to be what’s seen as acceptable that, for different locations for example or different ages, you can charge different prices. In an ideal world, as a business owner, you would like to see perfect price discrimination or pure price discrimination because you’re just getting the maximum amount of money someone’s willing to pay but that’s not seen as acceptable. It’s the imperfect price discrimination meaning charging different prices based on some sort of differentiation is going to be seen as acceptable.
NASIR: Basically it’s somewhat similar to – what’s it called – supply and demand, right?
MATT: Yeah, that’s what I was getting at.
NASIR: Why didn’t you just say that? I’ve been waiting here for so…
MATT: I mean, it is somewhat supply and demand but I think one way to look at it is charging different prices based on, you know, San Diego, for example, they’re going to charge higher prices than somewhere in rural Utah and different ages. If you go to the movies, you and I might be charged the highest price. There might be children or seniors that get charged a lower price.
NASIR: That’s messed up. That’s discrimination.
MATT: That’s messed up?
NASIR: An example of this price discrimination so-called is that Staples, what they do with their online prices, if you, as a consumer, are shopping from a location that has a lot of competitors – you know, Office Depot, et cetera – then your prices may be lower. You know, if you’re in a location, maybe a rural area that doesn’t have as many competitors. And so, that’s the kind of price discrimination we’re talking about. You know, in general, I think it’s been accepted that price discrimination is legal. Whether it’s ethical or not, I mean, to me, it’s the aspect of charging as high of a price you can for those that can afford it. You know, I think everyone’s in that kind of boat – you charge as much as you can – but it just depends upon what you’re selling. If you’re selling bottled water to people that are trying to leave a disaster area, that’s one thing. Or gas prices. Or if you’re just providing some service where you want to charge as much as you can because you’re really good at what you’re d...
Nasir and Matt are back and discussing the popularity of office wellness programs and the problems they have caused for employers.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Right on cue. Yeah, so we’re finally back after a week-long – well, two-week vacation for you, a week-long for me. That’s why we were absent and I’m sure you guys missed us this last week and a half, I guess.
MATT: Yeah. You can always go back and listen to previous episodes as well but I think it’s actually a pretty common thing because a lot of the podcasts – or not a lot but some of the podcasts that I listen to, I notice there is also some gaps or they were doing rebroadcasts of previous episodes so it just must be I guess the time of the year that people go on vacation.
NASIR: Yeah, it was right after Memorial Day and people did mention they thought that the reason we didn’t have episodes is because Houston was under water which was not the case. There was definitely a lot of flooding here but we had planned already that there was going to be no episodes last week.
MATT: Yeah. I’m glad to hear that you’re all right.
NASIR: Yeah, so long as I’m okay, that’s all that matters. Actually, you know, Houston was bad but, obviously, the rest of Texas got hit pretty hard.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But that Tuesday after we came back from Memorial Day holiday, I mean, offices were just kind of half-filled because people couldn’t get out of their homes and the water was still draining into the bayous and so forth.
MATT: Crazy.
NASIR: It was definitely off week last week.
MATT: Well, that happens. Hopefully that clears up and everything’s all right. But we’re getting into our topic for today. We’re talking about wellness programs. This isn’t the same thing necessarily as, you know, there’s way more talk about health care and that’s obviously been a big focus last year, the last two years, the last three years. Wellness programs are a little bit different because it’s not something that’s necessarily going to be a mandatory part of anything as an employee working for someone but it’s something that many companies are implementing. I think I saw something… roughly over 90 percent of big companies in the US have some sort of wellness program in place and a good chunk of those are trying to stick to those programs so it’s definitely something that’s happening or that’s at least an option for a lot of the major companies in the US but one of the things that’s really coming to the forefront here is, you know, is there questions of discrimination with these wellness programs? You know, there’s all these different laws in place, the ADA being obviously a big one and, you know, you can’t discriminate someone on the basis of a disability and these wellness programs are just kind of infringing upon that. It’s one of the questions that’s being asked right now.
NASIR: Yeah. And so, it’s an interesting world we’re living in now because the Affordable Care Act having a requirement of employers of 50 and more to have health insurance – which most do already – then a lot of these companies are actually self-insured where they’re actually taking on risk. Even smaller employers or relatively smaller employers that wouldn’t usually be self-insured are starting to do this as well. When you’re doing that, even if you’re fully insured – meaning you’re actually buying a policy from a regular health insurance company as opposed to funding it yourself – even if that’s the case, your incentive is still to have a healthy employee population. And so, in theory, if you have this wellness program, then you’re able to keep your health care cost low and, if you’re fully insured, then your premium is low and even 73 percent I read that of smaller employers offer at least one wellness program. Even larger employers, of course, 90 percent or more,
The guys close out the week by discussing why companies like Google and Facebook are raising their ownminimum wage pay and how one company in Seattle isblowing up the minimum wage model.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I feel like I don’t have to introduce myself anymore – like, ever – not even on the podcast. I’m just talking about in general anywhere.
MATT: Just go right into it.
NASIR: People should know who I am.
MATT: You’re the new… I don’t know. Who’s the most recognizable person?
NASIR: Abraham Lincoln.
MATT: Most recognizable living person.
NASIR: Oh, Abraham Lincoln.
MATT: I was going to say Obama but I think it’s an athlete – like, Michael Jordan, I think used to be the most well-known person, most recognizable person in the world.
NASIR: But maybe not now. If you think about it, there’s a whole generation of kids that haven’t even seen Michael Jordan play.
MATT: What was it? Like, Jordan and then Tiger Woods was really popular. I don’t know. Maybe Lebron James now.
NASIR: No, it has to be a movie star or celebrity, not an athlete. It’s more universal.
MATT: There’s not even any big movie stars or musicians.
NASIR: Actually, it depends – like what you referenced last week – their Q score. My Q score has gotten up there enough that I should just not have to introduce myself anymore.
MATT: Yeah, you should wear a shirt that has your score on it.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Very good. Well, good work.
NASIR: Thank you.
MATT: Next time you and I are in the same spot and we’re meeting someone for the first time, I’ll just introduce myself and you won’t say anything.
NASIR: Exactly. And, if they don’t know me, I’ll get upset too.
MATT: Just leave?
NASIR: I’ll act offended, yeah.
MATT: Well, I can’t make a connection from that to this so I’m just going to go into this but there’s a couple of things that have popped up, one of which is a little bit older but just increases in pay in general. And so, the reason we’re talking about this – for those of you who haven’t heard – Facebook just announced or recently announced that they’re going to pay a minimum $15.00 per hour to contract workers, right? Yeah, to contract workers such as cafeteria staff and janitors just to deal with this minimum wage thing that’s going on. I mean, $15.00 is higher than pretty much everywhere else other than the one spot in Washington State.
NASIR: I don’t know if they’re at $15.00 yet. I think they will be or something but, yeah, you’re right.
MATT: What’s interesting about this is it’s raising the minimum hourly rate of contractors, contract workers, so not employees.
NASIR: Yeah, I thought that was strange too.
MATT: Contractors will receive a minimum of 15 days of paid vacation, $4,000 new child benefit for parents who don’t receive parental leave. Isn’t that, like…?
NASIR: Exactly. That’s why I think, when they say “contractors,” I think this article’s incorrect somehow.
MATT: It has to be – inc.com?
NASIR: No, I’m serious, because also they’re talking about lower paid workers regarding their janitorial staff and cafeteria. Like, okay, you could have a janitor or cafeteria workers in contractor status but, with Facebook having a campus and a building and they probably need something there on the full day, I don’t think that’s the case in this case so I still think they’re still employees.
MATT: Yeah, that was the first thing I noticed, too. Just the job they were performing, it seemed like it was an issue. This has to be employees, I guess.
NASIR: First of all, no contractor gets paid vacation or new child benefits, you know?
MATT: Well, we won’t dig too deep into that. If it’s the case that they are independent contractors, we’ll maybe talk about it. But this kind of connects to this company in Seattle. I guess Washington State really loves to treat peo...
Nasir and Matt talk about an age discrimination lawsuitfiled by a 64 year old software engineer against Google and whether H&M will be subject to age discrimination claims for targeting millennials asnew hires.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name’s Nasir Pasha. This is the podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. I’m also joined with a special co-host for today…
MATT: Special, Matt Staub, I’m here.
NASIR: Matthew Staub, special co-host.
MATT: Lots of energy from you to bring in this Wednesday episode.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, that’s what I do.
MATT: You know who else has a lot of energy? Millennials.
NASIR: That’s right.
MATT: That’s part of the focus for today but we’re also going to talk about the flipside of that which is age discrimination against non-millennials – people that are much older than millennials. The story is a few weeks old and we were kind of waiting for some more developments when we first heard about it and there just hasn’t been anything yet. The 64-year-old engineer who applied for a job at Google and essentially he felt that he was discriminated against based on his age. I think the average age at Google is 29. But there were some certain things that happened in the interview that made him think that he was being discriminated against, et cetera. But the thing that, I mean, this is essentially the plot from that movie that Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn was in, right? It was two older guys.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, Internship or something, right?
MATT: Basically, just ripped off that movie and now he’s suing for age discrimination.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. This is just a big copyright infringement actually case.
MATT: But, yeah, I guess there were certain things that went on in the interview. The interviewer used a speakerphone that did not function well.
NASIR: If you actually read what the allegations are, it’s very confusing because they lay out this aspect where there’s some interviewer that has a bad accent and no one understands what’s going on and it just sounds like a bad interview with poor communication, and somehow that’s been translated to age discrimination. It seems like a little bit of a leap to me.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Especially when age discrimination is not an easy thing to prove – at least in more recent years – because it’s a little bit different when it comes to racial discrimination and things like that because, if you have a motivating factor other than age discrimination but then it ends up having age discrimination, it’s not necessarily illegal which is kind of funny to say. Even though age discrimination may be a factor, it still may be okay if motivational factor is a legal reason. It’s a very subtle distinction and I wouldn’t go too far into that if you’re an employer and are making decisions because it’s a little more complicated than that. but the point being is that age discrimination is not a very easy thing to prove, especially in a hiring phase, because even if you’re able to show that most of the work force is below the age of 40, that doesn’t mean that there’s age discrimination. There has to be a little bit more than that.
MATT: Yeah. I mean, especially in a situation where it’s Google and – I assume – they’re looking to hire an engineer position – yeah, software engineering job. You know, it’s very plausible that a 64-year-old person doesn’t have the same sort of background that someone who’s under the average age of 29 might have because they’re fresh out of school where they learn this stuff. I’m not saying that was the case here but it’s definitely, in terms of the hiring phase, it’s definitely a possibility and I’m sure that happens all the time. When this guy was first trying to get software engineering jobs, it was a completely different landscape than it is now. Maybe he’s kept up with it and that’s not the case, but it’s definitely a possibility.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely.
Nasir and Matt get into the story about a California woman who was fired for deleting an app on her phone that allowed her employer to track where she was at all times.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: That’s Matt Staub. Episode 191 about to be put into the books of records. Probably I suspect that this episode in particular will probably end up in the Library of Congress – maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.
MATT: Yeah, probably not but…
NASIR: Well, what I mean by that is I’m going to take the episode and then walk into the Library of Congress.
MATT: Okay. Then, it will happen, I agree with you.
NASIR: Next time I’m in DC.
MATT: So, you know, the more I think about the story we’re talking about today, I think I might have actually gotten an invite for this app in the past. If it wasn’t this one, it was a similar one. My mother-in-law sent me this request for an app and I don’t know if it was… is it Xora, I’m assuming?
NASIR: Yeah, Xora – except now it says Xora is now a click software solution. I don’t know what that meas.
MATT: So, it was something where it would basically just track wherever you were 24/7/365 because I had got the request. I was like, “I am definitely not doing this.” She sent it to a bunch of people in the family so it was like, yeah.
NASIR: Oh, okay. There’s other apps like that and I think my family used Life360 which you can see where your family is at all times.
MATT: That was it. That was it.
NASIR: Oh, that?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: That’s completely different than what I think this is but anyway...
MATT: Similar idea – it’s tracking. It would have been more appropriate I guess than what happened here. This was a woman in California who worked for this company and I guess part of the requirement for her job was to have this Xora app on her smartphone. It’s a job management app. I guess that’s the big difference – it’s a job management app with a capability of monitoring as a GPS where people go. That is the difference.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Okay. But still… the idea’s still there. So, she had that on her phone and I think she said she was okay, she was fine with it. Her employees were fine with it when they’re working but the problem is, when they leave the office, it’s on the employee’s phones and so it’ll just track wherever they go so it’s essentially a GPS for that. That’s my Life360 whatever aspect to it. And so, she didn’t like this aspect of it – and I think most people wouldn’t as an employee – and so she deleted it from her phone and the employer responded by firing her because he said that she needed to have it on her phone. I guess I haven’t looked at the actual or haven’t used the actual app itself so I don’t know how crucial, if there’s an easier alternative that this employer could have used to achieve a similar thing that didn’t track where she was at 24/7 but, yeah, I mean, there’s obviously some clear privacy issues with this story, especially when they leave the office.
NASIR: Employers are funny sometimes. I mean, they want to have so much control over their employees. My first question is, “Why?” This person is a sales executive. Why do you need to know where they’re at 24/7 or frankly even during the job? Like, do you have such mistrust of your employees that you want to micromanage them that way? It seems strange to me, no?
MATT: With certain exceptions. You shouldn’t really care what your employees do when they leave the office. I mean, they’re in there for the time they’re paid to work and the other time it’s their time. They take the money they’ve used by working for you and do things that they like to do. I mean, I don’t have employees myself but I don’t think I would really care to keep tabs on them outside of the office, like I said, so long as they’re not doing anything illegal or being on the n...
The guys close out the week by discussing Comcast's decision to require customers to sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to receive a refund for overcharges.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Comcast.
MATT: Comcast.
NASIR: That’s what we’re covering today.
MATT: I think I’ve mentioned this on the podcast before but this isn’t exactly what Comcast did but I told you my theory on how our phone provider, how I think they just overcharge us some data, like, once or twice a year and they do that to everyone.
NASIR: Yeah, you mention that probably every few episodes but, yeah, go ahead.
MATT: Yeah. I mean, I use the same amount of data every single month and, magically, some months I’m well under the limit and, other months, I’m just over it and have to pay an extra $10.00 or $15.00 a month. So, I feel like this is getting us closer to my ultimate goal of trying to get money back out of that. Comcast, and I think this all kind of started from a person that realized that they were overcharged, I think it was only $600 over a few years here but – oh, no – charged hundreds of dollars for a cable box they returned five years ago. Customer reached out to Comcast and they’re like, “Oh, sorry about that. You know, we’ll credit you the money. While we credit you the money, you have to sign this non-disclosure agreement.” Have you heard this before for this sort of credit back? I have never had to sign an NDA for this.
NASIR: No, and the thing is, like, in our industry – when I say “our industry” as in legal industry – putting in a confidentiality clause within a settlement agreement is very common. It’s still a negotiated point but it’s very, very common. But, when you’re dealing with consumers and this kind of thing, it’s like a return or what-have-you, it’s strange to me. But, at the same time, let’s put this in context, like, Comcast, I don’t know if you follow this but, on the internet, it is like the butt of every joke of how bad customer service is for Comcast. I mean, they are rated on the worst companies in customer service almost every year and I think they’re trying to make an effort – at least from a PR perspective in their public media – to reach out to customers and so forth. But, if their way of going about it is just to shut everyone up, that’s probably not the best idea.
MATT: We’re asking the obvious question here, “Why do we even know about this?” I guess the person didn’t sign the non-disclosure agreement or else we wouldn’t know about it. But I would like to see this NDA, just see what was in there. I’m just curious on what they’re not wanting to have people disclose.
NASIR: Yeah, and it looks like this Philadelphia Comcast customer after the local news have covered this story, right? Then, they were offered the return with no strings attached. But, you know, going back to your theory about what Verizon does, I know this happened to me personally. I was moving and I think this was AT&T if I recall and I needed to give them the box. Sometimes, you can mail it there but you can just drop it off and I think I went to… I’m trying to think of the location that I went to to drop it off. Actually, it wasn’t AT&T. I can’t remember which one it was. It might have been Cox Communications. I can’t remember. Anyway, I remember dropping it off and then, like, a month later saying that I didn’t return it. How am I supposed to prove that I returned it? You know, they were asking for a reference number and I didn’t write that down or whatever and it’s like, I just said I’m not paying for it or whatever. Luckily, they didn’t have a credit card or something on file that they could take the money because I think they would have otherwise. And then, they just said, “Okay. Fine, we’re going to remove the charge.”
MATT: Especially in a situation where you’re moving,
Nasir and Matt put on their gloves to spar over the class action filed over Manny Pacquiao's shoulder and the defamation claim filed against Floyd Mayweather.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and I was hoping to find, you already started talking when I thought of it, I was hoping to find the classic bell sound that you hear when a boxing…
NASIR: I was thinking the same thing, ding-ding-ding-ding! Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can just have Matthew add that.
MATT: Yeah, that’s true.
NASIR: Our sound producer.
MATT: At the beginning.
NASIR: At the very beginning. But then, if we’re talking about it now, how about we just do it now? Like, right now. Let’s start.
MATT: Well, I think we’re going to talk about a story that I haven’t seen anything in the media about and there was this boxing match between some guy, Floyd Mayweather.
NASIR: Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier?
MATT: Yeah, and Manny Pacquiao. No, I’m just kidding. Obviously, this was just blown up. I mean, I don’t even know when they even announced this but it seems like it was years ago. There’s been so much story on it but we’re going to talk about the legal side because these lawsuits that are popping up are more recent. We’re recording this – when is this? – five days before it’s actually going to be released so there could be many more lawsuits that are filed in-between now, right now and when this gets released. So, update yourselves appropriately, and the reason I’m saying that, there’s a couple of lawsuits that are involved but one of which is this crazy trend that these class action lawsuits are being filed against mostly Pacquiao but some of them include him, Mayweather, HBO, the broadcasters, everyone involved.
NASIR: I think I got sued a couple of times, too.
MATT: A lot of named defendants. So, this lawsuit, the class action lawsuits are in relation to I guess, after the fight, Pacquiao said that he has had a shoulder injury that happened in April. He was fighting injured and they wouldn’t allow him a shot before the match to whatever. But this class action suit is saying, “Oh, well, you know, if you were injured, we wouldn’t have paid the $100 or whatever it was for the fight. We wouldn’t have paid for this.” The people I guess that went to the boxing match is even worse because those were some expensive tickets. But I haven’t looked too much into these actual complaints and I think I saw up to seven class action lawsuits that have already been filed kind of with this same sort of idea. But this is just so crazy to me. It’s obviously people that are upset. From what I heard – I didn’t see the fight but from what I heard – it just wasn’t very good.
NASIR: I saw parts of it. I think it was pretty much what I expected it to be. I’m surprised everyone was surprised. I think we even talked about this. In fact, I remember listening to our podcast that these over-hyped fights tend to be a non-event in the sense that it’s just kind of, you know, whatever. What I think a lot of people are accentuating is this May 1st form that Pacquiao signed – which was May 1st would have been I think it was the Friday before, the day before the fight – and him checking “no” on pretty much everything except the meds that he took beforehand describing if he has any injuries or things like that. You know, like, hey, this is the proof that he misrepresented, almost as if, like, everyone was relying on this form and, on May 1st, before they ordered, they’re like, “Okay. Let me take a look at the pre-fight medical questionnaire before I order this fight.” But, I mean, there’s some truth to that, right? I mean, if he would have disclosed it, HBO and all the other news articles that were abuzz about this fight would have said, “Oh, he is injured,” and Mayweather was already a little favored so maybe people thought, “Well,
Nasir and Matt discuss the investigative report concerning nail salons andthe abusivetreatmentthat many workers are experiencing.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and we also add our legal twist to that business news. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we are two lawyers that have nothing better to do than talk about business and the law. I love it.
MATT: You don’t see many lawyers with podcasts, I’ll say that.
NASIR: You know, I was thinking, we’ve been doing this for a year – like, more than a year now, I think, right? We missed our anniversary.
MATT: We’re closer to two years than one.
NASIR: Oh, that’s true because we started in December 2013?
MATT: I think it was at least October.
NASIR: Oh, really? Okay. Then you’re right. You’re right. But, I don’t know, it’s fun.
MATT: Possibly even before that.
NASIR: Our listenership is much more than it used to be. I mean, it took a while to get where we are but that’s fun – fun stuff.
MATT: Neither one of us is a celebrity so putting something out there is not going to…
NASIR: Neither one of us is a celebrity but, collectively, if you add our celebrity status, you know, collectively, I think collectively we’re a celebrity.
MATT: There’s a score for that. Everyone’s assigned a score based on your notoriety or presence as a celebrity and it has to do with online. It starts with a “K” I think.
NASIR: Is it Q score?
MATT: Yes.
NASIR: The recognized industry standard for measuring consumer appeal of personalities, characters, licensed properties, programs and brands. Man, I need a Q score.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Let’s figure out how we can do it. Nasir Pasha…
MATT: This is our whole episode of you trying to come into the ultimate conclusion we have low Q scores.
NASIR: It says we don’t have any data for me. They just need to update it. Obviously, this is way behind.
MATT: All right. Well, we’re going to talk about a few things, one of which really is I say it comes as no surprise but maybe that’s just because we’re more familiar with it than other people but there was a recent piece that came out in the New York Times that did – I don’t know if it was an investigative search but – a detailed story on nail salons and just the abuse that these workers are getting and their treatment at these nail salons. It kind of details all the things that have gone on or that are going on in New York and it’s kind of crazy. Like I said, I mean, you and I were familiar with these things, but even reading through some of these findings, it’s still pretty insane.
NASIR: Wait. Wait. How was I familiar with nail salons again? I know you were but…
MATT: I thought, well, I don’t know. I guess maybe it was just me.
NASIR: I just know everything because of what you tell me in your experiences.
MATT: I don’t think I’ve actually ever been to one.
NASIR: You just have them come to your house or something?
MATT: Not quite but never had any work done on the nails.
NASIR: Well, the bottom line in very New York Times-like fashion, they do go into pretty good detail. They talk about even just how many manicure places there are, particularly in New York City. If you compare it to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston, of the maps that I’m looking at, and just the concentration in New York City is just a little bit different and it’s because of the cultural association with the Vietnamese nail salons and I think that has a lot to do with it.
MATT: Well, yeah, I mean, in this story here, they even talk about a cultural hierarchy or a racial hierarchy. A lot of these shops are owned by Koreans.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: This is the racial hierarchy as is described – Korean, China, and then non-Asian. That’s kind of the hierarchy of these places and I guess that it is what it is and I’m not surprised there’s any sort of racial discrimination going on just based on the other things that have happened....
Nasir and Matt talk about how one company rebranded in New York but failed to do a name search nationwide.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast, Legally Sound Smart Business, where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist – just like a little lemon, as I like to say – to those business news stories. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. I don’t know if you like to say that but you’ve said it, like, a couple of times.
NASIR: That’s all I say. I love to say that.
MATT: Yeah, this podcast is like a lemon – sour.
NASIR: And yellow.
MATT: Used for lemonade.
NASIR: And it’s a fruit. You listen to it when you’re thirsty.
MATT: Exclusively during the summer. Getting off-track here, we’ve got to talk about this – where is this is? Well, Texas and then New York, I guess.
NASIR: Nice.
MATT: Two of your favorite states.
NASIR: Yup.
MATT: This has been a very Texas and New York themed week it seems like.
NASIR: We covered California too, a little bit.
MATT: Yeah, it’s the spread of our firm, I suppose.
NASIR: Yeah. We’ll need to get Illinois soon too, once we start practicing there.
MATT: What we have is a company who came up with a new name for their startup called TripleMint.
NASIR: That’s original.
MATT: I didn’t realize it actually means something in the real estate industry. Triplemint means you have a pristine – sorry – immaculate condition of an apartment with an immaculate living space kitchen and bathroom.
NASIR: Oh, okay.
MATT: Yeah, triplemint, I get that. They have this startup which actually has already raised some funds - $1.65 million – from some people.
NASIR: Wait, this is pertinent because some of the investors are Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, those two twins.
MATT: Winklevoss.
NASIR: Yeah, those are the twins that are famous for accusing Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their idea for Facebook. Go ahead. I think it comes into play.
MATT: So, they’re just a real estate brokerage in New York. That’s it?
NASIR: Yeah, but they’re a little bit different – funny enough, I’m looking at a screenshot of their site and it says, “Why we are different.”
MATT: That’ll answer our questions.
NASIR: There’s pictures of the city and some pictures. So, you see what we see. No sales pressure. Technology rules. I have no idea what that means but what I do know is that they kind of have a startup mentality. I think their capital and their assets are in their technology. They allow a lot of innovative searching and those kinds of things. I’m trying to figure out exactly what makes them original but I’m sure some of our listeners are familiar with them already.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: They have kind of like a Zillow interface to be able to see listings and things like that which I guess is cool.
MATT: Yeah, there’s another business in Texas – Austin, specifically – called Triple Mint Real Estate, also a brokerage, smaller brokerage, less people. But, you know, it’s going to be doing the same thing as TripleMint – one word, lowercase – in New York. The Texas one started in 2006, well before this New York one started up, and I guess that’s where – well, we’re not really at a dispute right now, but just an interesting point because the New York one wants to be nationwide. Well, as you alluded to at the beginning of the episode, Texas seems to be a pretty big state in where some of the action is at so I think, if you want to be nationwide, Texas is probably going to be a spot you would want to be. Maybe New York, California, Texas would probably be my go-to three, at least initially.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: What’s going to happen when TripleMint 2 expands out of Texas where Triple Mint Real Estate already exists? I guess that’s where the potential problem lies.
NASIR: We can dig deep in the law here. Let’s just do that now and then we can talk about kind of conceptually about naming yourself and so forth. Here we have Triple Mint Real Estate based out of Austin.
Nasir and Matt talk about a recent decisionthat ruled on whether employers couldrun a reference check on LinkedIn for job candidates.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I’m sorry, who?
MATT: Matt Staub.
NASIR: Oh, Matt! Oh, great.
MATT: Didn’t have your headphones in. Are those the new cordless Beats headphones or whatever the thing they got unveiled at the draft yesterday?
NASIR: I thought those were out for a while, no?
MATT: There’s these new cordless, they might be intended for athletes, but they’re not even cordless because there’s still a cord that goes behind the head connecting the two headphones.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually have one of those for running. I didn’t like them. They didn’t stick in my ear because it has Bluetooth in it so it has some weight to it. I’d just rather have something light to plug in and that’s my story on that. Let’s talk about the law and business.
MATT: And LinkedIn which I don’t know if we’ve even talked about LinkedIn ever. In California, there was a decision – actually, in Federal court – that a reference search on LinkedIn is not a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. What people are saying or what people were complaining about was a prospective recruit applies for a job and the employer could do a reference search via LinkedIn and kind of see the backstory, the history of these potential prospects.
NASIR: Well, when we say “people,” keep in mind that it’s not like some LinkedIn user decided to file this lawsuit. I mean, this has definitely been perpetuated from an attorney and they see LinkedIn as a target. I mean, that’s how I see it because I can’t really see any wrong here, what prompted someone to complain that LinkedIn is not presenting information correctly that all the requirements that are required with this Fair Credit Reporting Act, how is this consumer or this LinkedIn user hurt in some way with the information that was provided since especially they are the ones that actually provided the information.
MATT: I didn’t really understand that at all because it’s people complaining about potential employers can see their past work history, references, anything like that. But, if you don’t want that on there – you voluntarily posted that on LinkedIn – if you’re that concerned about that, just don’t post it in the first place would make the most sense, right?
NASIR: Yeah, and that’s pretty much what the court decided as one of the factors. But they actually broke it down in step-by-step, you know, whether LinkedIn’s profiles are considered or it’s information that’s been provided are “consumer reports” or reports that contain information solely as for transactions or experiences between the consumer and the person making the report. And so, not only did it not fit in that definition but also they went on to explain how it’s not a consumer reporting agency, these plaintiffs actually provided this information. You know, when we go on LinkedIn, it’s not like our employers are putting our past history on their work; we’re putting it on there. In fact, we could put whatever we want in there. It could be true or false.
MATT: I still just don’t understand the idea behind bringing this lawsuit in the first place. Like, the employers are discriminating against them before they can even do an interview? Or I guess discriminating against them in the employment search process?
NASIR: I think what it is is that, if they’re able to say that LinkedIn is a consumer reporting agency and that they have to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, then they can say that, in the past X number of years, they haven’t complied with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and they’ve made all these violations and, therefore, this class of LinkedIn users is entitled to all these money damages.
The guys kick off the week by discussing the newly introduced Federallaw that would make it illegal for businessesto finecustomers forleaving negative reviews.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Okaaay. Uh, okay. I was trying to start goofy. Okay. All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is Legally Sound Smart Business, the podcast. What do you think about that?
MATT: Sounds the same as the previous 184 episodes but, you know, it’s fine – fine with me.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s cool. I’m excited.
MATT: What a great fight that was two days ago.
NASIR: Well… So, I haven’t seen it yet and I don’t know. Are you planning on going somewhere and watching it or ordering it?
MATT: No, I’m not.
NASIR: I like watching UFC fights and boxing once in a while but these fights always seem to be a letdown, you know? There’s just so much hype around it, right?
MATT: That’s what I’ve been saying the last few days. In the last twenty years or so, all the big fights I can remember have either been, for whatever reason, I went somewhere – I think it was in 2007 – Oscar De La Hoya fought somebody and it was just… is it twelve rounds? Ten rounds? However many rounds of it, it was just them dancing around and then they took punches in the last, like, thirty seconds.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: It was like, “What was the point of this?” I think it was Mayweather-De La Hoya, if I remember correctly.
NASIR: The best fights are sometimes, what do they call it? The undercard?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Sometimes, they’re the best. Every once in a while, you get some headliner – whatever you want to call it – that are going toe-to-toe and it actually makes it enjoyable. But I think those are rare occasions, frankly.
MATT: I’m not a boxing pundit by any means but, from what people have said, this is about five years too late for this match-up. It’s a little bit past their prime.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly.
MATT: I don’t know how I could put that in terms you would understand. Let’s see. You watch soccer. Who’s the one guy? This is David Beckham versus somebody.
NASIR: Yeah, I don’t think I pay attention to soccer that much.
MATT: Well, don’t leave a bad review about me because it’s about to be federally banned. I screwed that up. That was a terrible, terrible lead-in.
NASIR: Terrible transition?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: You mean, don’t disparage you, right?
MATT: Yeah. Ah, all right. Well, we’ve talked about this before in California. They made it so it’s in effect now that you can’t have a consumer or a customer sign an agreement saying that you will penalize them if they leave a disparaging review or make a disparaging statement in public against you. And so, there’s a Federal law that’s trying to be passed that will essentially be the same thing – it’s going to ban these non-disparagement clauses which are more or less threats against customers for leaving these bad reviews and sometimes even penalizing the customers as well or threatening penalty if they leave these reviews. You know, I hope I’m saying the same thing I said before when we talked about this because I want to make sure I’m consistent in what I say because it’s been over a year but you have to have a good service and, if you don’t, then it’s kind of what you take. I mean, I guess, all right, let me dull that back because I don’t agree with what I just said.
NASIR: Just rewind it.
MATT: Actually, this is good because my thoughts on this have changed since we recorded the first time. That was my stance the first time. But, with the way Yelp and these other review sites have gone, some of these reviews aren’t legitimate so people can leave – well, okay, I’m just having a conversation with myself because I guess those people wouldn’t be signing the contracts necessarily. I don’t know. It’s a coin flip for me.
NASIR: I guess the customers that are the people that are just making up revie...
Nasir and Matt cap off the week by discussing re-hire clauses in employer-employee settlement agreements and why they may be invalid as restrictions against non-compete agreements.
Transcript: NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. It’s actually raining here right now which is pretty unique for San Diego. NASIR: Oh, I heard it was cloudy because I know the International Space Station was visible last night in San Diego for a period of time, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to have cloud cover or not. MATT: Well, I didn’t know that. NASIR: Missed it out! I think it was last night. MATT: I thought you were going to make some joke about it’s cloudy here, dark skies because of the Chargers possibly leaving going to LA. NASIR: That’s not for sure, is it? MATT: No, but there’s more stuff this week that they’re trying to push it forward. It’s definitely it wasn’t a step in the right direction. NASIR: I swear, like, six months ago or three months ago was the opposite news. Like, it’s more likely that they’re going to stay. MATT: It’s so back and forth. I mean, it’s not even almost worth following. NASIR: In fact, yeah, I thought there was some kind of deal where the county and the city would split fees for it and Qualcomm didn’t want to put much money, if at all, in it. But it was going to be at the current location. MATT: Well, this was something in LA. They agreed to push forward with something without a vote for the public. I don’t know. I barely looked into it. Not a good summary for me. NASIR: Well, let’s get to our story today then. MATT: Yeah. So, what we were going to talk about today is something you might not even think about because you would think that it might not ever come up in a situation like this, but we’re talking about re-hiring clauses. So, when you have an employee and employer, once they agree to part ways, it might have some sort of settlement agreement. And so, one clause that’s been put in some of these settlement agreements is this no re-hire clause which essentially states that the employee is not eligible to be re-hired by the employer. Okay. The reason this is getting brought up right now is there is a recent decision that I don’t want to think really putting sort of clear-cut answer to the issue. NASIR: Let me first specify that this no-hire clause is kind of a big business problem. It doesn’t really apply to most of our listeners. It’s an interesting topic nonetheless because, if you think about it, if you have a disagreement with an employee, you’re just not going to hire them again and, most likely, they’re not going to go to you if you’re a small or medium-sized business. But, when it comes to these big enterprises that not only have a lot of different subsidiaries and side businesses and also affiliates and also they plan to acquire other businesses, these no-hire clauses actually try to expand it to the widest scope possible. It’ll end up even being not only the business’ affiliates but businesses that they may acquire in the future. So, in theory, if you have this no-hire clause and an employee signs this and it’s enforceable, an employee works for a competitor and then that same business acquires that competitor, then the acquiring company would say, “Hey, you can’t work here because of this agreement and you’re fired.” MATT: I guess that’s the concern because what the specific clause, the idea is you’re not going to be able to be eligible to be re-hired by this company that we’re doing the settlement agreement with. Okay, that’s fine. But, looking at it, it’s not preventing you from leaving the industry as a whole. It’s not preventing you from going to a competitor right then and there. But, yeah, down the road, if there is some sort of merger or acquisition, something like that, it’s a different story because I think it was a medical-based case, wasn’t it?
Nasir and Matt talk about John Deere's recent filings with the Copyright Office and how them and others are trying to protect their products through the argument of implied licenses.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: So, what are we doing today, Matt? Should we continue with our podcast today?
MATT: I was thinking about writing a “Dear John” letter.
NASIR: Wow. That’s a really great transition.
MATT: It’s not even a pun or even clever.
NASIR: It’s not even a pun. You just took John Deere and just made it Dear John.
MATT: I know you don’t watch the NBA playoffs – or at least I don’t think you do.
NASIR: I hear about it.
MATT: One of my favorite NBA players of all time, Reggie Miller, he’s long retired but he does the play-by-play for games and he said something, it was some game, I think, last Thursday or Friday, and he said something about, “They’re doing blah blah blah with, like, Steph Curry not on the floor.” He’s like, “No pun intended,” and he said that statement and I was just sitting there and I was like, “That makes no sense. What you said was not a pun at all.” I was like, “I can’t be the only one who picked up on that,” and, the next day, I looked on this site and the title was like, “Reggie Miller has no idea how puns work.” It’s basically you would just make a statement and then he said, “No pun intended.” There was no connection at all. It was just a sentence.
NASIR: That reminds me of Michael Scott’s use of the phrase “Catch 22” in The Office. Catch 22. He also does not know what that means.
MATT: Well, circling back to the Dear John thing, this is a John Deere theme story, the tractor company.
NASIR: Also big in Indiana, right?
MATT: Yeah, probably. I would assume, I guess, yeah. I’m sure there’s other companies but I know I worked at a place that had lots of John Deere stuff. But, yeah, this is a pretty interesting issue and it’s not just John Deere. I know GM has been big on this as well. We’re talking about ownership. What John Deere is saying is it’s filed something in…
NASIR: Yeah, US Copyright.
MATT: US Copyright Office, yeah, saying that, you know, people shouldn’t be allowed to modify the tractors. What they’re saying is, “We have our equipment that we sell to customers and it’s protected by copyrights.” I think the key part for this situation is the tractor has a chip with some code in it, this software, and so you don’t actually own the tractor. It’s an implied license for the life of the vehicle or the life of the tractor to operate that. It’s a pretty interesting subject because, you know, you go out and buy something, it’s not just tractors, too. I mean, the majority of the population is not going out and buying these big machines because where would you park it? What’s another good example? Like, iTunes music or something like that. Or GM, like I said, so cars, if there’s some sort of software in it. So, you go out and buy a product, you know, you think you own it but some of these companies are saying, “Well, you don’t actually own it. It’s just an implied license because we have the copyright protection on this software.”
NASIR: I would say this is pretty complex. I mean, it’s a very sophisticated argument and kind of goes very closely to John Deere’s approach on protecting its intellectual property. It might be a myth; I don’t know if people think that or not but a lot of people think that John Deere owns the color green and no one can use it. It is true that the colors – the green background with the yellow logo and writing – is part of their trademark, but they don’t necessarily own it. But, at the same time, you know, there are other machines that can have that color. The exact same color? I don’t know. That shade of green with the yellow and so forth? Probably not; that would be more close to the trademark infringement.
Nasir and Matt discuss why Popeye's Chicken fired a pregnant employee that was the victim of an armed robbery.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Let’s see. I have never been to a Popeye’s. This is a confession, all right? This is a confessional podcast. It’s the first thing I want to confess. I’ve never been to a Popeye’s.
MATT: Yeah, the real confession’s going to come later on in the episode when you confess to this armed robbery that took place. But, yeah, I don’t believe I’ve ever been to a Popeye’s either. I know they have them in the Midwest because I know they have them in Indianapolis because I’ve definitely seen them.
NASIR: No, I thought they had them in San Diego, no?
MATT: Well, I’m just saying, for you and I, growing up…
NASIR: Oh, growing up, no.
MATT: Yeah, but they definitely have them in California – well, at least they have commercials for them in California because I still see those even though, when I lived up in Northern California, they used to have CiCi’s Pizza commercials, but there’s no CiCi’s Pizzas anywhere close in the area so I never understood that sort of advertising.
NASIR: It was like Sonic. I mean, Sonic used to advertise in San Diego but the nearest drive used to be far away. Now, they have closer ones.
MATT: Yeah, there’s one really close to where I live now that’s pretty new. Just like in the middle of a spot that you wouldn’t see a Sonic, typically.
NASIR: I guess there are three Popeye’s in San Diego, in case you’re wondering. There’s plenty of Popeye’s around here in Houston. I think it started in Louisiana.
MATT: I would say probably after KFC and maybe Church’s Chicken – I don’t know if that’s popular or not but it’s got to be up there in terms of most locations. I don’t know. It’s not my ranking of most locations because that’s an objective thing. All right. I’m just going to get into the story here before this gets too out of hand.
NASIR: Once again, I’m really hungry now. You made me hungry. I feel like we should just stop the podcast and eat first.
MATT: It’s too early for me here for fried chicken. Basically, what happened was this. There was a woman that was running – or not running, she was at the counter at Popeye’s.
NASIR: She was a manager.
MATT: She was a manager, okay. And an armed robber came in – not something that you see on a day-to-day basis at fast food places. I can’t imagine there’s too much money in those drawers but I guess it’s worth it. And so, armed robber came in, stole nearly $400 if that’s a significant amount of money. But, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that much at all for a robbery.
NASIR: Worth armed robbery? Probably not.
MATT: Yeah, with an armed robbery, not probably worth it. But, anyways, this person came in stole the money and left. After the fact, the Popeye’s said, “Hey, you need to reimburse us for this money,” to the woman that was managing the store and she said, “Well…”
NASIR: She said, “No.”
MATT: Oh, I should also point out that she’s pregnant, correct? That’s another thing.
NASIR: Yeah, because that definitely added to the headlines – you know, “pregnant mother fired.”
MATT: Yeah. So, they request her to pay this money. I think they requested it pretty soon after the fact, too. She was saying, “I’m still kind of recovering from this armed robbery situation so it’s a little bit too soon and I’m also not going to pay the money. It was a robbery. You know, that’s not on me.” Of course, they did the logical thing and fired her. This was in Texas. Of course, you fire a pregnant woman who was – I don’t want to say the “victim” – I guess kind of the victim of an armed robbery or at least was there and had a gun pointed at her. The video shows it. I mean, whether the gun was loaded doesn’t matter. If someone points a gun at you, it’s pretty significant.
The guys end the week by explaining what negative SEO is and what legal remedies are available to victims of it.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. This is… what are we doing today? Yes, a business law podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name today is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And, as always, I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: As always… Well, I change my name once in a while.
MATT: Pasir Nasha.
NASIR: That was horrible. Horrible joke. Let me just write that down.
MATT: It wasn’t a joke.
NASIR: I keep track of all your bad jokes, by the way. We’ve had 181 episodes or so and we’re at 296 bad jokes.
MATT: Hey, that’s not bad, that’s like 1 ½ per episode. That’s pretty good – good average.
NASIR: Yeah, good average.
MATT: Speaking of numbers, we have SEO talk today – or negative SEO talk.
NASIR: Well, why is that speaking of numbers?
MATT: I don’t know. SEO, numbers
NASIR: 297.
MATT: I should have said “speaking of analytics.”
NASIR: You should have said, “Speaking of negative SEO, uh, negative SEO.”
MATT: Good lead-in.
NASIR: I think it’s funny that us lawyers are covering this issue because I think it’s such a subtle issue that most people aren’t even aware of. First of all, let’s break down what negative SEO is. In order to understand what negative SEO is, you have to know what SEO is. SEO is search engine optimization and, by the way, if I’m wrong and you SEO experts want to correct me, send me the email later, okay? I’m sure I’m not perfect on this. Anyway, SEO is search engine optimization. That’s just basically the process of trying to optimize your website and its affiliated backlinks, et cetera, in order to prop up the ranking of the search engine results for a particular keyword. And so, just as an example, if you’re a plumber and you have your business in San Diego, when you search “San Diego plumbing,” you’re going to want your business to come up as high as possible. Obviously, it gets a little more complicated than that because that’s a very competitive keyword. But, when it gets to other stuff, then you’re actually able to get number one spots sometimes. And so, negative SEO is, of course, the complete opposite. It’s what you do to your competitors that if you have ABC Plumbing San Diego that happens to be on the number one spot on Google when you search “San Diego plumbing,” how can you as a competitor get them to rank lower with efforts that you’re doing? It’s a little controversial, I would say.
MATT: Yeah, I mean, a little bit. This is the whole thing, and you wrote a great post on drawing the line between what’s legal and what’s ethical. I mean, I think it’s pretty clear on the ethics side of it. I don’t think any of this is ethical but, I mean, it’s also a business tactic.
NASIR: We tend to get SEO consulting calls and we have clients in the industry, we hire people in the industry. So, every time I run across anybody that seems to know about this stuff, I ask them about this and they all seem to agree that negative SEO does exist because, first, there was a myth of whether it exists or not. Two, it’s not something good to do. But yet, there’s always a smile on their face as if, like, if the right circumstances where there, they would definitely do it because it’s fair competition, you know?
MATT: I don’t think it’s ethical but we can go on to the legal side of it. There seems like there’s a couple of issues. One being – correct me if I’m wrong – it’s pretty difficult to figure out who’s actually doing these negative SEO tactics to a business, right?
NASIR: There’s different strategies for negative SEO. Let’s talk about the most common way or common thought of what that is. Google and its algorithm to decide how the rankings go decided about two or three years ago that all these other companies that were basically using these – what are called – crawlers or spiders to – I don’t know if that’s the right word, actually – all these scripts to create all these back...
Nasir and Matt are joined by Josh Malatino of Sno Kone Joe to hear his side of the story behind the alleged altercations and arrest involving another ice cream truck vendor and the Gloversville police.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we’re doing a recap episode I think today, right, Matt? Of an episode that we did, I think, it was two weeks ago or a week ago. I always get the timings messed up.
MATT: Yeah, recap or follow-up, I don’t know. It’s not similar to an episode we’ve done before but I’m looking forward to this one. It should be pretty good.
NASIR: We covered a dispute between two ice cream truck owners. I’m not sure exactly how it works but we covered it between Sno Kone Joe and Mr. Ding-A-Ling. Actually, Sno Kone Joe or the owner of Sno Kone Joe actually reached out to us, wanted to set some of the record straight because, obviously, you know, we just read what we see online, and who knows how truthful that is? Matt, who do we have today? Why don’t you make a nice little introduction for Josh here.
MATT: Yeah, like you said, we have Josh. Is it Malatino? JOSH: Yes, that’s correct.
MATT: Josh, like I said, the owner of Sno Kone Joe and we can only go as far as what we were able to read online when we did the episode before so we’re really glad to have you here to kind of get your side of the story. Just to do a quick recap of what we talked about before, or at least how we had heard it or read it, there was a dispute between you and Mr. Ding-A-Ling and, from what we read, there was an arrest for stalking and harassment, et cetera. Eventually, the charges I believe were dropped against you. I guess the first question is, you know, kind of give us your first-hand take on really what happened here. JOSH: Well, back in 2013, my ex-girlfriend and myself had a permit in the city of Gloversville to vend ice cream. We had two trucks that were in the city that have roughly 15,000 people on the high end. Sno Kone Joe has been in the city for… this would be the 46th season of it. There was a previous owner. My family had bought the business out. My ex-girlfriend had bought a truck and we were allowed to use another truck. Back in 2013, we were out selling ice cream. On different days, these alleged incidents happened. The first incident would have been with me, myself, on April 16, 2013. The cops were alleging that, as Hollister was going west on 8th Ave. in the city, I was going east and we completely just bypassed each other. Hollister testified that he was going about 20 miles an hour with his ice cream truck with his music on and I was going slow, with my music on, in the opposite direction, and I allegedly yelled, “This is my town!” which I did not yell. But, even say I did, what kind of crime is that? It’s not a crime. So, that was the only incident we had on that day. I was arrested for that sole incident – that was my harassment charge.
NASIR: You were arrested for that? JOSH: I was arrested for that; that was my harassment charge.
MATT: Wow.
NASIR: And that was the sole allegation at that time, right? JOSH: Excuse me?
NASIR: I said that was the sole allegation at that time on April 16th that you had yelled out that, “This is my town!” JOSH: That was allegedly what I yelled. That was what I was arrested for – for harassment. So, people think that the stalking charge was for following. They had nothing to do with following. It was more or less stating that we were offering free ice cream from our business which in turn was jeopardizing another person’s business. On April 28th I believe – between the 26th and 28th of 2013 – I was vending ice cream and Hollister had come past me. He drove past me, okay? When he took a right on to Spring Street, I had no idea where he was going to be. We were just following a route that’s been followed for, at that time,
The guys discuss why the Blackfish documentary may have led to a class action lawsuit against SeaWorld for fraud.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our Legally Sound Smart Business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Hope you guys had a good weekend and are ready for probably the most important news story that you’ll be hearing today.
MATT: In your time, when you lived in San Diego, you had the SeaWorld unlimited pass every single year.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I think you bought multiple passes just because you wanted to lay out on the seats and take up multiple spots.
NASIR: I realize you’re joking now but, one year, we had passes because my wife’ nephew was in town and he loved going there. We went there and – I don’t know – to me, it was one of the most depressing places on earth, you know, as opposed to Disneyworld which is supposed to be the happiest.
MATT: There’s one in Florida and one in San Diego, is that right?
NASIR: No, I think there’s more, actually, than that.
MATT: In the US.
NASIR: Yeah, I think there’s more in the US, too. I think there’s one in San Antonio.
MATT: Oh, is there?
NASIR: Yeah. Yeah, I think the two main ones are Florida and San Diego though.
MATT: Okay. Yeah, because I’ve never been to the one in San Diego. I’ve driven by it a bunch of times. I’ve been to the one in Florida a long time ago. Yeah, I’m not the avid fan like you.
NASIR: No, okay. Actually, they have three. They have one in Orlando, San Antonio, and San Diego.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: So, I guess those are the three we named.
MATT: Yeah. So, the firm almost covers all of those states. Maybe we can be part of this lawsuits that’s going on.
NASIR: Exactly.
MATT: Well, I guess, just to give a back story, I don’t know, I assume… have you seen the Blackfish documentary?
NASIR: I haven’t so it is kind of hard for me to be so opinionated. I am pretty opinionated about it but I don’t think I have a lot of facts that maybe that movie may actually demonstrate to back that up.
MATT: Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s a pretty big piece against SeaWorld and just essentially the treatment of the animals there. If you think about it, who knows how much of that is true. If you think about it, just look at the size of the animals and look at the size of the tanks that they’re being held in and it kind of makes sense. Obviously, it would be in terms of size to be in the ocean and things like that. But the Blackfish documentary gained a lot of publicity, got a lot of traction. A lot of people were watching it and realizing that they don’t like SeaWorld anymore. I guess it never dawned on them previously.
NASIR: All of a sudden, yeah.
MATT: Yeah, it’s like, “Yeah, now that I think about it, I really don’t like this thing.” That was a huge thing that’s happened over the last couple of years and I know recently – I don’t know how recent or how long ago this has been going on but – I’ve seen commercials that SeaWorld has put out essentially saying that some of the things in that documentary or these allegations are not true. I don’t know the specifics.
NASIR: I just saw the commercial this morning, in fact. They were promoting the hashtag #askseaworld and #askseaworld.com and making some statements. For example, they were saying how studies have shown that the animals in captivity in our facilities live as long as others outside in the wild which is an exact opposite allegation to what I think other people are saying. But what’s interesting, they use this #askseaworld and, of course, it backfires on them online. You know, I read some of the comments and you mentioned the tank size. One of the comments was or one of the questions is, “Why is your parking lot ten times bigger than the sizes of your tanks?” So, I thought that was pretty funny.
MATT: Yeah. Obviously, they’re trying to do this new marketing campaign and the #askseaworld. I mean, really,
Nasir and Matt close out the week by talking about Amazon's recent suit against companies that are offering paid positive reviews to products sold on Amazon.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I almost forgot what we were doing.
MATT: Uh… Uh… Uh-oh. He froze. You froze for a minute.
NASIR: Oh, I froze? In real life or what do you mean?
MATT: It’s like you were starting the intro and then you just froze for a second.
NASIR: Oh, yeah.
MATT: You caught it. Don’t worry.
NASIR: Okay. Yeah, exactly. I froze for a second. I was trying to think so… But, anyway, we are doing a podcast this time around and we’re covering an interesting topic, I believe.
MATT: Yeah. I realize on Wednesday we should have done something tax-related since it was Tax Day. Oh well. Too late.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: No, we mentioned something in the Amazon… or not that. Amazon’s what we’re talking about today. The Kickstarter thing about taxes, yeah, so I think we’re covered.
NASIR: Yeah, but I’m sure everyone feels the same way. Like, Tax Day is a depressing day. No one wants to be reminded. In fact, on April 15th, assuming you make your payments and so forth, you just want to be done and done with it.
MATT: I like it. I look forward to it.
NASIR: Really? Yeah. Unless you’re getting return, I suppose. I suppose that’s fun.
MATT: Well…
NASIR: It’s been a while for that though.
MATT: Yeah, you shouldn’t but, Amazon, that’s what we’re talking about. It looks like Amazon has finally – after twenty years of business or twenty years of allowing people to leave reviews for products – it’s finally had enough and it just filed its first lawsuit against, I guess, a few companies for selling fraudulent positive reviews. I think I’m still okay because you know how I run that negative review website so people can come in?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I just leave negative reviews for products.
NASIR: I think that’s available. I think you can do that.
MATT: It probably is.
NASIR: If you’re selling a product on Amazon that only has a few competitors then, man, that would be evil but it’s definitely doable.
MATT: This isn’t exactly what I think we were planning on talking about next week with the negative SEO stuff but it’s kind of related in terms of just unfair business practices that harm the business of a competitor but we’ll save that for next week.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, this lawsuit was just recently filed in Washington State Court against these websites that are buyamazonreviews.com, bayreviews.net – I don’t get that one. Is that a typo? Maybe “buyreviews.net”? It has to be a typo, right?
NASIR: I think it’s a typo, yeah.
MATT: Buyreviewsnow.com, buyazonreviews.com, whatever. Buy Amazon Reviews, you can have unlimited four- and five-star reviews this week. Our skilled writers look at your product, look at your competitors’ products, and then write state-of-the-art reviews that will sure to generate sales for you. It seems like a very questionable thing. I mean, I looked to the Amazon customer review guidelines which, to me, aren’t very extensive or they need to be more detailed, but it does prohibit. It says, “Who can create customer reviews? Anyone who has purchased items from amazon.com. All you ask is you follow the rules below.” Technically, I mean, without reading the rules below but, technically, you can say, “Hey, I purchased something from Amazon. That entitles me to leave a review on anything,” that’s how I can read that, but there are a little bit of safeguards in the things that are prohibited below. But (1) Amazon needs to improve its review guidelines and (2) these companies probably should word things a little bit better as well.
NASIR: You write the guidelines are not that great. This kind of goes to the whole reviewing process online and the reason why this has become an issue is because these...
The guys talk about Kickstarter and who exactly is responsible for when campaigns fail to provide rewards to backers.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for what? For ourselves, right? We’re just going to take the money and leave.
MATT: I don’t know if that’s allowed under their terms of service, but how much are we looking to raise?
NASIR: Well, it’s for our podcast – to help us fund the podcast. As far as how much we’re looking to raise, I think I would say a minimum of $1.00 but maximum $2 billion.
MATT: The minimum is the important thing because, if you set your minimum and, in order to actually get the proceeds from Kickstarter, you have to reach your minimum. If not, then nothing happens.
NASIR: Oh, okay.
MATT: So, yeah, we’ll just have to make sure that we’re following the rules that Kickstarter has on its terms of service and this is actually what it truly says. “Don’t break the law. Don’t lie to people. Don’t offer prohibited items. Don’t victimize anyone. Don’t spam. Don’t harm anyone’s computer. Don’t abuse other users’ personal information.”
NASIR: Yeah, I think we can do that.
MATT: Sufficient for me. But let’s say we do get that investment, well, I guess, first, let me backpedal a little bit. We have to offer some sort of reward or benefit in order for people to give us the money.
NASIR: I already have a list. Like, for example, okay, if you pay us $5.00, then you get a free download of our episode. If you pay us $10.00, then you get to listen to an episode before it comes out and that’s about, like, six hours or so before. We can go on from there. I have a lot of ideas.
MATT: Yeah, all very good, of course.
NASIR: Yeah, all very good.
MATT: So, if we do that and then people give us money, we don’t fulfil those, I mean, those would be easy rewards to fulfil. But, oftentimes, people start these Kickstarters and have these rewards. A lot of times, if it’s product-based, it’s going to be based on giving them some form of the end product and, what happens when the people that ran this individual Kickstarter don’t end up giving the rewards to the people they’re supposed to, I guess that’s what we’re going to talk about here – the issues behind that – because it happens. I don’t know what percentage of the time it happens but it happens, I’m sure, I was going to try to ballpark a percent but I’m just not even going to do that.
NASIR: I mean, obviously, I think most people are honest but, at the same time, it’s not about honesty. It’s also about how many projects just fail. I think our perspective may be a little warped because we tend to hear those stories more often than not. I mean, we’ve had personal experiences with our clients who have either done campaigns or have had relations to it and so forth. It’s not uncommon for just a group of people to go in there with positive, wholesome intentions. They raise the funds and they find out, “Oh, there’s some kind of kink in the production,” or whatever and they need more funds and it just falls apart or one of the partners leaves and doesn’t go anywhere. That happens. I mean, that happens with any project which shows you there’s always going to be a time where you need more money. Sometimes, what you raise in the Kickstarter campaign maybe not be enough.
MATT: Yeah, that’s a good point. I don’t think there’s too many people out there that are just trying to scam the system and get free money. Maybe that guy who did the Airbnb thing.
NASIR: Of course. We covered that a while ago, that guy that was overstaying in an Airbnb also had onne failed Kickstarter campaign where he didn’t do anything with the money and then he was working on a second one, right?
MATT: Right. It was a sizeable amount, too. I think it was $40,000.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But, yeah,
Nasir and Matt discuss Oyster, coined the Netflix forBooks, and why their model may work out over the long-term.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I’m excited for today because we’re going to start reading some books for the first time. I don’t think I’ve read a book all the way through – at least a fiction book all the way through – in a long, long time.
MATT: I was just telling somebody this story. It’s probably more embarrassing so I shouldn’t tell it.
NASIR: No, it’s okay.
MATT: Many years ago, a long time ago, I was in an interview for a job and one of the questions they asked me was…
NASIR: “What was the last book you read?”
MATT: Well, I don’t think it was. I don’t remember the exact question but it was something along those lines or, like, “What book would you use to describe…?” whatever the position was, and I hadn’t read a book in a while so I just made something completely up. Someone had told me about a book a couple of months ago so I just said that book and then completely made up what the book was about – just made up facts and everything – and the guy goes, like, “All right. Good answer. That’s a good answer.”
NASIR: He was like, “Yeah, I read that book, too. I enjoyed it,” and you guys are both making up the story as if you guys have read it. That was for your pizza job, right?
MATT: Yeah, it was very important to be well-read at that pizzeria. Yeah. Well, I think you and I are probably the same in that we read so much – you know, either case law or statutes or practice guides or just blogs. I mean, there’s a good amount of reading and, by the time I get done with all that, I don’t really want to read a book. I’d rather just watch something and not have to make my eyes work as hard.
NASIR: Yeah, and even from an entertainment perspective, when I want to read for entertainment purposes, I don’t want to read fiction. It’s just I want to learn – read information, I suppose, I guess.
MATT: I’m with you on that. Pretty much every good book turns into a movie or a TV show.
NASIR: That’s right. That’s your screening process, right?
MATT: Yeah. That’s why I’m not too concerned, but a lot of people are pretty excited about this Oyster which I think I might have heard about this before but I don’t know. Essentially, they’re calling themselves – or they’ve been called – the Netflix of books which, I guess, a book can be just as easily binge-read as it can a show on Netflix binge-watched or, you know, a documentary or something like that.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Is that how you interpret that?
NASIR: Well, I would say Netflix is the idea that it’s kind of unlimited. What’s interesting about this model is that, first, actually, Amazon has its own unlimited subscription service. I think it’s $10.00 a month or so.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But it’s actually a little known fact that another company or another business model that’s very similar to this was invented a long time ago before Oyster and Amazon was even around and it was called the public library.
MATT: I knew you were going there before you finished it. I was hoping you weren’t but…
NASIR: I love how things just get reinvented. Obviously, the nuance to this is that it’s electronic. You know, you get ebooks. You don’t actually have to drive to the library and they’re not physical books but, hey, power to them.
MATT: And you mentioned the Kindle part. This is different. Oyster is different because it’s actually somehow got some sort of agreement with I guess the five biggest publishers so it seems like it truly is an unlimited – I was going to say all-you-can-eat but that doesn’t make sense – all-you-can-read book arrangement.
NASIR: No, you’re right. That’s the big difference here. The big five publishers – and you guys probably haven’t heard of these publishers – I mean, Hatchet and Harper Collins,
Nasir and Matt talk about the Indiana'sReligious Freedom Restoration Act and how a pizza place was the first to adopt the new law.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this story was built for us as if they put it together. Matt’s been messaging me all week, like, “We have to cover this!” because it has to do with pizza and Yelp, right? It’s a nice combination, but there’s other things too, right? GoFundMe.
MATT: Yeah, there’s a lot of things. I mean, even starting from the beginning. You know, I’m from Indiana.
NASIR: There you go.
MATT: Yeah, and we just talked about last week the people that are taking, like, the Taylor Swift and the Ted Cruz URLs.
NASIR: Oh, that’s true.
MATT: It’s kind of the same thing. Someone basically created a fake website for this company. If you’re listening to this, you obviously know how technology works and you’ve heard about this story that’s been going around.
NASIR: “You know how technology works”? Yeah.
MATT: Well, I figure anyone who listens to a podcast would definitely have heard this story over the last couple of weeks at some point.
NASIR: Well, I don’t know. I could picture, like, a Unabomber-type person in the middle of nowhere listening to our podcast and our podcast only. So, this is where they get the news, you know?
MATT: So, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which isn’t new in general but at least new to, I guess, this version is new to Indiana. You did a good job explaining the federal.
NASIR: Yeah. So, this is not a new law to the country. Like you said, it’s a new law to the state of Indiana. I think there’s actually 18 or 19 other states that have almost the exact same law and this was actually modelled after a federal law back in the 90s – you know, during the Bill Clinton presidency. And so, it is kind of strange from a legal perspective to see the reaction and I think even the governor felt the same way. He felt taken back of the reaction that he’s received because what is a pop news story right now going on about this law is that people are using this law or interpreting this law or this law was even passed to discriminate against homosexuals or based upon sexual orientation and the actual language itself has nothing to do with that. And so, then the question is, “What were the intentions behind this law?” Was it to discriminate?
MATT: Yeah. I mean, you’re exactly right in that and there’s nothing in there. It’s all about the exercise of religion so it’s reading the actual bill itself reminds me of the constitutional law class where you had to do all these tests on whether the burdens outweigh the benefits, things like that.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: That’s essentially how this is worded. If you’re really interested, you can read the actual bill itself but it’s just a test saying that the state or local government can’t substantially burden a person’s right to exercise a religion unless it’s blah blah blah. I don’t need to get into the whole thing but it’s nothing to do with sexuality at all.
NASIR: Yeah, it restates what the law is already regarding the application of religious freedoms. And so, what’s interesting, if I asked one of these, you know, people that are protesting against this law, if I asked them, “Okay, before this law was passed, could an Indiana business owner discriminate against a homosexual?” what do you think their answer would be?
MATT: No?
NASIR: Of course, it would be “no” but the answer is that they can and they can before the law and the can after. Now, I’m sure this is going to be a challenge but the reality is that there is no federal protection for sexual orientation but there is state protection on a state-by-state level – California is one of them amongst many others and I think the trend is such that it’ll start extending to that. Even in Indiana,
The guys kick off the week discussing how Sno Kone Joeallegedly stalked and harassed Mr. Ding-A-Ling and what crosses the line for fair competition.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. You remember last week when we recorded?
NASIR: It was a week ago but I do remember.
MATT: The people trying to break into the room?
NASIR: Yeah, that was crazy. Who was that?
MATT: It was a rival podcast of ours.
NASIR: No way!
MATT: Yeah, they tried to break in and yell stuff while we were recording. You know, it’s competition for them, so they didn’t want us to be recording. They thought, maybe if they came in and yelled things, that’d get us out of sorts or maybe people would stop listening because they’d just hear people yelling in the background and no one wants to listen to that.
NASIR: It was disrupting.
MATT: But, yeah, apparently this happens in other spots as well and much more hilarious names than ours. There’s a battle between Sno Kone Joe and Mr. Ding-A-Ling – two ice cream truck vendors that are in Gloversville, but I don’t know what state that’s in. The lawsuit was in Upstate New York.
NASIR: It must be in New York then.
MATT: Yeah, I would think so. This is very town-centric because basically you have Josh Malatino – he’s Mr. Sno Kone and he’s had his business, I guess, for a while in Gloversville – and there was a new guy that came in town, Mr. Ding-A-Ling – you know, new into town, just trying to give ice cream presumably to kids. Kids love to hear that sound of the ice cream coming through. I actually hear it every now and then at my house.
NASIR: Well, I’m trying to figure out if the Sno Kone guy, what’s his name? Sno Kone Joe?
MATT: Sno Kone Joe, yeah.
NASIR: Well, snow cones are different than ice cream so does Sno Kone Joe also sell ice cream? I feel like he does because the one that was upset, I suppose, they would follow the other competitor’s ice cream truck and then give out ice cream, basically killing the business. You know, I thought this was a joke but, you know, people get pretty competitive in the food truck business, right? And, apparently, I think there’s a Simpson’s episode about that, if I recall, which is also about franchises. So, interesting tie-in for us lawyers.
MATT: Yeah, and let me get to some of the things that happened. Basically, Sno Kone Joe got upset that there’s this new competition in town. He would just follow around the other guy, just yelling at him, “You don’t have a chance! This is my town!” You know, he did get arrested for stalking or bullying – however you want to, I guess, more so stalking. He would just pull up behind the guy and yell “free ice cream!” to people as the second guy was trying to sell his product.
NASIR: So, what makes this a little bit more interesting, and I was trying to find more information about this, but the Mr. Ding-A-Ling owner, Brian Collis, Ding-A-Ling says that he and the previous owner of Sno Kone Joe had an agreement not to bring in Mr. Ding-A-Ling trucks into Gloversville. Okay. Just to follow what’s going on here because I know these names are confusing, Mr. Ding-A-Ling had an agreement with the former owner of Sno Kone Joe’s business saying, “Okay. We’re not going to bring any Ding-A-Ling trucks into Gloverville,” but that arrangement ended as soon as – let’s see – Malatino, who is what?
MATT: Mr. Sno Kone.
NASIR: He’s Mr. Sno Kone or Sno Kone Joe or whatever. So, as soon as he took the business over, that agreement somehow went out the window. And so, Ding-A-Ling trucks took advantage of that. Now, the question was, okay, if this agreement existed, was it in writing and, by Malatino or Sno Kone Joe, by taking over the business, did he take on that agreement as well and as restricted in that respect?
MATT: So, such a very professional and legal actual substance to this with two hilarious names...
Nasir and Matt end their week together in San Diego by discussing Taylor Swift and other celebrities purchasing their own top level domains related to porn. Also, check out the new pizza site for Pasha Law!
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Recording live in San Diego, California.
MATT: Still here. You’re still here.
NASIR: We’re all still here. Perfect. So, we had to cover this next topic because Matt was searching Taylor Swift in porn and it just came up. Since you were looking at it, why won’t you tell us what we’re covering today?
MATT: Well, it’s only funny because I’m using the communal iPad at the university club so whoever gets this next, this search is going to be hilarious. But it’s not just that, there’s that, dot-porn, dot-xxx. I like the one that’s dot-sucks because you can actually have some fun with that one with competitors. It’s these – I always forget the name of these – specialized domain?
NASIR: They’re called TLDs – top level domains.
MATT: Top level domains, that’s what it is.
NASIR: Yeah. Yeah, speaking of pashalaw.pizza.
MATT: Still can’t believe that’s an actual thing. It’s hilarious.
NASIR: Well, remember I said, it was last year we found out that dot-pizza was coming out and I think was – I don’t know, I don’t remember the date it actually came out – February of this year or something like that and I almost forgot about it and I was worried that someone was going to take it, but I was okay. But, in June first, there’s all these other ones coming out, right?
MATT: Yeah, and I don’t have the full list of ones that are coming out but the ones that people are having problems with are the ones we mentioned that were, you know, not putting these individuals in the best light, I guess. The dot-sucks one I think is kind of funny. People could have some fun with that.
NASIR: Yeah, it seems like all the bad ones or all the negative ones are coming out on the first of June. I wonder why they did it together like that – sucks, porn, and adult.
MATT: So, how does that work? I mean, is it just hit a certain time and then it’s open? Like, first come, first served?
NASIR: On June first, it’s starting but – I don’t know – it’s basically there’s this nonprofit organization called the ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – and there’s a whole history of ICANN and how the internet started. That’s kind of geeky and you can look it up. But, now, when it comes to these top level domains, some of the organizations that are associated with this are giving… the registration office is giving these celebrities an early bite at the apple. I’m not sure what their basis and reasoning is. Well, I understand the reasoning is because, like, for example, the dot-sucks domain for Taylor Swift is still available and the reason it’s available is because it’s operated by another company and it costs up to $2,500 to buy this out. Right now, they’re selling at a premium. Even dot-pizza I think was not a regular cost. It was like $50.00 for a year or something like that and I paid for probably 90 years.
MATT: Money well-spent for 90 years. Yeah, so it’s interesting that – and my internet’s not cooperating but I believe – Taylor Swift bought some of these websites.
NASIR: So, she bought dot-porn, dot-adult, and probably others, I’m sure.
MATT: Dot-pizza.
NASIR: And dot-pizza.
MATT: We should buyer taylorswift.pizza.
NASIR: We’ve got to buy it before this episode comes out.
MATT: This reminds me of when – it was a thing on ESPN, actually, or SportsCenter – when the internet started really becoming popular and some of – for whatever reason – I remember Warren Sapp who’s recently been in the news for not great things. At the time, he was playing…
NASIR: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
MATT: Well, you can look it up.
Nasir and Matt get together in San Diego and talk about outrageous non-compete agreement that Amazon had temporary employees sign.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name’s Nasir Pasha. This is our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. As you know, my intro is all messed up – because it’s usually perfect – only because Matt and I are recording in the same room in sunny San Diego on top of the Symphony Towers at the University Club.
MATT: Yes, and a longer table than before.
NASIR: Yeah, a nice and long boardroom. I’m looking out towards the east, towards Balboa Park area, kind of.
MATT: I’m just looking at the wall for whatever reason.
NASIR: Well, yeah, well, you’re in San Diego so you get to have the views all the time. I need to let it sink in a little bit.
MATT: That’s true.
NASIR: It’s been a while.
MATT: I can see Petco Park, a plane, Coronado Bridge, businesses.
NASIR: Legally sound smart businesses? By the way, what did you think about pashalaw.pizza?
MATT: You said that to me. I didn’t think it was a real thing.
NASIR: It’s real.
MATT: Hold on.
NASIR: I thought you were just joking as if you didn’t think it was real. No, it’s real.
MATT: Uh, man, this is actually pretty funny.
NASIR: It’s a good time to talk about. All these top-level domain names are still coming out. I love it. Pretty much pick a noun and it’s available or it’s going to be available soon.
MATT: Ah, and this just links to all the podcasts that we’ve had that have mentioned, have a tag of pizza?
NASIR: Yeah, pretty much.
MATT: Actually way less than I expected.
NASIR: I was going to do a link that just searches “pizza” but then that would have been way too many because, for example, this one, just by saying “pizza,” now is on that list because of our transcript.
MATT: Oh, okay. I was going to say that makes sense because I know it’s definitely been…
NASIR: Actually, we’ll change that.
MATT: The four that are on here are all titled with “pizza” in the title so I guess that’s why.
NASIR: Yeah. In fact, actually, I’m going to just change it now as we’re talking.
MATT: This photo is so funny. This pizza looks pretty good, too.
NASIR: It’s the Pasha Law brand. By the way, it does search all pizza anyway.
MATT: Does it?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: All right. Everyone enjoy that. And that’s our show!
MATT: I really thought you were joking this whole time. Can’t even go on, but we’re going to have to go on because we have a pretty interesting topic for today. We’ve talked about… Actually, I think Amazon was maybe one of the first companies we’ve…
NASIR: Oh, someone’s breaking in. Someone almost broke into our podcast, probably a fan.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I appreciate you guys listening in but, you know, you have to give us space to record.
MATT: Take the unruly fans outside – same unruliness that former employees of Amazon are going through with this non-compete that they’ve had to sign off on some of them to get severance pay. Also, that’s temporary workers, nonetheless. So, basically, you know the deal with Amazon, they sell anything and everything online, they have people that work for them in the warehouse and take the products and put them in boxes and, you know, make sure they go to the right people. A lot of these are seasonal jobs – around Christmas time’s big, that’s probably the most seasonal one. But they’re having some of these employees – maybe even all of them – sign this 18-month non-compete agreement which, all right, that’s ridiculous right off the bat.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: What’s it preventing them from doing? Amazon bars their former employees from working for companies with products or services that compete with Amazon’s. So, that’s pretty much as broad as you can get. Just looking at the words, it’s broad, but knowing what Amazon does, it’s so overly broad. I can’t imagine any court upholding this sort of – not even in...
Nasir and Matt cap off the week by discussing how AT&T's legal counsel failed to appeal a decision and the costly consequences that resulted.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the podcast that we record, and my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Hey, I had something, I thought you would think this is funny. This is a good start to Friday. I saw this commercial.
NASIR: I’m already laughing.
MATT: I saw this commercial last night. It’s not LegalZoom, but it’s something like that. I forget the company, incorporation.com or something. Good domain.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: It’s like cheap filings for incorporating businesses and their quote in here was, “Incorporating can be the difference between making a fortune and losing everything.” That doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s like, well, if you incorporate, you’ll become rich. But, if you don’t, you’re going to lose everything. It’s like, incorporating is not going to depend on the success of your business.
NASIR: No, that’s all you need to do. It’s like, “Yup! I’m incorporated!” No, but it’s true. You know, businesses in general – or I should say “business owners and entrepreneurs” – kind of put this, especially for the first time that they’ve formed an entity, it’s almost like this unattainable, this kind of, like, prestigious thing to incorporate and it kind of is because, you know, it’s the same thing of putting your shingle out for the first time and entering into that business lease and basically making a commitment to your business so I understand that. But then, that kind of catchphrase is kind of exploiting that kind of sentiment, for sure.
MATT: It can make the difference between making a fortune and losing everything.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Even if you don’t have a good business model.
NASIR: Yeah. At the end, entity forming is – I guess, from a lawyer’s perspective – it’s different. But, even those business owners that have been in business for a while, it’s a formality. It’s just something that you have to go through. In a sense, if you think about it from a legal perspective, it’s almost a joke. Like, just because I file this piece of paper now, I have limited liability and what’s up with that, you know? And, the day before, I did not. It’s kind of funny. Well, that’s how the law works and that’s why you have to pay us a billion dollars to perform legal work for you.
MATT: Especially if you’re the in-house counsel for AT&T because they might be in some trouble here.
NASIR: I don’t think they’re paying their lawyer that much this time because of this.
MATT: I also assume they probably – I’m going to go on a limb and say – they probably have more than one lawyer.
NASIR: Oh, they definitely did. I think they had 18. Was it 18? Yeah, 18 lawyers and assistants who basically messed up.
MATT: Oh, that’s the actual number?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Well, yeah. So, they had this, you know, they’re probably involved in many lawsuits, some of which are frivolous but, yeah, there’s this patent infringement case and, essentially, they missed the deadline to appeal a jury verdict. So, AT&T lost this case and they were going to appeal. They had 30 days to do so and they didn’t figure it out until 51 days after and, yeah, they missed their opportunity and now they’re saying they could be on the hook for this $40M payment that resulted from this lawsuit involved with Two-Way Media, LLC.
NASIR: Yeah. So, let’s break down how this exactly happened. Basically, there’s a docket notice that is sent out every time something is filed with the court. Like any kind of index of anything, it’s like a table of contents. All you see is the title or a very limited description of what the document is. If you want to read the actual order, then you just click on the link or, if it’s a state court, then you download the document or you’re notified accordingly.
Nasir and Matt talk about Panera Bread's decision to start recording video of its employeesand whether that decision is legal.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to another day of podcasting of business law and business news. You know, actually, I’m pretty excited about the stock market today because Yelp is crashing like crazy – not like crazy, it’s down 6 percent. But, if you look, when our episode about Yelp came out last Wednesday, I’m pretty sure we caused its collapse and its downfall.
MATT: Most likely.
NASIR: At least the beginning of it, most likely. That episode did pretty well. So, if you haven’t caught that, yeah, we had a guest from a company that actually was being sued by Yelp for trying to help out business owners so check that out.
MATT: Revleap.
NASIR: Yeah, Revleap, exactly.
MATT: Yeah, I want to stay posted on that one. Interested to see what happens. A good guy, too. So, hopefully they win. Maybe they’ll win and the judgment will be that they own Yelp. That’d be cool.
NASIR: And they’ll be like, “We hate Yelp!” and they’ll just close the business. Actually, yeah, Yelp is down 4 percent. It was yesterday I think another 6 percent – I think I read. But there’s also this other campaign or some documentary that’s going on that’s called the Billion Dollar Bully trailer and it’s just basically there’s a trailer about Yelp and their CEO and so forth that’s being produced, and they have a Kickstarter campaign.
MATT: Actually, I had a conversation with somebody this week and, for people that don’t own a business or don’t work with businesses, they probably don’t know but we’ve talked about this many times before how Yelp’s kind of can basically control exactly what they do and then they call you if you advertise with them and you pull the advertising. They can manipulate. They can just manipulate everything and I don’t think the general public knows about this. Why would you know unless you own a business or work closely with businesses or if someone, you know, one of those people tell you about it? If you’re just in the general public like my wife is, she has no idea. She uses Yelp all the time because she doesn’t know that they completely can manipulate something and make one business look a lot better than it is or a lot more worse than it is.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, and you’re absolutely correct. I mean, most people don’t know. Also, in a way, I can understand why they don’t really care because, at the end, all they care about it, okay, not just can I trust the ratings but is a good place that have five stars actually good? Because they don’t really care about the one or two stars because that’s fine. All they want is a good place to go, right? And a trusted source. So, so long as that part is trustworthy, and the likelihood is that it is, because it’s very easy to get a lower rating, difficult to get a higher rating – even with Yelp’s standards – so I could understand why, you know, the general public doesn’t care. But, I think, because it’s hitting small businesses so hard, I mean, I predicted, I mean, I think Yelp is on a bad course and I think investors are going to see that on the long-term that they’re going to have to make some adjustments pretty quickly and all this information of the practices of businesses are going to get out and general public is going to start understanding it and the impact it’s having.
MATT: Yeah. Hopefully, is the documentary already out or is it coming out?
NASIR: No. In fact, we should probably link the campaign. There’s a Kickstarter campaign. They’ve raised a small amount of money. It’s 50 percent done and they need the rest to so-called “finish” the other 50 percent which is understanding, I mean, there’s a lot of post-production costs that are pretty expensive.
The guys kick off the week by discussing what can be done when there is a breach of confidentiality and whether there are any solutions to remedy the breach.
Get help with a confidentiality agreement by contacting our firm today.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. And, of course, you can always visit us on our website at pashalaw.pizza – you do know about that, right?
MATT: I wouldn’t be surprised if that was an actual thing.
NASIR: It is! By the way, my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: No, yeah. So, that is our official announcement – FYI, Matt – pashalaw.pizza has finally launched after, I think it’s been about six and a half, seven minutes of development. We’re finally up and going so check it out.
MATT: After we talked about those – what do they call them?
NASIR: Top level domains.
MATT: Yeah, I haven’t heard about those at all.
NASIR: Well, the reason is because it took, like, almost a year to actually implement it. So, they actually have a staggered schedule. In fact, let me see here. So, yeah, we have dot-green coming out on March 24th which you would think would come out earlier for Saint Patrick’s Day; April 1st is dot-tires; April 2nd is dot-flowers; April 8th – my birthday, everyone make a note of that – dot-wedding; 15th, it should be, like, dot-taxes or something, no, it’s garden, fashion; and then, 21st is poker. A lot of cool stuff coming up.
MATT: It’s so weird. I don’t really get it.
NASIR: No, but check out pashalaw.pizza, that’s probably the best site out there right now
MATT: What do we have on there? Strictly legal stories?
NASIR: It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s pretty complex so you just have to check it out on your own.
MATT: You link to the best pizza in every state article that you just told me about.
NASIR: Well, no one knows that we started late today, but the reason we started late is because we started going through the Business Insider article for the “best pizza in every state” which the very premise seemed ridiculous to us, but we found some pretty bad pizzas in there.
MATT: Yeah, some interesting stuff, for sure. I feel like this article comes out all the time so I don’t know how they decide on this. Some of these don’t even make sense. I just don’t get it. Well, the Oregon one has just got shells all over it. Did you see that one?
NASIR: Yeah, I don’t even think that’s a pizza. They’re like, “Oh, well, we can’t really find a good pizza place. Let’s just put this blob of goop on here.”
MATT: Yeah, there’s so much – and we’ll get into, I guess, the episode here in a second – but there’s so many very different pizzas. I feel like that’s what it takes to win this thing. But, most likely, the best one is probably just the more standard topping.
NASIR: Exactly.
MATT: So, what do we have? Something much less fun to talk about probably. Oh, confidentiality.
NASIR: Nice, with pizza?
MATT: Yeah. So, like, the secret ingredients for the recipes for the crust or the sauce or anything. It could be confidential.
NASIR: Whatever you prefer – sauce or crust.
MATT: Yeah. Not to make any judgments but I guess this is part of a lawsuit. I mean, we’re going to talk about confidentiality in general but this is part of a lawsuit and I guess what happened was there was a document that was filed with the court and I don’t know if it was unredacted or just poorly redacted.
NASIR: I think “incorrectly redacted” was the term.
MATT: Basically which had confidential information on it and, you know, once that gets lodged with the court, that’s public record and anyone can go and look that stuff up. So, at that point, the things that were supposed to remain confidential were supposed to be redacted are out in the open and they’re not confidential anymore. So, obviously, the side that, you know, was going to be harmed by this – by the confidential information getting out – tried to...
Nasir and Matt discuss the concept of "friendly fraud" and how scammers are using it to defraud businesses through Paypal and other means.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Very good. It’s our Friday episode. You know, honestly, I can’t get over that last Wednesday episode. I’m still thinking about it.
MATT: It’s one of the better guests we’ve have.
NASIR: It was real. It was pretty raw. No expert here; it was just someone that co-owns a company that provides a service that was sued by Yelp and was defending them. So, if you guys haven’t checked it out yet, one episode before – E165 – definitely, definitely something you don’t want to miss.
MATT: And they’re probably not listening to this episode today because, as you know, the Thursday and Friday of the NCAA tournament, it’s like the biggest nonproduction workwise. There was something like 9 billion. I saw some number.
NASIR: I think the 9 billion is the number of people that watch it that day.
MATT: No. Uh, okay. “Estimated 40 million fill out brackets, wager approximately $9 billion.”
NASIR: What a waste of money.
MATT: Pretty much all that illegally.
NASIR: So, what was interesting, I was on Reddit and trolling through there and making fun of people on my comments and stuff like that – no, not really.
MATT: Typical for you.
NASIR: So, there was one person, I think, in the finance section or personal finance section that posted something about how their PlayStation network gamer tag was – I don’t know – there was all these charges on it and I can’t remember the exact circumstances but, bottom-line is, somehow, PlayStation was saying, “Either you pay this amount or we’re going to ban you for life,” or whatever. And then, someone else responded to that and says, “Okay. I see your PlayStation problem and I raise my case where I got scammed with a PayPal chargeback and forced to repay $1,414 or be banned forever.” Of course, this post got picked up and on the front page and then Consumers.com covered it and different things like that. So, I thought it was pretty interesting that we should cover it.
MATT: Basically, this is how I understand the whole fraudulent transaction here, whatever you want to call it – a scheme, if you will.
NASIR: They call it “friendly fraud.”
MATT: Yeah, I saw that, too. I thought that was stupid. Friendly fraud…
NASIR: It’s so odd, yeah.
MATT: So, let’s see, what’s something I want to buy? Let’s see. I’m going to buy a TV.
NASIR: Nice.
MATT: So, I’ll order a nice expensive TV.
NASIR: Flat screen?
MATT: What?
NASIR: Flat screen or one of those tubes?
MATT: Well, I’m going to go big because this is what I’m going to do. It’s order this really nice curved big TV that’s thousands of dollars. So, I order it and then I tell my bank, “Oh, I didn’t order this.”
NASIR: But that’s a lie.
MATT: Yeah. Well, it’s friendly. It’s a friendly lie.
NASIR: Oh, okay.
MATT: Get the charges reversed after this identity theft claim so I get my money back, and guess what, I still have the TV too and the person that sold it to me, I guess they’re the ones that are out of luck because they don’t have a TV or the money.
NASIR: But then, who has to pay for all that? Someone has to pay for it.
MATT: Whoever sold it to me. I don’t care. I’m watching my TV. I’ve already forgotten about it.
NASIR: You’re watching the NCAA tournament and betting all your money that you still have.
MATT: Yeah. Yeah, don’t get me wrong; I lost all the money that I got from this friendly fraudulent transaction. But, still, at the end of the day, I feel pretty good about it.
NASIR: No, and anyone who has been charging credit cards for a long enough time, you know, we have credit cards. I don’t think I’ve had one chargeback because, you know, usually the people that you’re working with,
Nasir and Matt welcome Alec Farwell of RevLeap to discuss why his company is being sued by Yelp and how you can support their cause.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we’re covering, I think – what is this? I don’t know if it’s our favorite topic or second favorite. I think we go back and forth between Uber and Yelp. But we’re covering Yelp today.
MATT: Well, yeah, I was going to say it’s been a long time coming. You’ve been harping on this issue for what’s seemed like years and years, but I think it’s only been maybe one year at most.
NASIR: Yeah, I think, on the podcast, for a year. But, I think, otherwise, it’s been definitely years, for sure.
MATT: It’s been a while since we’ve had a guest, too. I think this is going to be a pretty good guest to have because it’s a very interesting topic and a very interesting thing that they’re doing. So, we have Alec here with Revleap. For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, they’ve recently been involved with a lawsuit with Yelp. The difference here is they’re actually being sued by Yelp. I know, a lot of times, we talk about people wanting to sue Yelp. This is the flip side of it. So, Alec, it’s good to have you here. ALEC: Yeah, thank you.
NASIR: So, as we know, just to kind of set this up a little bit, Yelp is a company that has plenty of reviews for small businesses and, as we’ve discussed in the past, once you have a bad review, it’s very difficult, and that’s actually published and actually part of the algorithm that they actually choose to publish, it’s very difficult to remove that review unless you can actually, if it’s a statement of defamation and you actually know the identity of the actual reviewer. Other than that, the Ninth Circuit ruled – I think it was, like, last year or so – that, even if Yelp is changing the algorithms and they’re fancy however they want to do it, even if they are extorting and basically taking in money from advertisers and putting those positive reviews up and those that don’t advertise, putting the negative reviews up, and vice versa, that’s okay. It was kind of a very controversial decision and I don’t think it was made in the way that necessarily Ninth Circuit intended to do. But that kind of ruling, I think, gave a little bit of strength or aggressiveness for Yelp to start going after other companies that actually service customers and service businesses that want to have a little bit more control of their reputation online. So, I may be mischaracterizing exactly what you do, Alec, so I don’t want to be the one to do that. Do you want to describe exactly how you service your customers and what you’re doing? Also, touch on what Yelp is saying about you guys. ALEC: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I just want to first, you know, re-verify all the stuff that you’ve just said and I wanted to bring that up as well because, you know – and, keep in mind, this is all my speculation; I’m not entirely sure, you know, I’m not an attorney, you know, that’s your field but, you know – from what I can see, Yelp, right now, is trying to get the backing of our legal system to further establish control and dominance over everyone’s profile. You know, this win that they just had, this victory, this victory allowed them, essentially, they can do whatever they want. So, they can literally go up to someone and say, “Hey! You know, if you don’t pay us, we’re going to remove your good reviews,” and they can legally do that now, and correct me if I’m wrong, but that was my understanding of it. So, they have the legal leeway now to do whatever they want on people’s profile. With this lawsuit, my thinking is that now they’re trying to get the legal backing to not only be able to do whatever they want to someone’s profile once they reviews are there, but they’re trying to prevent business owners from even having t...
Nasir and Matt talk about the company that's attempting to convince athletes to stay in college by raising money from fans.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I was going to try to do the lead-in for this even though it’s another sports story and the only reason is because I was at Sports Clips this week getting my haircut done. Yeah, that’s right; I get my haircut done at Sports Clips. And so, I was sitting down in the waiting area and there was I think it was ESPN. There were two guys. It looked like they were doing a radio show but they were being filmed on TV which I thought was strange.
MATT: Mike and Mike probably.
NASIR: Yeah, I think that sounds right. They were talking about this exact story and I’m like, “That’s pretty much Matt and I.” We might as well be on ESPN.
MATT: Yeah, maybe. Actually, this is good timing. This episode will come out on Monday and this is right after Selection Sunday.
NASIR: Oh, yeah.
MATT: Which you actually like. I mean, Dayton will be back. You had your big Dayton thing last year. They’ll be in the tournament.
NASIR: Will San Diego State make it this year? I don’t think so, right?
MATT: They’ll definitely be in it as well. I’m projecting they’ll probably be a seven. I mean, it’s still hard to say because they still have a couple of games possibly at this point, but they’ll probably be around a seven. They’ll definitely be in.
NASIR: Well, I was looking at their rankings and I was confused because there’s 36 teams that are selected, right?
MATT: 68.
NASIR: Oh, okay, then that makes sense because I thought they were outside that 30-some. So, okay. Phew! Very close.
MATT: Now, they’ll definitely be in because they won their conference and it’s not a problem for them.
NASIR: Yeah, I was thinking, like, they won their conference, they should be able to. Okay. Well, yeah, so Dayton and San Diego State, they’re going to be in the finals probably.
MATT: Bold prediction. They’ll probably play each other first game.
NASIR: Not to get distracted on our topic but you heard the billion dollar bet or billion dollar perfect bracket is no longer on the table this year because there was just too much legal dispute as to who came up with the idea and then people were upset because one of the participants went to the insurance company to insure the billion dollar bet but, by doing that, it made everything public and kind of let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, before they wanted to and it became a whole legal hoopla.
MATT: I didn’t see that. That’s not surprising, I guess.
NASIR: We’ll cover that next year – a little too late.
MATT: Let’s get to your story that you already saw earlier in the week which is I’ve a very strong – well, not strong opinion – I think I have a correct opinion on this.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: But this guy in – I believe – Chicago came up with this new idea. Actually, if we go really far back, I think this is one of the first things we ever talked about with the investment into a player. Do you remember that? That was a long time ago.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Adrian Foster.
NASIR: Adrian Foster, the Houston Texans, but that was for the NFL professionals, obviously – a little bit different.
MATT: Well, it does mention professional possibly in here, but basically what this company is, this idea, this concept is, if you don’t follow sports, basically, you have four years you can play in college and then you have to leave. But some guys that are really good, especially in basketball and in football too, you have to play a couple of years, but you can play and then go to the pros and, you know, then your college team’s worse than it was presumably when their good players leave. So, this guy’s idea was, “Hey, I will just come up with this thing where anyone can donate money,” and a certain percent – it says 80 percent but then,
Nasir and Matt talk about an ice cream maker that is attempting to produce organic versions of Ben & Jerry's flavors.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our program. We have a good one today. My favorite type of food – well, I think it’s one of my favorites – ice cream. I think it’s my favorite dessert – actually, vanilla ice cream and brownies is my favorite.
MATT: Yeah, ice cream, you scream, we all scream for lawsuits.
NASIR: Wow. That was great. I love that.
MATT: There hasn’t been a lawsuit involved in this yet.
NASIR: No, there hasn’t.
MATT: Yeah, I should have jumped the gun there, but possibly… And so, you’re going to have to help me out with this because I don’t eat ice cream so I don’t know what’s even going on.
NASIR: Yeah, I’ll explain to you everything that you need to know.
MATT: It’s this cold food you eat with a spoon.
NASIR: I’ve been eating it since I was a kid so I’m pretty sure I’m an expert unlike everyone else.
MATT: I’ve had ice cream before so it’s not like I never had it, yeah. It’s just been a very, very long time. So, obviously, Ben & Jerry’s, that’s got to be one of the top ice cream makers – if not the top in terms of what you can buy in stores. I think people are familiar with them. We’ve talked about them before on the podcast, I believe, as a B Corp.
NASIR: Maybe. Yeah, probably. I’m sure we’ve mentioned them.
MATT: I think they’re kind of one of the biggest companies that’s referenced when you’re looking at B Corps.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, anyways, Ben & Jerry’s, they have these crazy flavors – or names, at least – and there’s this new company – or newer company, new-ish – Three Twins.
NASIR: Which is very misleading, by the way. Is it three sets of twins or triplets?
MATT: That’s a good question.
NASIR: I think, if they meant three people, they would say triplets, right?
MATT: Yeah, three twins doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, three twins.
NASIR: That would mean six people.
MATT: Yeah, my head’s exploding thinking about that.
NASIR: What’s weird is three twins, obviously, it’s the name, but then they have a picture of three different people.
MATT: Yeah, that’s why I’m confused.
NASIR: Already you know that these guys are a little crazy.
MATT: Something’s up.
NASIR: Something’s up.
MATT: So, basically, what he’s doing is trying to produce the organic version of some of these Ben & Jerry’s flavors. For example, Ben & Jerry’s has Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia. Three Twins has one called Cherry Chocolate Chunk and the carton says, “We’re not monkeying around with this combination of banana, walnuts, and chocolate.” It’s not another one with The Grateful Dead. Ben & Jerry’s has the Grateful Dead one and he does a little tribute to them as well saying, “You’ll be grateful that this sumptuous combination is available in organic.”
NASIR: Sumptuous.
MATT: Sumptuous?
NASIR: Sumptuous.
MATT: Yeah, I said that. That’s what I said.
NASIR: Yeah, you’re right.
MATT: Ah. So, basically, what it sounds like is he’s created these organic versions of Ben & Jerry’s flavors – at least some of them – which is kind of weird. I would have thought that Ben & Jerry’s would have had their own organic flavors by now anyways given the nature of kind of how they operate.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: But it’s interesting because, I mean, he admits to it. You know, “We’re not ripping off what they have. We’re paying a tribute to these flavors,” and, you know, it’s different because it’s organic. I said the lawsuit thing at the beginning. I don’t know if there is going to be lawsuit with this.
NASIR: Well, Matt and I were trying to figure out, okay, if Ben & Jerry’s would allege some trademark infringement issues because I’m sure they’ve trademarked their flavors – at least they hold some kind of tradem...
The guys discuss the recent settlement concerning deceptive tactics of a company involved with as seen on tv ads.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business law podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist for your listening pleasure. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: I’m Matt Staub. That was very serious today.
NASIR: I wanted to make sure that everyone knew I was on my game today. This is serious business. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about a more serious topic in the last 162 or 161 episodes, if you’re counting this one or not. We have to address it in a respectful way, obviously, so we’re going to try to do that today.
MATT: Sorry. I’m watching the video that corresponds to what we’re talking about today.
NASIR: I think that’s a good intro. Maybe just see if people recognize this really quick here. One second. AD: You want to keep warm when you’re feeling chilled, but you don’t want to raise your heating bill. Blankets are okay, but they can slip and slide, and when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside. Now, there’s the Snuggie! The blanket that has sleeves! The new Snuggie blankets are here! “Watching a show on TV in my Snuggie, happy that my hands are free in my Snuggie, I’m just as warm as can be in my Snuggie, I love my Snuggie! That’s right!”
NASIR: I don’t know if you could hear that, Matt.
MATT: I could, yeah. So, in a shocking turn of events, it seems like these deals, the As Seen On TV deals are kind of too good to be true pricewise which I never would have expected. It’s like, “Oh, you want one for $19.95? How about we’ll give you 25 of them if you order in the next two minutes?” or something. So, basically, there’s the Snuggie Magic Mesh Door Cover, Perfect Brownie Pans, and a bunch of other ones that all fall under this Allstar Marketing Group LLC. Well, it turns out they got fined by the FTC. Let’s see. What? Roughly $8 million total – $7.5 million to restitution to customers and another half million to the New York Attorney General’s office for deceiving customers about the cost of its products. So, if anyone’s seen an infomercial before, they always give you the product and then, order within an hour and get another one for free or whatever the deal is which, I think, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one that wasn’t like that, but what they were doing – at least what Allstar Marketing Group was doing – is, you know, when they give you that second product, well, the already kind of high shipping and handling fee is actually going to double. So, basically, they’re just making up for this extra double the amount you get by doubling the shipping and this is the whole deception that was going on with customers and, it turns out, they definitely were deceiving this with this $8 million which $8 million isn’t that much for these companies.
NASIR: The actual price of the product jumps from $35.85 – nearly double the advertised price. So, on one hand, it’s like you get buy one, get one free. But then, not only is that not true, it ends up being even more expensive – double what you’re supposed to pay. Very unfair.
MATT: Yeah. I mean, it is deceiving but, to me, the customer still has the option of saying no before they pay, right?
NASIR: Well, here’s a good point is that they have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
MATT: Yeah, I just saw that.
NASIR: Of course, that’s less packaging and handling. And, according to the complaint, the FTC says that the consumers that reported the company refused to issue refunds and directed consumers to return their unwanted products at their own expense. So, even that didn’t work. I’m just wondering, like, one of the problems with the FTC is that they will only start enforcing it if it starts to become a big issue – if they get a number of complaints – and that’s because they’re just an organization that has to prioritize between different issues that come across. Now,
Nasir and Matt discuss the allegations of American Apparel intimidating and silencing employees from complaining about the company and talk about guidelines for employers in making social media policies.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: The Staub and Pasha Brothers are here. Why is that so funny?
MATT: You’ve never mentioned that ever. That’s kind of funny.
NASIR: I don’t know. I was just trying to think, like, what are we? The duo? The Staub-Pasha duo?
MATT: The duo, yeah, I guess.
NASIR: Yeah, I guess that makes more sense.
MATT: Not to get too far off track but you know what I’ve always found was really weird, and you might not have ever even seen this, the commercial for State Farm – I think it’s State Farm – one of the insurance companies.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Do you know who Chris Paul is? He’s a basketball player? No? Okay.
NASIR: I have no idea.
MATT: It wasn’t a question to the listeners; it was a question to you. He’s a player in the NBA and the whole thing is Chris Paul and Cliff Paul were separate. They’re twins and they’re separated at birth. It’s Chris Paul wearing glasses, you know.
NASIR: Oh, okay, yeah.
MATT: It’s this whole thing, it’s like, oh, they were separated at birth and they were adopted by different families and they’ve lived different lifestyles and then they meet each other or something. I don’t understand why they have the same last name if they were both adopted through different families.
NASIR: But, wait, are they really twin brothers?
MATT: No, it’s fake. It’s him and then him wearing glasses, basically.
NASIR: So, even their fake story doesn’t make sense because why would they have the same last name?
MATT: Exactly.
NASIR: Sometimes, you know, it’s not abnormal for the adoptive child to keep their own name, too. Perhaps that’s what it is, Matt, since you think you’re so clever.
MATT: For both of them?
NASIR: Yeah, both.
MATT: The odds of that happening.
NASIR: Maybe that was the condition of the adoption.
MATT: I guess, but they were…
NASIR: I actually did take a course in Columbus Ohio on adoption law, very interesting.
MATT: Oh, I bet.
NASIR: If anyone needs an adoption, don’t contact me just because I’ve taken a course. It doesn’t mean anything.
MATT: Well, I don’t have a good lead-in for this.
NASIR: Yeah, what’s your transition here?
MATT: Maybe we’ll adopt this story or something. I don’t know. We’re dealing with American Apparel which, I believe, is a nationwide store.
NASIR: I’ve heard of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.
MATT: I went there once and I bought a shirt but it’s very slim-fitting – not my thing.
NASIR: Maybe you should lose weight?
MATT: Yeah, that’s true. Well, maybe that’s why these employees that work for them are upset with all their slim-fitting close, that’s probably not even all slim-fitting either but whatever. Anyway, basically, what American Apparel is in the news for is that employees are upset with the company and that happens all the time but American Apparel is taking it a step further and there’s been two complaints filed in the last, as of today, when we’re recording it’s been the last couple of days, but it’ll be a week by the time this comes out.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But it’s saying that American Apparel is allegedly intimidating the employees and trying silencing tactics, preventing these employees from discussing their transgressions, I guess. You know, some of these employees have met off-site after work hours and have just been, you know, kind of complaining about things there, and American Apparel actually sent, one of the people said, they were accosted and interrogated. But the company sent security to this off-site meeting of people gathering and, according to the complainants, intimidating them and telling them to be quiet about voicing their complai...
Nasir and Matt end the week by discussing the importance of securing the necessary licenses for your business and how operating without a license can ruin yourbusiness.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist like a little lemon at the end of a story. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I’m all business today. Last Friday, I went on a rant that lasted probably twenty minutes.
MATT: That’s true.
NASIR: And the feedback has been that that was too long. So, I was like, “Okay. Now we have to get more serious. This is all about business and the law, and we can’t make one joke,” because people don’t have a sense of humor, apparently. So, this is now serious.
MATT: This will be like a semi-rant for me because of the topic we talked about or we’re talking about today.
NASIR: Perfect.
MATT: We’re going to deal with licenses, but not the licensing we’ve talked about in the past. This is the actual license that you need to sell your product or conduct your services – more so services. I’ll start with my semi-rant. So, I do some estate planning from time to time and there’s people out there that are doing estate planning that aren’t estate planning attorneys and I don’t really understand how it’s done because there’s a thing called the “unauthorized practice of law” and, if you’re not a licensed attorney, you can’t practice law. So, some people are out there advertising themselves as a certified estate planner or something along those lines, and I don’t even if know if that’s… like, I can come up with my own certification system and make someone certified in something, but that doesn’t really mean anything other than it’s a certification that I made up, and I feel like that’s what these people get into.
NASIR: Oh, and you’re right because these guys – guys or gals – they actually produce forms, don’t they? I mean, they have these templates and so forth and trust and estate planning. I mean, that can be just a mess if they make a mistake, you know?
MATT: Yeah. Well, I’m not talking about LegalZoom or anything like that.
NASIR: No, no, no, I know. No, I’m talking about – not to pick on any particular industry but, you know, - when you have insurance agents that relate to a lot of estate planning, they sometimes can fall into that trap. But it’s not only estate planning. I mean, from a legal basis, there’s also immigration law and family law for whatever reason. Like, if you go on Craigslist, you can find a bunch of people that are not attorneys advertising these services for cheap and, of course, you know, you get what you pay more. but the main problem is that they’re not regulated and so they don’t really have any – besides, you know, getting maybe a bad customer that’s upset – they don’t really have any consequence too if they mess up. You know, what happens if they mess up? What are you going to do?
MATT: Yeah, exactly. That’s a reason that you – not just in law but in any area where there’s some sort of licensing – you go with people that have a license because, if there is an issue, that’s something you can go after. So, there’s a couple of examples that we have and the one here is kind of interesting. This was actually a Supreme Court case, right? Yeah.
NASIR: I think it’s a state Supreme Court though, right?
MATT: US Supreme Court, six to three decision. A business that was selling teeth whitening services, whether you need to have a license. It seems like a stretch but…
NASIR: Oh, I see. This was actually an FTC lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Dentistry.
MATT: Oh, okay. That’s what it was. So, the Supreme Court did rule six to three that the North Carolina State Board acted illegally by excluding the competing businesses from offering teeth whitening services which, I mean, I never would have even thought about that, really. It never would have crossed my mind that that’s considered den...
Nasir and Matt discuss the bankruptcy auction of Radio Shack and why the intangible assets are being sold separately from the tangible assets.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business law podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt—
NASIR: The co-host of the show and…
MATT: And I’m—
NASIR: We have another co-host as well.
MATT: Gosh.
NASIR: And you are…
MATT: Matt Staub.
NASIR: Oh, Matt Staub, that’s right.
MATT: You’re in like a pitch black environment so I can’t see when you’re speaking. Recording in darkness.
NASIR: I’m sorry.
MATT: You’d think we would have gotten it down by now, but I guess not, never will.
NASIR: Someday, we’ll be jiving together, working with each other well.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Someday.
MATT: So, I feel like I just talked about this on the podcast so forgive me, listeners, if I did. But the spot that I usually go to to fill up my gas is right across the street from a RadioShack and I think it’s pretty funny because I thought all the RadioShacks were shut down and that’s, I guess, what we’re talking about today and, regardless of whether the store is doing well – which it isn’t – I recognize the name is a very important name and that’s kind of what’s going on in this bankruptcy auction. They’re segregating the company name and intellectual property. Are they going to sell it off separately from everything else? Stuff like the store leases, et cetera. They expect to get $20 million for it – which, you know, at its prime, RadioShack was worth well over that. But, you know, after they sell that name and the IP, I guess you have your inventory but it’s probably a pretty undesirable leftover of assets, especially those leases.
NASIR: Yeah. Let’s say, first of all, the bids start at $20 million, right? So, let’s say that you’re a company and you buy RadioShack, the name, for $20 million plus, what are you going to do with that thing? I mean, that’s going to be hard to get your money back, I feel.
MATT: Commercial lease is expensive. That’s the way it is and these RadioShacks are going to be fairly good-sized stores, you know. It’s a lot of…
NASIR: Hold on. The name RadioShack is being sold for $20 million. There’s about 1,100 RadioShack leases that are put on sale which seems strange, right? Okay. How can you sell a lease? But, basically, they’re selling the right to assume the lease because that’s a lot, you know, a thousand other leases. That’s a lot of property and being able to get in there by getting that lease assumed might be a good location and so forth.
MATT: Oh, okay.
NASIR: And they may have negotiated some pretty good leases. See, it’s actually separate.
MATT: Oh, sorry. I heard you talking about something. I just assumed you were talking about the leases.
NASIR: Oh. Actually, I assume the same thing. Every time you talk, I just assume you’re talking about leases.
MATT: So, this is a pretty interesting arrangement. We’ve definitely talked about this before how, when you purchase a business, there’s different ways you can do it. I mean, you can purchase – what is it? Is RadioShack a corporation, I would guess?
NASIR: It’s a corp, Delaware.
MATT: You know, you can purchase the stock, you can purchase the assets. There’s different ways of going. When you buy a “business,” there’s different ways of going about it. So, regardless of whether there are value in some of these spaces that they’ve leased out, I mean, I think RadioShack does say, “Hey, you know, our value is in this name,” and, rolling back to my story, you know, I agree with it. I saw the name RadioShack and it still means something to me. Like, I know what that is. I mean, I would never probably go there because I would shop online. But it’s not a shock to people that brand names can have significant value.
NASIR: See, that’s what’s weird is that, once someone buys that name, they won’t be RadioShack.
The guys kick off the week by getting into what constitutes false advertising and what is mere puffery.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business news and add our legal twist and my name is Nasir Pasha. Welcome to the program!
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Very good. That was a perfect intro. But, once again, I messed up by mentioning it.
MATT: Even though I don’t think you’ll ever have a perfect intro, I’m still going to say this is the best podcast ever.
NASIR: I would say so. I would have no disagreement with that.
MATT: What if I said it was the fastest-growing podcast ever?
NASIR: It’s a fast-growing podcast – a very fast.
MATT: Well, it depends. I mean, if I took a look, 07:32:12 a.m. through 07:32:13 a.m. and looked at the growth, if we got, like, three people, I might consider it the fastest-growing podcast.
NASIR: Possibly – probably not, but yeah.
MATT: So, if you can’t tell, our topic for today is going to be what I call “puffery” which probably, you advertising people out there, you’re going to love this one because this is going to tell you, well, we’re not going to tell you if you’re doing it right or wrong. Well, we’re not going to tell you if you’re doing it right or wrong, but there’s certain things you can say and certain things you can’t, and there’s a recent story here with Slack and that’s why I got the fastest-growing podcast because they declared they’re the fastest-growing business app ever – which seems like a stretch.
NASIR: Yeah, which I find hard to believe since I’m not even sure what exactly they do, but it looks like team communication. Maybe it’s not something that I would ever use so maybe that’s why I haven’t heard of it.
MATT: Well, yeah, and I would question it even if it was, like, the most popular – even if, like, Google said that or something. I don’t know. It just seems like that’s a very hard thing to quantify. Let’s see. It has more than 500,000 people using it every day, but it’s a user count group by 35 percent in just the first six weeks of the year, 1.7 billion messages – I guess that really doesn’t matter. But, obviously, if you want to declare something, the fastest "blah blah blah" ever, I mean, there’s different ways to measure. “I’m the best shooting point guard of all time,” if you look at this one game and I shot 12 for 12 from the field.
NASIR: Versus a career. Versus, you know, only regulation play versus, you know, playoff plays. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, I think Slack, they base it upon users – that’s my assumption, at least. But I think, in this case, even when making that statement, even though there’s multiple ways to measure it, you do have to back it up, and I think, if you’re able to make a statement like that and back it up, I think it’s a powerful marketing message, you know, to declare yourself the fastest, the best, et cetera, it’s pretty cool. But “best” is something different though. You know, I think a lot of coffee shops have, like, “the best coffee in town” or “the best coffee in the United States.” Do you remember that movie, Elf with Will Ferrell?
MATT: Yeah, I’ve seen that.
NASIR: He sees this sign on the outside that says something like “World’s Best Coffee” and he goes inside and congratulates everyone. He’s very excited. It reminds me of that. But that’s still opinionated. That’s still kind of an exaggeration and puffery within the guidelines of true advertising.
MATT: Everyone sees that all the time if you go to any stores. But we have to mention, of course, the number one boss coffee mug of Michael Scott.
NASIR: Oh, yeah.
MATT: It wouldn’t be this podcast if we didn’t mention that, but it’s where you draw the line. So, the restaurants are always tricky because it’ll say, like, “Voted Best Restaurant” but there’s so many different publications and things that have the voting. It can literally mean anything. There’s a difference between that and something that’s very q...
The guys finish off the week by discussing the sweepstakes being conducted by Domino's and how a franchisee can deviate from the franchise model.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business law podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions. Oh, wait. We don’t do that anymore.
MATT: You’ve got a nice Friday prank.
NASIR: No, but we do add our legal twist to some of those business law stories that we do cover. But you can send us in some of your topic ideas that can be in the form of a question at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Yeah. So, on Monday, we had all that construction that you were recording, and they’ve still been working four days straight, banging away on whatever they’re doing.
NASIR: Even after the cease and desist.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Wait. Wait a minute. Who’s talking? Who is that?
MATT: Oh, yeah. I’m Matt Staub. Did you say your name?
NASIR: Who am I? Oh, yeah. My name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: Ah.
NASIR: Goofy start there. Let’s get serious. Actually, before we get to our topic, I just realized, I’m glad I’m in a goofy mood because yesterday – actually, the day before – I was very upset and annoyed at something. I wanted to share with you because I wanted to get your opinion on it.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: I wish it was related to our topic. It’s kind of related. Well, I’ll tell you what the story is and I’ll tell you what kind of lessons I learned from it and I kind of related to it. So, I’m moving offices and I was going to my old office and I was just picking up a couple of things and it was one of these office buildings that has reserved spots. You know, I literally thought I was going to be there for a couple of minutes. So, I went in there, parked in a reserved spot that wasn’t mine. Okay. Number one, I am totally wrong and that I messed up in that respect, okay? Went up the elevator, went to the office, and I got a phone call. Ended up being two hours later so, you know, the maintenance guys come by and they’re like, “Hey, do you have this such and such car?” or whatever, and I’m like, “Yeah.” They’re like, “Oh, you’re parked in a reserved spot.” I’m like, “Yeah, I know, I meant to leave.” So, I packed up my stuff, I go down there. I go down there and there is this small little Boxster Porsche parked right behind me, blocking me in – not only blocking me in but literally touching the back bumper of my new car. I’m like, “Okay. I’m very upset,” but then, you know, I started thinking, like, “Okay.” I’m trying to put myself in their shoes. Like, I did park in their spot, but then again, there’s like ten other reserved spots right next-door or right next to it that they could have parked in. It wasn’t even that great of a spot so I was thinking, maybe other people park there a lot and so that’s why he just had it or something.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: You know, I’m looking around; I’m taking it out on these guys that are right next-door and trying to figure out who it is. Long story short, maintenance told him to move the car but he wouldn’t. He wanted to talk to me or whatever. You know, I went up to the office that he was in. He ended up being a doctor which may not surprise some people. I couldn’t find him. I gave him my card and, you know, I was a little annoyed, but I was trying to be as patient as possible. And then, I went down back to my car and then I see this guy in scrubs – not walking towards me but kind of walking past me and kind of avoiding eye contact – and I’m trying to figure out, “Is this the guy?” or whatever. I try to talk to him and he ignored me. I’m like, “Okay. Obviously, you’re very upset.” He’s getting into his car right at this point. He reverses back quickly, screeching his tires and speeds off out of the parking garage. And then, I’m just looking. There is a scratch but it’s very minimal, but I was just thinking, like, a lot of times, clients come to me and they get into a position where they’ve been...
Nasir and Matt discuss the recent conflict between the California Labor Code and Industrial Welfare Commission concerning a second meal period for healthcare employees working in excess of 12 hours.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business law podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha. This is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist, and it’s just me today, right?
MATT: I’m also here. I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Oh. Oh, okay. Well, Matt Staub joining us once again. Thank you for joining us.
MATT: Your intros remind me of – I’m going to have to explain this to you first. So, for baseball, typically, you have a line-up where you have your batting order and it stays fairly constant throughout the year. I mean, you have maybe your speed guys up front, your first one or two batters, and then your power hitters at three, four, five, and then maybe six and then, like, seven, eight, nine is your worst hitters. But, if you’re in a slump, if the team’s in a slump, sometimes the manager will just, like, throw everyone’s name in a hat and then, you know, you’ll pick a number and you’ll have, like, a random batting order. That’s how I see the intros. It’s the same nine pieces, but it’s always mixed around because you did, like, part seven then, you know, your name was one, but that came later so it was very, very interesting.
NASIR: Well, believe it or not, I actually put much more thought in it than you think. I spend the night before usually writing it and it actually comes out exactly how I write it up so it may seem random but it’s not. This takes skill.
MATT: Yeah, I’m not complaining about it. You always keep me guessing.
NASIR: I appreciate that.
MATT: Well, we have some California employment law that we’re going to discuss today.
NASIR: Nice.
MATT: Everybody, hold onto your seats because this is going to be a big one. I think it pertains to health care workers which, I imagine, the ones that are working these 12-hour-plus shifts probably aren’t listening to this podcast – or maybe they are if they’re doing this during their break.
NASIR: Or maybe on the job, yeah. I know some health care workers that do listen to our podcast. So, yeah, I think they’re listening to us right now and probably going to sue their employer after this episode, probably – hopefully not.
MATT: Hopefully not. So, we have the California Labor Code and then we have the Industrial Welfare Commission – the IWC. So, basically, what happened was there was a recent decision that health care workers cannot waive their second meal period when working in shifts of excess of 12 hours despite the IWC’s order saying that they could. You know, typically, people work 8 hours. That’s, like, a standard work day. But, if you’re working in excess of that, you do get a second meal period after a certain amount of time. So, if you’re working in the health care industry and you work in excess of 12 hours, what they were recently saying was you can just waive that second meal period and keep on working because, typically, if you’re working those sort of shifts, they need you to be there and be working or else they’ll probably just send you home. So, that’s what workers were doing. But, now, they’ve decided that, “Hey, you actually can’t waive that second period and you’re going to have to work.” So, this is going to be a pretty challenging thing for hospitals and other health care companies, but this can pertain to other businesses as well. Typically, people aren’t working 12-hour shifts, but I think this can stretch possibly to other industries.
NASIR: I think for lawyers and even employers, it kind of puts you off a little bit because, okay, all of a sudden, okay, you have the Labor Code that specifies you have to have this second lunch after 12 hours or at 12 hours, that’s fine, right? But then, the IWC comes out with their wage order which typically what happens is this agency is usually assigned to kind of clarify some of these n...
Nasir and Matt start the week by explaining how a business can protect its social media accounts and what to do when an employee leaves who has access to social media accounts.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business law podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist for your listening benefit. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we have some construction next-door. I don’t know, we should do something about that, Matt. It’s getting in the way of our podcast.
MATT: Yeah, I know. I recommended the cease and desist letter but I guess they haven’t responded to it yet.
NASIR: Yeah, when is that going to get there? Well, at least we should mail it out today. See how that goes.
MATT: Mail out, yeah. It seems like it’d be kind of counterproductive mailing it out. It’s right next-door so you would have to go somewhere to mail it and then they would deliver it right next to the spot where you’re located.
NASIR: I would pass by their door on the way to the post office.
MATT: Yeah, that happens sometimes. I’ve actually thought about that before and I’ve mailed things out in the same, like, really close to where my office is but you have to mail it out. So, it’s just kind of weird in that sense.
NASIR: I don’t know if it’s a myth but isn’t there some kind of federal law that prohibits you from actually delivering mail into a federal mailbox receptacle of someone’s home?
MATT: Yes, I got in trouble for that in high school. My friend and I, we went around to a neighbourhood and we had to deliver flyers for the pizza place that we were working at. We were supposed to go up to every door and put it on the door. I forget exactly where we were supposed to do it. But then, the driveways are really long so we just got tired of it so we just started to…
NASIR: Put it in the post box, right?
MATT: Yeah, we started putting it in people’s mailboxes and then the business got a call saying that we can’t do that because it’s against the law.
NASIR: Almost got arrested. That’s your big brush with the law, right?
MATT: Yeah, actually got charged with 80 counts of a federal crime, but that’s fine.
NASIR: Mail fraud.
MATT: Pretty serious.
NASIR: “This wasn’t delivered by my postman! This is from a pizza place down the road.”
MATT: It did work, though. We got a lot of business from that neighbourhood that week. So, pretty good overall, positive experience for the company.
NASIR: Well, I don’t know. In California and elsewhere in urban places, it seems like mailboxes are kind of going to the wayside now.
MATT: Oh, yeah.
NASIR: They all have, like, central facilities where you have to go walk down the street and pick it up now and things like that.
MATT: Yeah, it’s definitely shifting. But I think that’s in part because of the presence of online ways to do things.
NASIR: That’s a great transition, yeah.
MATT: It wasn’t even purposeful with me telling that story how I was supposed to go delivering flyers. Nowadays, we might just use social media – well, not that pizza place because it’s closed down but, if it was still around, it wouldn’t have either because it never did anything proactive.
NASIR: Wow. Ouch.
MATT: If it wanted to and if it was still in existence, yeah, it could use some social media to reach its customers. So, I guess, let’s say I was in that situation and we were using social media, but I was the one in charge of all the social media accounts, like I said, I’m not an owner, I’m just an employee there, and they probably would put me in charge of social media and so it’s a conundrum for employers because you put one of your employees, maybe someone who’s even really low down on the totem pole, to be in charge of the social media accounts and then, you know, something might happen and then you’re looking at the employee leaves or there’s some dispute or whatever, you have to look at who owns these accounts. So,
Nasir and Matt close out the week by diving into the topic of trademarks to go over unintended negatives and overlooked positives related to trademark filings. Also, the Katy Perry dancing sharks!
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And that’s the show.
MATT: Happy Wednesday!
NASIR: Wait. This is Friday episode.
MATT: Oh, yeah. Sorry, I screwed that up.
NASIR: It’s okay.
MATT: I guess I’m just confused as some of these trademarks we’re going to talk about are leading to confusion.
NASIR: What’s the likelihood that you’re confused?
MATT: Very likely. Yeah, there you go. There’s a couple of recent stories dealing with trademarks that are, I think, some areas we haven’t talked about in the past so I was just going to kind of discuss them and the first being this beer dispute. So, there’s Lagunitas in Sierra Nevada, both in Northern California, and Lagunitas had filed a trademark for “IPA” which is a type of beer – it’s an India Pale Ale – very popular at this stage, in 2015, very well-known. If you drink beer, everybody knows what that means. It’s a term that is very, very prevalent. And so, they had trademarked the acronym IPA and I guess they had tried to enforce it against Sierra Nevada. Like I said, these are two heavy-hitters in the craft beer industry in the US. I think they are both top ten – maybe even top five – in terms of beer produced for craft breweries in the US. These are two big names that are going at it. So, Lagunitas tried to enforce or protect its trademark of “IPA” against Sierra Nevada. They tried to resolve it, it didn’t work, so they filed a lawsuit and it just completely backfired on Lagunitas. They got all this negative feedback. All these people were saying they’re never going to drink Lagunitas beer ever again which is not true. I hate when people say that, “Oh, I’m never going to do this again!” Like, the next day, you forget about it.
NASIR: I say that whenever I have Yelp and Uber which are on my hitlist.
MATT: Yeah. For you, it actually holds true. For most people, I don’t think it does. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that.
NASIR: I’ll tell you this; I’m never drinking IPA, that’s for sure.
MATT: You even said it awkwardly.
NASIR: I guess it’s not as funny if people don’t know that I don’t drink at all.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: How do you say it? IPA? What do you say? IPA?
MATT: You’re saying, “I’m never drinking IPA.” I think the correct way would be to say “a” – you’re never drinking a IPA.
NASIR: Well, I agree. I’m not going to drink an IPA or drink any more IPA types of alcoholic beverages – IPA.
MATT: Well, then you would be isolating the IPAs in general. And so, that was what the whole dispute was about. Lagunitas tried to protect this trademark that it had against Sierra Nevada who, I’m sure, produces a bunch of IPAs as well. It’s had a public backlash and now Lagunitas has since pulled its lawsuit and is no longer going to go through that route. So, I guess the moral of the story here is, even when you have some protection over your intellectual property – in this case, being the trademark’s probably going to be where it makes the most sense – it can have negative consequences to have that trademark and sometimes it can even be more of a hassle and a burden than you even want it because, in this case, Lagunitas tried to protect what it owned and it obviously got the negative PR but it’s also just a hassle having to deal with and they dropped the lawsuit. So, whatever money they, in time, dumped into it went all for nothing.
NASIR: Yeah, we’ve seen these kinds of public blowbacks in different situations. The one thing that I can remember with any sort of detail, there was a Kitchen Nightmares episode with Gordon Ramsay, they did one restaurant where the local restaurant tried to trademark one local phrase that is very c...
The guys talk about the costly mistake made by one business owner and discuss the legalresponsibilities of handling major errors.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist for the benefit of you, the listener. My name is Nasir Pasha. Thank you for joining us.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And Matthew Staub is here again, joining us for the 153rd time, I believe.
MATT: Correct.
NASIR: I think that’s a new record, right? I mean, I think last week you were at 152. So, I think you just broke the record, man. 153 in a row. Congratulations.
MATT: I’m pretty proud of that.
NASIR: I wouldn’t get too confident there, you know. You don’t know what’s going to happen next week.
MATT: Yeah, it’s true. Well, it’s bad because we’ve had the other three people that have been here the whole time. And so, they haven’t really said anything, or they haven’t said anything, but it still counts because they’re here.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, if I screw up and don’t show up, they can just step in and say something and then they’re going to have the record.
NASIR: Correct.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: The record committee just requires presence. You don’t have to actually say anything.
MATT: So, I hope I don’t make a mistake like the mistake we’re going to be talking about today.
NASIR: Classic transition.
MATT: Yeah. So, there’s this guy who’s an artist, Cameron Moll, M-O-L-L.
NASIR: Moll? Moll?
MATT: Moll. Moll. Okay. Spend the rest of the episode just trying to guess his name. So, he’s an artist. He’s started a Kickstarter campaign and he was looking to raise $10,000 and, actually, as of recording here, oh, I guess it’s already over. So, he raised just under $65,000 – well above what he was expecting to raise. Nearly 600 people backed the project and he was essentially doing this really cool letterpress printed version of the Brooklyn Bridge – really, really cool thing. People funded it. He gave them a copy of what he created and, after the $65,000, after he spent all the time and money sending out these prints to everyone, he had about $15,000 left. And then, he realized he made a big mistake. When I first saw this story, I assumed he, like, screwed something up with the numbers or something. His mistake was it was a typo. He misspelled the word “Brooklyn.”
NASIR: Whoops! That’s a big one.
MATT: Yeah. So, B-R-O-O-K-Y-L-N. So, he switched the Y and the L there. So, what he had to do obviously was go back and reprint and reship. Essentially, he cut his profit in half. At the end of the day, he still made money because it was free money that he got so I don’t feel too bad.
NASIR: But did he have to resend it all? I mean, yeah, okay, you misspelled it, but, you know, it’s a piece of artwork. Maybe that’s part of the art – misspelled words. I mean, if you think about it, basically, you guys, it’s hard to picture it, but the Brooklyn Bridge image is made up of different letters which has different words in it, and he displayed that on the Kickstarter, but I don’t think he actually showed the word because, basically, when the final product had “Brooklyn Bridge” kind of in big letters and so it wasn’t on there. But, if some of the words were misspelled on the original poster and people bought it, well, apparently, they can’t spell either so he didn’t have to send it, I guess. I don’t know. What do you think?
MATT: I don’t know if that’s technically a contract. Is he obligated? How Kickstarter works is people back your project and you can give different incentives. So, he had any pledge of $80 or more, he would send an early bird signer posted – you know, a copy of this Brooklyn Bridge poster. Is he obligated to even send that in the first place? Because people are just sending him money. I think that agreement might be with Kickstarter. I’m not sure.
NASIR: I don’t know how that works but let’s say he was just selling it on his website and,
Nasir and Matt list off the biggest mistakes they see start-ups make and offer their advice on how to avoid these issues.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and also add our legal twist to those news stories. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we’re here today, we are talking about messing all the bad mistakes that you business owners make all the time.
MATT: Yeah, it’s coincidental because I know you messed up Valentine’s Day which was two days ago so we’re talking about more business-related mess-ups.
NASIR: Yeah, not personal mess-ups.
MATT: This is a nice fit for you though, I think, but we’re not going to get into personal stories on this podcast.
NASIR: Thank you.
MATT: There’s a lot of ways that businesses can mess up and I guess we’re going to focus more on start-ups specifically and, you know, obviously, there’s ways you can screw things up at all stages in your business, but there’s crucial things at the beginning that could really be big impediments down the road. To me, one of the biggest things that could happen for a company, especially if they don’t really know each other beforehand, is not having any sort of agreement in place or at least something in writing saying who is doing what or I guess, more importantly, what the ownership is of the specific individuals because, oftentimes – not oftentimes – sometimes, you’ll have a couple of people get together, you know, start working on a project together, it turns into something, maybe even goes so far as to even file something with the state and become an actual entity, but don’t come to an agreement on who owns want or if there’s a majority and just kind of more defined roles, I guess. To me, that’s one of the bigger things where I can see a start-up just not getting it right from the onset.
NASIR: I think we’ve talked about this – at least a couple of weeks ago or so – about how partners get together and they’re excited about their business idea and they’re like, “Okay, let’s just do it 50-50.” But then, down the line, that ends up not making sense or you have more than two partners and everyone expects it to be equal when, in reality, that may not make sense when one person may be putting a lot of money in than the other or they have this somehow vague agreement and, whether it’s in writing or not, it usually needs to be a little more specific than that and that requires, frankly, tough conversations.
MATT: Sometimes, when companies start up, they need some money and so they’re kind of willing to do anything to get that money and sometimes they have to give up equity to do so. So, I know you recently wrote a really nice post that we’ll link in the notes of this episode about ways to keep control while still maybe achieving some of those other things.
NASIR: I do like control because, to me, the control aspect is actually worth more than the equity itself. I mean, obviously, you need equity – some kind of equity ownership – to make it worthwhile. But, when you have control, sometimes, the only person you can really trust is yourself. When I say “yourself,” it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be with other people and you can’t share control with other people. But, when you’re dealing with outsiders or people that you haven’t been in business with for a while or don’t have a tremendous amount of trust then it’s risky, right? I mean, I’m not saying that you’re doomed to fail, but there’s a level of risk in there. Yeah, I like that. I think some of the other things that start-ups just we see over and over again is they do do-it-yourself incorporation processes – whether they go through LegalZoom or otherwise. You know, we’ve seen a number of weird things, but some of the basic stuff that you would think would be covered are things like – I don’t know – filing an S corp and then having an entity, or a foreign person owned a share for the S corp which you can’t...
The guys end the week by talking about businessesdenying job applicants unless they are tobacco free.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist for you, the listeners, to enjoy at your home, at your work, or while you’re working out, or really any time that you want to play this podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and I hope no one’s listening to this while working out. You need something upbeat!
NASIR: We can add some workout music to the background. We’ll just have Matt add that on cue right here. I assume he actually has some of that. That’d be funny if he just left that in there and just be blank, but either way.
MATT: I guess the beginning and the end both have that guitar or whatever that is. I’m no musician.
NASIR: That’s okay.
MATT: And I guess I’m also not going to know a lot about what we’re talking about today because I don’t smoke either which is what the subject of this Friday’s podcast is.
NASIR: Well, you’re tobacco-free so I suppose you know about that.
MATT: That’s true. I’ll take it from that perspective. So, an interesting topic dealing with a tobacco-free hiring policy – and I guess I should say the name of the place that is doing this – University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
NASIR: Yeah, which makes sense.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: In fact, their logo is literally a C crossed out or on their billboard it says, “Cancer,” and it has it crossed out in red which is kind of cool, but then I think a comedian that was in Houston came to town once and he was like, “Yeah, I saw that billboard and it looked like the goal was cancer and then they completed that so they crossed it out.” Something to that effect. I thought that was clever.
MATT: Now, applicants there are going to be screened for tobacco use. It’s just part of the application and those who test positive will not be eligible for immediate employment with the cancer center. But, if they remain interested in the job, they’re going to be given tobacco suscitation materials and instructions for obtaining this which I think is really cool, actually. This is a really great policy and procedure that they have in place. I mean, I haven’t heard of something similar really before. If I have, I guess I forgot about it. But I wonder if this is going to start making waves throughout the country. I mean, for Texas – you know better than me, you live there – is there possibly people that smoke more?
NASIR: Houston’s a little bit different than the rest of Texas. But, coming from San Diego, I think there are more smokers here in general. I mean, San Diego, it’s unique.
MATT: Definitely.
NASIR: Yeah, I guess San Diego’s pretty unique in the country. What’s interesting, I think, in the medical field – and anyone who’s listening who’s in the medical field I think can attest to this – you’d be surprised how many physicians, nurses, or people in the health-related field actually smoke. I actually know a pulmonologist that actually smokes and this guy works with lung cancer and stuff like that. So, I do think it’s a problem in general, of course. But, in the health industry, I mean, can you imagine? You know, the University of Texas and MD Anderson, their purpose is trying to rid the world of cancer and yet they have employees that may be smoking which is a huge cause for not only cancer but all these other health risks as well.
MATT: There’s no health benefits of smoking.
NASIR: And I just thought of one of the reasons they may be doing this on top of the PR aspect is, if they have a self-insured plan or even a fully-insured plan or whatever and providing health benefits, their premium and their cost will be much less, especially how the new ObamaSare works and Affordable Care Act works, if your employees are more healthy, then you’re going to benefit from that. And so, if you have employees that don’t smoke,
Nasir and Matt discuss working as a freelancer and what both employees and employers must know to make sure it is done correctly.
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist for you, the listener. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome. Welcome to our podcast.
MATT: Business in the news. Business news.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: News about businesses.
NASIR: Legally Sound Smart Business.
MATT: Well, you know, I know you hate…
NASIR: I hate a lot of things. What do I hate?
MATT: I could have stopped there and we could have filled the rest of the episode with things you hate. It’s weird. For sure a nice guy, you do hate so many things. I don’t really understand it.
NASIR: Yeah, it really should just be, “I know you hate,” and that’s it, just period.
MATT: Anything. We have to talk a little bit about Uber in this episode, but we’re not going to really focus on it.
NASIR: I think that’s, like, six weeks in a row, but that’s fine.
MATT: It’s not the focus of the episode, but it’s just the precursor to the main topic at hand. So, we saw this story this week – or I guess last week now when it comes out – about an Uber driver who makes $252,000 a year which seems pretty high for driving people around.
NASIR: A little, yeah.
MATT: What this guy does is he is a typical Uber driver – drives people around from Point A to Point B, gets paid for that – but he also has this side business where he sells his custom jewelry which – I don’t know if you took a look at it – some of it’s actually pretty expensive.
NASIR: The question is how do I get this guy to ride with so I can take a look at his jewelry to buy?
MATT: Well, he has a website.
NASIR: Oh, no, no, no, I want to buy it like everyone else – get in his car and be pitched.
MATT: An in-car purchase?
NASIR: I guess he doesn’t pitch people though, right?
MATT: Yeah. So, basically, just a little bit more on this guy, he respects the customer’s privacy if they’re on the phone or don’t want to talk, but a few times a day or however many rides he does, he will get people that are engaged to speak and then he kind of talks to them about this little side business that he has and makes them jewelry sales on the side. I have a lot of questions about this but one of them is I’m sure there are times when he just finishes a ride, has tried to close a sale, and he’s sitting there for ten minutes, hopefully the customer isn’t getting charged for that in terms of the Uber ride, but I guess he probably has the power to turn that off.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, the point here is this sort of freelancing or side project work. What Uber says is, “One of the greatest things about the Uber platform is that it offers economic opportunity for a variety of drivers – full-time, part-time, veterans, teachers, artists, and students. More than 260 cities around the world, supporting and fueling the local economy is important to Uber and our driver partners to help us achieve this goal.” So, my question is how much do you think they paid Forbes to produce this story to make this seem like they actually were these actual independent businesses and bypass this employee independent contractor issue? Because I think that’s the real thing.
NASIR: Yeah, you’re right, I agree. I think that’s a very big point you’re making because, on one hand, we already know Uber’s techniques in marketing so I wouldn’t be surprised. To be fair, there is a disclaimer at the end, I don’t know if you read that. It said disclosure, this is the author, they thanked a couple of people for the actual article, but at the end it says, “I work for Google whose Google ventures as an investor in Uber. However, I’m not involved with Google ventures and I wrote this story completely independently.” So, okay, let’s give them that benefit of the doubt. But, of course, who pitched it to them and how did this come about?
The guys kick off the week by explaining the issues with employers requiring their employees to pay fortheir own uniforms.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to these stories for your benefit and your benefit only – for no one else. Welcome to the program and my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I just wanted to make sure that we’re paying very specific attention to you, the listener, right now. I’m talking about you – the one that’s listening right now with their headphones – yeah, you, this is for you.
MATT: So, this is what? Monday — well, Monday, sometime Monday, assuming you listen to it on the day it comes out. It’s nice to have someone focus on you on a Monday. So, I think our listeners are very appreciative of this nice gesture that we’re doing for them and I think it’s going to be a good week. If you just listen to this, the Farmers Insurance Open has ended, assuming there hasn’t been another fog delay like there was on Thursday and it got pushed to Monday.
NASIR: Didn’t that happen last year too? Or two years ago?
MATT: I know this because I went on the Saturday two years ago.
NASIR: Yeah, we both went.
MATT: Oh, yeah, we did. There was a rain delay. Like, a couple of people got on the course and that was it. They had to push the last day till Monday so it threw everybody off.
NASIR: I don’t know if you went with us that time. Remember Chris Merrill?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Was with us from KOGO? Good times in San Diego.
MATT: Well, I think what happened was you and I went with separate groups and we tried to meet up and then I think you just ended up leaving because of the rain.
NASIR: Yeah, I think I stole Tiger Woods’ ball and ran away or something. I can’t remember.
MATT: Yeah. Well, he’s out. He withdrew after twelve holes or something yesterday because he’s hurt.
NASIR: That’s pretty much my golfing game in a sentence.
MATT: All right. Well, what do we have today? I think we have something pretty interesting for people.
NASIR: That’s new.
MATT: Especially if they are on their way to work and wearing a uniform because we’re going to talk about employees that have to pay for their uniforms. It’s an interesting thing. Have you ever – well, I guess (1) have you ever had a job where you’ve had to wear a uniform? If not, then you don’t answer the question but (2) like, I’ve had plenty of different uniforms of businesses, I’ve never had to actually pay for anything in the past.
NASIR: The only real job that I could, in theory, would have had a uniform was I sold cellular phones for T-Mobile for a little during law school, but I don’t even think they cared what you wore. But, of course, you’d want to look somewhat presentable to the potential customers.
MATT: Yeah, that’s a good point.
NASIR: That’s pretty much it. No uniforms on my end.
MATT: Is that when you had to dress up as a giant phone?
NASIR: Yeah, that was my uniform. I had some balloons as well and hold a sign.
MATT: Sign spinning. Well, in California, if the employer requires the employee to wear a uniform, the employer has to pay the cost of the uniform. I mean, in California, it’s pretty straight-forward and I guess I need to define uniform so I haven’t been very good at that. It’s apparel and accessories of distinctive design and color. One of the things I had to wear one time was almost like an apron, but it wasn’t an apron – I guess it was an apron – I don’t know. That would be an example. Or all the items of flare that I didn’t have to purchase when I worked at Chachkies.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s a great example, nice office space reference. So, the Department of Labor have some guidelines on, basically, if you require the employee to wear a uniform then the employer is going to have to cover the cost. But where it becomes a little more difficult is exactly where Matt mentioned is what exactly is a uniform and when does that actu...
The guys end the week by talking about the patently unfair contracts that contestants for American Idol must sign.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our business law podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to it. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: All right. Well, thank you for joining us once again on this Friday episode where we’re covering your favorite show pretty much of all time or is it just top five?
MATT: Of mine? Bottom five, maybe. I don’t know.
NASIR: So, American Idol is coming back this season, right? It seems to be coming up soon, if it hasn’t started already.
MATT: I can’t say I even know if it’s still around or who the people are. All the original people are off of it now, aren’t they? I think that happened a long time ago.
NASIR: There is Ryan Seacrest and I think that’s all I know. I think that’s the only person I know that’s still there.
MATT: The original one was Simon something.
NASIR: Cowell.
MATT: Simon Cowell and…
NASIR: Paula Abdul and…
MATT: Paula Abdul.
NASIR: And the dog guy.
MATT: Randy.
NASIR: Randy.
MATT: And Seacrest. Is Seacrest still there?
NASIR: I’m pretty sure, yeah.
MATT: Probably. Sure, he is.
NASIR: Those were the classic days of American Idol.
MATT: I might have watched part of the first one with Kelly Clarkson. But I don’t know if I watched any other ones.
NASIR: That’s strange. I thought, since it was your favorite show, you’d watch it more. But I guess you just kind of like it from a distance.
MATT: And the reason I don’t like it is because they require their contestants to sign these oppressive contracts that just take advantage of the people that go on and, you know, I’m a little bit conflicted on this just because you’re never going to get this sort of publicity anywhere else because I’m sure it’s still watched by millions and millions of people.
NASIR: Sure.
MATT: It’s kind of like Shark Tank in that most people wouldn’t find out about your business unless you went on the show. But one winner with the unfortunate name of Phillip Phillips…
NASIR: When I was Googling it to do more research, I was trying to figure out if that was just, like, a mistake. No, it’s basically the same first and last name with an S difference, right?
MATT: Yeah. So, he was doomed from day one by his parents that named him that for some reason. I guess he was a winner a few years ago in 2012 and he’s trying to get out of his contract that was signed saying that, you know, it’s just really patently unfair and we actually have some – what we believe to be some – excerpts from the agreement. But, you know, a couple of things he’s saying, he got uncompensated for a show, he did a performance for an insurance company that was an endorsement deal and he was only paid 20 percent commission when he was supposed to be paid 40 percent. I mean, those aren’t as bad things as if you actually read the agreement itself and, like I said, I think we have something that seems pretty legit in terms of what’s in the actual agreement. You pretty much sign your whole career away to American Idol or 19 Group.
NASIR: Yeah, 19 Entertainment I think is the proper name and it looks like, I mean, I don’t see this in this contract but I’m seeing other people say that the initial contract extends for three years although 19 Entertainment continues to collect a percentage of some of the contestants’ earnings for ten years. So, even though the contract may only be for three years which, okay, I don’t think that’s totally abnormal for these kind of agreements, but the problem is that, basically, they sign an agreement as a contestant saying, “Okay. If you reach this top ten, you’re basically required to sign another management agreement with 19 Entertainment and with these certain terms.” And so, when they’re first signing that, you know, they’re practically nobodies so, of course, they don’t really have much negotiation power. But then,
Nasir and Matt discuss the legalities of surge pricing and how one company is flipping the script on surge pay.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to the show. Mmy name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: All right. Welcome. So, again, for the second time, I feel like I just should repeat myself after Groundhog Day a couple of days ago. We’re talking about surge pricing today. Unfortunately, we’re not focusing on Uber but I think we’ll have to talk about them, right? We get to talk about them, right?
MATT: Yeah. I mean, they’re kind of the ones that put it in the spotlight – at least recently they have. We’ll talk about surge pricing and I think everyone knows pretty much what that is but, for those that don’t, we’ll use the Uber example really quick even though I know you don’t want to. They have a certain rate for when you want to take a car or want to take a ride somewhere. But, if the demand is really high, they bump up their prices and then your ride is whatever – a multiplier of 1.5 to et cetera. So, you pay more during peak times. That’s kind of the surge pricing model. Well, there’s this company, Zappos, which I believe is, are they shoes?
NASIR: No, they do shoes but I think they do other apparel, too.
MATT: They are testing out surge pay so it’s not surge pricing per se but it’s the same sort of concept and it’s dealing with their employees in their call centers. And so, I’m not sure of the exact arrangement they have and I think it’s still relatively new, too. But, essentially, they tried this open market pilot that they tested out and it gave every employee 10 percent flexible time so you’re not working the same exact hours every single day, every single week, and the thing with this is, like I said, it’s surge pay. So, if you’re working at a time when the demand in the call center of this customer service center is really high, they actually pay you more and, if you’re working in times where it’s not, you get paid less. It’s an interesting concept. Let’s say you’re on the East Coast and it’s early and a lot of people are calling in, especially because no one’s calling in on the West Coast, you know, it might not be as high a call time but, in the middle of the day, when both East Coast and West Coast people are calling in, the IRS is kind of a similar thing. When I call in to them, I’m realizing now that I structure my calls at a time when I think most Eastern Time zone and Central have all done for the day because that’s peak times. So, it’s an interesting concept, but I wanted to talk about the whole surge concept in general.
NASIR: I think, in this case, it’s pretty neat in that the surge pricing aspect of things, people are somewhat uncomfortable with it – not only customers are uncomfortable with it but even cities and governments are uncomfortable with it too – because there are anti-gauging laws that are put into effect in certain circumstances and, if you think about it, when Uber implements them and these other companies that may do the same thing, they do it when supply may be low and demand may be very high. But, since the surge pricing for Uber and other companies, it’s done on an algorithm or done automatically based upon how many people are requesting a ride and how many rides are available, sometimes, it can have some – I don’t know if it’s attended or unattended but – results in the sense that, during a national tragedy or a storm, for example, surge pricing can go into effect. In just this last month, we’ve seen the same thing happen in France during the last terrorist attack though the surge prices were done taken away manually but they kicked in as soon as that happened. And then, also, with this last winter storm last week on the East Coast, that was also kicked in. But the difference is now, with East Coast specifically and I think in New York City specifically – in ...
Nasir and Mattenter Groundhog's Day by discussing the importance of trade secrets and how to best protect your intellectual property.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: What are we doing today? A podcast again? Another episode?
MATT: Yeah, we can something different if you want.
NASIR: No, that’s fine. That’s cool. Podcast is cool.
MATT: A lot of people think today should be a national holiday but it hasn’t really gained too much traction.
NASIR: Because of Groundhog Day? Is that February 2nd?
MATT: Is it Groundhog’s Day? Oh, maybe it is. Oh, no, I was thinking the day after the Superbowl.
NASIR: I was thinking, yeah, February 2nd is Groundhog Day, I believe.
MATT: Is it?
NASIR: I recall.
MATT: Oh.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, you’re saying because of the Superbowl.
MATT: Well, this is the day after. So, this is the day that everyone thinks should be a national holiday. I never really understood that because I don’t see how it’s different. It’s just one football game and, on a lot of Sundays, I mean, I guess it’s the biggest game of the year but, still, it’s one game. All you have to do is watch it and then that’s it.
NASIR: I was hoping maybe Groundhog Day would be a national holiday. So, that may be technically it would be the case, but it doesn’t look like it’s a… I don’t know what the definition is – at least banks aren’t closed, I don’t believe.
MATT: So, wait, is today Groundhog’s Day?
NASIR: Yeah, February 2nd.
MATT: Okay. We should just do the intro, like, ten times in a row and have that be the episode. Just loop it.
NASIR: I love that movie. It’s a great, great cult classic. I guess it would be a cult classic because I don’t think it was like, when it came out in the theatre, it wasn’t that great of a movie or it didn’t do that well.
MATT: Yeah, I mean, you’ve got a big star in his prime.
NASIR: True.
MATT: But there was a lot of movies. It was a weird time for movies where you could get a lot of big names and they might not translate into big movies. I don’t know. Like, today, if Will Smith opens a movie, it’s just like a blockbuster no matter what it is.
NASIR: Automatic.
MATT: Well, you know, I have a secret for you and I don’t know how to protect it. It’s a trade secret, actually.
NASIR: Nice.
MATT: Bad intro but that’s what we’re going to talk about today – protecting your trade secrets – and I think we’ve talked about this before to some extent, haven’t we?
NASIR: Yeah, definitely. It seems to come up quite a bit.
MATT: The reason – I mean, well, there’s a few reasons – why we’re talking about it today but there was a recent case. We might have actually talked about this business before, too. So, it’s nClosures, and that’s obviously a lower case “n” with a capital “C” as most people would think. Well, anyways, I’m not going to bore people with the details too much of the case but, essentially, it came down to there was a breach of their, or at least nClosures believed there was a breach, of their proprietary information and it was kind of tied into their trade secrets that they have and they had this other company who is part of the lawsuit. They had a confidentiality agreement with them but the court actually determined that nClosures did not take reasonable steps to protect its information and, thus, it kind of left its trade secrets out there in the open and its confidentiality agreement was not enforceable as a result of that. nClosures did not require other employees or engineers to sign additional agreements, and this is with the other party that’s part of the lawsuit. So, basically, what it’s saying is it didn’t take the right steps to protect its trade secrets as it should have. And, even though it had this confidentiality agreement, we haven’t seen what that actually says so who knows how good or bad it was. But, despite this confidentiality agreement,
Nasir and Matt end the week by diving into the topic of drones and where the law stands with their usage.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I keep starting our intro with an accent but maybe I’m just hearing it.
MATT: What type of accent? I can’t tell anything. [REWIND]
NASIR: Business in the news and add our legal twist. I don’t know what kind of accent – some Midwestern/Californian accent.
MATT: I mean, where you’re from, and it’s similar to me, we’re both from the Midwest but we’re not southern enough to get the southern accent.
NASIR: No, we’re not.
MATT: I wasn’t close enough to Chicago to get that. You were a little bit closer to the East Coast than I was, but you don’t get any of that. So, we’re in a spot where it’s pretty – well, I shouldn’t say “normal.”
NASIR: Normal. Yeah, we’re pretty normal. I’m sure we use some words, like you probably use the word “pop” too, right? Or no?
MATT: I use all the different words. I don’t favor any of them. I just say whatever.
NASIR: I’m the same way. I think I’ve gotten used to using the word “soda” because, when I say “pop,” people will look at me weird – at least in California they did. Here, everyone looks at me weird in Texas.
MATT: There’s a thing that came out, I don’t remember if it was a year ago or two years ago but it basically looked at 25 different words – you know, like, soda, pop, Coke, something like that – and it had a map of the US and it was color-coded on who said it. It was actually pretty cool.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. There’s even different phrases that describe different situations.
MATT: Someone recently made a comment to me that wasn’t from the US and they were saying, “You know, if the US formed today, all these different states would be different countries because a lot of them are so different than other parts.” I mean, you and I are very good examples. California and Texas are very different than pretty much every other state in the US.
NASIR: Yeah, even New York. I mean, those are the three states that we practice in. It’s interesting how the law has developed in the three different states and how you can see even just taking one body of law like employment law and how each state approaches general concepts differently. I think, from an employment perspective, New York and California are pretty close in their interpretation and how they implement it but still very different, and Texas is on a different planet altogether for sure.
MATT: Yeah, that’s very true, very true. Well, we’re going to talk about a lawsuit just to set up the topic, but it was in Virginia so none of this. I was hoping it would apply to one of the three states we talked about.
NASIR: You’re always looking for a transition, I know.
MATT: But we’re going to talk about drones. And so, the thing I was getting to about Virginia was this guy just settled with the FAA which is the Federal Aviation Association, is that right?
NASIR: I think Administration, right?
MATT: Yes, Federal Aviation Administration, you are correct.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, he just settled with them for a whopping $1,100 on a $10,000 fine.
NASIR: Sweet.
MATT: Pretty good, 10 percent of what he owed. So, you want to know what he was fined for?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: The fine was that he was using his drone for commercial purposes and this was a few years ago, wasn’t it? 2011.
NASIR: Yeah, this was before drones really became a consumer product.
MATT: So, he was operating it for commercial purposes but using it also in a reckless manner while filming a commercial at the University of Virginia. So, I don’t know what the reckless manner part means.
NASIR: Yeah, he was probably hired to film or take some photos or something to that effect and didn’t know how to drive the drone, apparently.
MATT: It’s actually funny – quick side story – I went to...
The guys talk about the different methods to value a startup, particularly when the business is pre-revenue.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our little legal twist to it like a little lemon at the end of a… what do you add lemons to? Fish and…?
MATT: Uh…
NASIR: Anyway, my name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I think most of the time you add lemons to a podcast. That’s the only thing I can think of.
MATT: Oh, you’re talking about the end, after something’s already made. So, that would be very common in a fish and chips setting.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, fish and chips.
MATT: I thought you were talking about something like a lemon peel garnish type situation.
NASIR: No, that’s way too fancy for us. We’re a fish and chips kind of podcast. So, welcome to our cooking show and food culinary arts.
MATT: I’ve actually ranked my top ten things to have a twist of lemon with, food-wise.
NASIR: Is one of them a podcast?
MATT: Podcast is number one.
NASIR: Okay. Great.
MATT: But, if I did have a business, let’s say I did start a business and it was solely based on what to put a twist of lemon on at the end, but the problem was I wasn’t really making any money but I’m presenting in front of some investors and I need to value how much this business is worth, how would I go about doing that? That’s our topic for today.
NASIR: Yeah, just sitting here, watching you find a way to transition it to our topic of the day is just entertainment in itself. There’s no lemon needed, in other words. Yeah. So, we’re talking about valuation today.
MATT: I’m sure a lot of people have seen Shark Tank or have at least heard about Shark Tank. But, if you’ve seen an episode, you know that, at least once an episode – actually, not even once an episode – in every single one, you see they come out and the first thing they say is, “I’m offering this percent of my company for this amount of money.” So, you know, you multiply that out and that’s how you get what the entrepreneurs value their company at and there’s usually a dispute between what someone values it at and what the sharks value it at. And so, I think that’s, I would say, for those people that are on that show, that’s probably the toughest thing for them to do because, a lot of times, sometimes, the businesses have some track record or some sales or specific industry things like that, but I think, a lot of times, they’re just kind of throwing numbers out there. They’ve looked at prior episodes and prior things and just tried to take a stab at, you know, what they think the value of their company is, and sometimes they get called out, especially Mark Cuban will do that pretty frequently.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: And the one guy in the middle, was that Kevin O’Leary? I think it’s his name. He’ll always because all he cares about is the bottom-line.
NASIR: Yeah, I like his approach. Well, I mean, he’s pretty harsh when it comes to valuation. He’s pretty aggressive in that respect. But you know what’s interesting about this topic – I think we should give a disclaimer because we’re not necessarily experts in business valuation. Obviously, we can give our legal perspective on this but it seems like everybody and their mother are experts on valuation. If you were reading online, it would seem that way, right?
MATT: Only mothers, no fathers.
NASIR: Is that the term? I don’t know. Everybody and their parents and their cousins and their brothers and sisters and sons and daughters seem to be experts in this field, and they come up with these rules like, “Oh, well, look, if you’re in your first year and you don’t have any assets, you’re a startup, automatic million-dollar valuation and then it starts from there. It goes up if you’re pre-revenue,” all this stuff. But, at the end of the day, we can talk about the different ways that people approach it but, to kind of cut to the chase, I think, at the end,
Nasir and Matt discuss the app that allows employees to post anonymous messages about their employers. They also talk about the legalities of banning gossip in the workplace.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Did I have an accent there? I feel like I had a strange accent there all of a sudden.
MATT: I didn’t even notice. It was just so short that I was very thrown off.
NASIR: Oh, actually, that’s right. I’m supposed to say, like, “Welcome to our program. This is where we cover business law in the news.” But everyone knows what we’re doing here. If you don’t, then why are you listening to us?
MATT: Yeah, you should be able to tell by the thumbnail picture of two faces.
NASIR: That makes it very clear.
MATT: I think we’re wearing suits in the photo.
NASIR: Well, that’s the law part. The business part is just, like, our faces. Very clear.
MATT: We mean business.
NASIR: Before we get into our topic, I want to do an update from last Friday’s episode.
MATT: The glitter?
NASIR: Yeah, did you see how much? Last Friday, we covered a website called ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com and, long story short, this guy who created this website out of Australia got a ton of sales but didn’t want to do it anymore and so put up his website on Flippa.com which is basically they act as an intermediary between a seller of a domain name and I think the website too. I think it comes with the whole package. Guess what he sold it for after one week? It ended two days ago.
MATT: Well, I can’t guess because I already know what the answer is. What I would have guessed, probably, like, no more than $50,000 if I would have not known about it.
NASIR: For some reason, I actually thought it was going to be more. When we looked at it after a day or so, it had already got a number of bids. So, it’s $85,000 it ended up being sold for, 345 bids. Again, like, it got a lot of publicity even for the Flippa campaign so I thought it would go for a little bit more but that’s a pretty good chunk of change there.
MATT: Yeah, especially from what I can tell, he essentially just put the website up. The first day got tons of publicity and then he sold it.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: He probably pocketed all the money too from the people that paid and look at the return for how short a period of time that was. I think he’s doing pretty well.
NASIR: Yeah, I think that’s the case because it looks like the website itself had $20,000 in sales and 2.5 million visits in four days. Obviously, those visits were a result of all the viral activity and I doubt that’s going to sustain itself but I’d like to see what these guys end up doing with it later on if they, you know, anything more than just glitter.
MATT: That’s true. Anything can explode out of the package – snow.
NASIR: I think we should go on to our next topic but we did cover the episode. We tried to find videos of people online. We couldn’t find it because there wasn’t any yet and I think there’s some out there now. So, if you want to look it up, ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com.
MATT: Yeah, I’m still sceptical that’s real – at least the one that we saw.
NASIR: Yeah, I agree.
MATT: So, Memo is what we’re talking about today. It’s an app as most things are these days. A new messaging app, but this is for office gossip. So, basically, from what I can tell is it can’t be fake. So, people that work for a company – let’s say you work for Nike – you either log in through your Nike work email or through LinkedIn to verify that you work for this company, and then you get thrown in to this essentially just a gossip spot where you can just post these different memos – hence the name Memo – and you can just kind of blast people within the company. I mean, you can pretty much do whatever you want. It’s just kind of a free-for-all in there and I guess some companies are not taking too kindly to this because they don’t want their employees gossi...
Nasir and Matt end the week by talking about businesses based on pranks, including exploding glitter and mailing animal feces.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our program – probably the best podcast that is hosted by us.
MATT: I hope so. It’s definitely in the top ten.
NASIR: Well, twenty.
MATT: So, I have a question for you. Do you have any enemies?
NASIR: Do I have any enemies? I can name one person that I blacklisted. He’s not even an enemy. It’s just somebody that did something wrong and I don’t like, but I don’t really put much thought into him. That’s it.
MATT: Okay. So…
NASIR: You know who I’m talking about too, right?
MATT: Yeah, I do. So, I mean, you say you don’t put too much thought into it, but would you put enough thought into it to possibly send him or her a secret envelope that would possibly explode with glitter upon opening?
NASIR: Yes, of course. I do that to my friends, too. So, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
MATT: I saw that you sent one to your wife and you were just sitting there watching her open it. The real prank was on you because you had to clean it up. Well, you could be in luck – and I say “could be” and we’ll get to that – but I think a lot of people might have seen this – well, I guess this would have been last week by the time this episode comes out – this kid – and this guy is definitely a kid as well, especially how he’s handled it – he started this business where basically you pay $9.99 and he would essentially stuff an envelope with glitter and it would be sent to someone – whoever you pay to send it to – and it would just explode and glitter goes everywhere when you open it. Yeah, it’s a nice, funny prank. I could see it being pretty funny.
NASIR: It’s somewhat harmless.
MATT: Yeah. Once his website went live, it just went insanely viral. I think he said one million page visits; over a quarter of a million social media shares; five figures in sales which, like I said, it’s ten bucks per thing so that’s quite a few purchases there; and that was only the first 24 hours. So, this 22-year-old was very overwhelmed and just kind of went on – I think – the Twitter page and said, “All right.” I think he took the ability to purchase down on the site. Basically, he went on Twitter pleading for people to stop purchasing this which has to be one of the first times ever that someone’s just pleading with their customers to stop giving them money.
NASIR: I know. That doesn’t happen often. And what was the reason? It was just too much for him to handle or he just thought it was ridiculous that people were doing this or what?
MATT: From what I understand, it was too much to handle because I think I saw an interview with him where, like, they asked him his process on how it works. Like, “I literally just stuff the envelopes with glitter,” and so I guess he was like, “Well, I have thousands of orders to fill so all my time’s going to be spent just stuffing envelopes with glitter and I just don’t feel like doing that even if I’m making a good amount of money.” I mean, if you break it down to amount of money per hour, it’s probably not bad if you got fairly efficient with it.
NASIR: Yeah, I imagine in the interview, “So, what’s your approach on how you handle this?” “Well, I take an envelope and I stuff it with glitter and then I close the envelope and then I address it and put it in the mail and that’s what I do for people.”
MATT: Yeah. So, I don’t know how it necessarily explodes. I would think that the post office would have a problem with that.
NASIR: I don’t think you can ship things that explode.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I would assume that how you open it is such that it just goes everywhere, I assume.
MATT: I wish there was a video.
NASIR: Oh, I’m sure we can find someone. Let’s see. YouTube… what is it called?
The guys discuss the recent developments in employment law for 2015 and what employers should consider when hiring new employees.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, today, we are talking about hiring employees in 2015. It seems like everyone is talking about hiring employees either for the first time or they’re expanding and I think that’s good – that’s a good sign for the economy, obviously, and maybe it’s also the new year.
MATT: Yeah, and, I mean, I’m thinking it has to do with a couple of things. One, the beginning of the year.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I would say anyone, any business owner in the last quarter of the year who was thinking of hiring people – unless it’s a seasonal thing – probably was thinking, “I’m just going to put it off until the beginning of the year and not mess with it.”
NASIR: Oh, yeah.
MATT: And then, two, just the economy in general has gotten better. Businesses are making more money so they can pay people to be there. So, I’m sure there’s more reasons but those are two things that come to mind and it’s definitely a good thing. Let’s see. I think I had some numbers here. So, this is from Career Builder which I guess deals with hiring people but who knows how credible this is.
NASIR: It’s some blogger, you know, that just came up with some number.
MATT: It’s something.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, careerbuilder.com.
MATT: Yeah, 36 percent of employers plan to increase their full-time permanent employee number in 2015 up from 24 percent last year. So, that’s a pretty significant jump. But it’s interesting too because we talked about, obviously, more people being hired, but in terms of – at least in California, and I think probably nationwide, too – the amount of money that needs to be spent on employees has also increased. So, it’s interesting that employees are now more expensive to have, but people are hiring more of them. So, it’s a weird dynamic where, I guess, at the end of the day, as long as, you know, you make more money than the cost of having the employee there then I guess that’s fine with the business owner. That’s how I would view it, at least.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we even filled out our San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce every year. Actually, also periodically during the year, they do a survey. I just filled out mine a couple of days ago and they ask these questions – you know, “Do you plan on hiring? Do you plan on expanding?” et cetera, like that. And so, the sentiment of businesses is always really cool to kind of see where they’re heading because that’s usually a good indicator of where the economy is going or at least what people’s impression thinks it’s going. So, when you hire somebody, there’s just so many issues that are going on and I think your employees are the biggest liability of your business. And, if you’re hiring an employee for the first time, then you better learn pretty quick. I mean, there are a lot of issues to go through, even from the setup perspective. I mean, there’s lots of setup – everything from registering your EIN which you should have already, obviously, but, you know, doing things like registering with your state labor department, workers’ compensation insurance, payroll is huge.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I’m always surprised that people actually handle their own payroll. I think it’s just silly. I mean, if you can afford an employee, you can afford to pay someone to do your payroll because it is something you do not want to mess and do incorrectly, for sure.
MATT: Oh, yeah. I don’t understand how people handle that by themselves either. I mean, I have some connections with some payroll companies in San Diego. I know their pricing; it’s very reasonable. Your time’s going to be way more valuable than just paying someone a little bit of money to handle it and they actually know what they’re doing.
Nasir and Matt kick off the week by diving into the topic of partnerships and the important things to remember before forming the partnership.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our program once again. I’ve been trolling Reddit a little bit and it’s just crazy how many times I see the exact same question and story in the startups and entrepreneurs section of Reddit of someone that is starting a business with a partner and it going horribly wrong. It’s, like, pretty much the same story over and over again so I wanted to talk a little bit about partnerships and starting a business with somebody and things like that.
MATT: Well, what’s the story that you keep reading? Since you just admitted to being a troll, I want to hear what you’re trolling on.
NASIR: Yeah, I guess that’s a negative thing. No, but it’s the same thing. Basically, I think we’ll link the particular Reddit that made me think about it. It’s kind of a long story – long story yet the same story – but I’ll summarize it. Basically, someone is the developer, another person is the business end of things, and they have a startup idea. It really doesn’t even matter what it is. The developer, they say, “Okay, let’s split it up this percentage; you get this percent, I get this percent.” It could be 50-50, it could be 40-60, it doesn’t really matter – they talk about it. And then, the developer works for six, seven months and starts, you know, actually creates the product – a minimum viable product as they say – and then they launch and then they start having discussions about raising funds and things like that and the business guy is just sitting there in the background and kind of doing his thing and, of course, the developer starts to feel that there’s some unfairness here. “Hey, what are you doing in this relationship? You’re just sitting back,” and then they go to get funds and then now this developer is complaining because the business guy came back to him and said, “Okay, here’s a deal, I’m going to give you 25 percent. I’m going to take 50 percent of the company and then the rest is going to go to other investors and things like that, and not only that, your 25 percent is going to start at – I don’t know – 15 percent and vest another 10 percent over the next 36 months or so.” I’m messing up the numbers but that’s basically the bottom-line. And so, now, all of a sudden, the deal that he thought it was is not even close to what it is and, of course, now the paperwork is not as clear. He signed some stuff but didn’t sign other stuff and then, of course, there’s always intellectual property issues. if this is the same story and I read a bunch of them, I think he showed up over Christmas at a family dinner and wanted him to sign an IP assignment which is basically the last thing that he needed on paper to make sure that this deal went through. So, this is a very classic situation. I swear I could retell it over and over again and with different numbers and different positions. But, if you read the comments, the first top comment says, “’Gentleman’s agreement.’ Hey, I found the problem!” So, I thought that was pretty clever.
MATT: That could be a female that posted that. I was disappointed that it wasn’t just an agreement. But you’re right; this happens all the time and the best analogy for a business partnership is a marriage. I mean, think of it this way, you wouldn’t just kind of meet someone and get married to them – well, you might. I don’t know. I guess that’s worked before. But your odds are better if you know someone more beforehand and do some due diligence than just jumping into something or setting the terms. I’m probably screwing this up how I’m describing it but it’s definitely something you want to get hammered out sooner rather than later and one of the things, you’re familiar with Startup Weekend,
Nasir and Matt end the week by discussing how cat cafes are popping up in cities across the US and the legalities behind how people are pulling it off.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And thanks for joining us once again. This is our Friday episode and this is the time where we’re going to just pause here for a second for you to pause and bring up iTunes and rate us with five stars. So, let’s just sit here for… how long does that take? Like, twenty minutes?
MATT: Yeah, it depends. Was that intentional? You really emphasized “pause.” Was that a pun based on what we’re talking about or no?
NASIR: Yes, it was.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: I don’t do anything unintentionally. Everything’s intentional.
MATT: Yeah. Well, we’ve put it off for… what is this? 138 episodes.
NASIR: We’ve been planning this for about – I don’t know – about five years now, right?
MATT: Despite your requests and your cameo appearances by flowers and I forget the name…
NASIR: Marley.
MATT: Marley. I was going to say Hendrix. See, I was close.
NASIR: Hendrix?
MATT: Well, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley. That’s how I think of it.
NASIR: Oh, got you, got you.
MATT: Yeah, despite those cameos and everything else, we’re going to talk about cats – your favorite thing.
NASIR: Well, I don’t know if I would say favorite thing but, yeah, I’m definitely a cat person compared to a dog person, I would say.
MATT: Well, I’m a dog person. That’s fine. I had cats growing up. Just saw my parents’ cat so it’s nice. I did like it there. Cats, when they’re focused, they have their…
NASIR: Moments, right?
MATT: Yeah, they have their moments, but they’re usually just lying around doing things.
NASIR: Well, I actually don’t have any cats. I just have cats that are a guest in my home. I wouldn’t say I own them. They definitely don’t act like I’m their owner.
MATT: That’s the problem with cats. That’s the nature of their personality. It’s the exact opposite. I can’t remember ever coming home growing up and the cat was excited to see me. Every time I come home now, my dog is like, it’s like the best moment of his day.
NASIR: Well, yeah, that’s not completely true, but definitely there’s a huge difference between dogs and cats in that respect.
MATT: So, actually, we’re not even going to put a poll up on the site because I know what would win if people were going to vote cats or dogs. It’s not even going to be close.
NASIR: I’ll stay silent on that.
MATT: So, we’re talking about these cat cafes which is pretty interesting. You know, before I get into the story, it is interesting because every place that you see, especially in San Diego – I don’t know out in Houston if it’s the same but San Diego is a huge dog place so there’s a lot of dog-friendly restaurants, places.
NASIR: I think most cities are but I think the difference is where there’s so many outdoor seating and things like that that people have their dogs with them and there are people walking around in Houston like it’s hard to find outdoor seating sometimes, even when the weather is nice. And so, it’s not as common. Everyone drives around everywhere and goes inside.
MATT: I’ll give a quick plug to this company – this iPhone app, Doggie Door – that I saw on Wednesday. It’s only in San Diego right now but basically you can download the app only on your iPhone and it basically pulls up a map of all the spots that are dog-friendly.
NASIR: Dog-friendly? That’s cool.
MATT: But the point I was getting to was I don’t think cats are really allowed in the same, I mean, you never even see it. It’s not like, “Is this place cat-friendly?”
NASIR: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s allowed or prohibited. I mean, people just don’t carry their cats around either.
MATT: Earlier in the week, I was driving and some woman was walking her pig.
NASIR: Is San Diego pig-friendly? What would you say?
Nasir and Matt discuss the company in danger of being sued for having a Chrome plugin that allows students to compare prices of college textbooks from all sources.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news and my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: This is our second episode for our new format where you can also send in your ideas and some questions to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: That is correct.
NASIR: That is correctamundo.
MATT: Our theme this week – well, it wasn’t intentional, I don’t think, maybe it was – basically, things that are created to make consumers’ lives cheaper and then bigger companies getting upset and then coming after the people that created the ideas.
NASIR: It’s a pretty common theme. I think people have covered it many times before.
MATT: Yeah, it’s a common thing.
NASIR: Very specific, but…
MATT: Yeah, on Monday, we talked about the guy who started the site that will basically get you cheaper flights. Today, we’re going to talk about – it’s not even a site – it’s a…
NASIR: Chrome extension.
MATT: An extension, yes. An extension on Chrome that you can download that will basically get you cheaper textbooks and I know that, the last couple of years, it’s been a really huge deal with, like, the price of textbooks. I mean, even when we were in school, I know it was outrageously expensive to buy books, especially if you’re going to use it for… I mean, did you ever do the thing where you would buy a book, like, a new book, and then you would go return it to the bookstore at the end of the year and just sell it back and it was two percent of what you bought it for?
NASIR: Oh, yeah, it was ridiculous. I think the first year, I just lost, it was like half the tuition I was paying, basically. It was crazy how much I spent on books. And then, you realize, of course, the professors don’t even use all the books or what-have-you, or the book itself is written by the professor.
MATT: That’s the worst.
NASIR: Yeah, you know. But then, I think it was, like, towards the second or third year, I think by this time they already had these book comparison sites. I think I used, I think it was AbeBooks. On our campus too, there was a couple of bookstores. There was one on campus but then also off-campus that basically it was called KB Books for all you San Diegan natives there. And they sold basically all the same textbooks with a little bit of a cheaper price. It was still pretty expensive but at least it was an alternative so it kept the prices a little competitive.
MATT: There are all these sites out there that do comparison tools.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Especially now with the ebooks being more prevalent that those popped up. I can never get into those just because I like to read on actual paper. Anyways, before I get too off-track with my history, like I said, there’s all these different sites that do price comparison tools for textbooks. There’s a whole bunch of them, way more than I realized, but these people, these two guys created this extension for Chrome called Occupy the Bookstore. So, you can download it, let’s say you’re searching for a book, you hit the book and this thing will pop up and run a search of every book and then, if you were on the university’s website and you’re like, “Oh, I can actually get this book for much cheaper,” it’ll direct you to that. So, you can see why some of these places are pretty upset. I think the biggest site, Follett?
NASIR: Yeah, I think they’re a publisher. Well, okay, they service college bookstores. So, they’re either a publisher or some kind of distributor company or whatever. I’m sure they represent many different authors or publishing companies, I would assume. They’re apparently a $2.7 billion company according to this Chrome extension developer.
MATT: Yeah. So, just like on Monday, we had some tortious interference with contract.
The guys kick off the week by discussing how an entrepreneur got sued by United and Orbitz for exploiting the hidden city fees in airline tickets.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news and that’s it. We no longer answer your questions. Actually, we do. You can send in your questions and ideas at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We are changing our format a little bit and – oh, yeah – my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Yeah. So, we are changing our format. We’re getting rid of some of the questions, at least not in every episode.
MATT: Yeah, it turns out we answered pretty much every legal question there is. There’s only 136 legal questions – well, more than that because some of those first episodes, I think, had three questions per episode.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. So, we pretty much exhausted that. No, but we just want to focus in on some of these legal issues. I feel like we don’t have enough time to cover some of these topics and so we’re going to just stick to one topic per episode so, that way, we can talk about it fully. Please send us your ideas and continue to send us your questions because we will be covering them, but we’re going to be consolidating into one episode and one topic.
MATT: Yeah. So, like the times we get off-track or I get us off-track talking about random things that have nothing to do with the story we’re talking about, now we can afford to do that and still cover the legal side of it. So, everybody wins!
NASIR: Exactly.
MATT: If you’re tuning in to listen to your legal analysis or my relation to analogies to TV shows or movies then…
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. We can talk about The Office more. We can talk about the sauce versus crust debate a little bit more in detail. We have more time.
MATT: Speaking of which, I’m going to tell a personal story for our story today because we’re dealing with a lawsuit involving United and Orbitz. So, typically, if I’m looking for flight – unless it’s local – like, in the States then I just pretty much go to Southwest. But, if I’m looking for something outside of the state, I’ll usually go to Orbitz first and see what all the options are and then end up going to the actual airline’s website once I find the flight that works. And so, that’s pertinent to this because there’s this new kid – and he is a kid, he’s 22 years old – that started this site.
NASIR: They call it a kid in the media, though.
MATT: Skiplagged is the name of it. But, basically, I guess I should tell a little backstory on this. I didn’t even know this existed, this hidden fees thing. So, if I was trying to fly to Denver, sometimes it would be cheaper for me to book San Diego to Denver to another city than it would just to be San Diego to Denver which seems crazy but that’s apparently how it works. So, this guy’s website…
NASIR: It seems crazy but it’s true.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Believe it or not.
MATT: So, this guy’s site essentially will produce those, show you those flights that exist and then, I guess, get you out of these hidden fees. So, obviously, Orbitz which is, I assume, the biggest online flight searching tool on the internet. I’m assuming it has a pretty sizable chunk of the market.
NASIR: Yeah, Orbitz I think is huge. I think they even bought out Hotwire a while ago and Travelocity is probably their competitor and I think KAYAK, I think they actually used Orbitz in part of their search engine and so forth. So, I think all these guys are pretty big, but Orbitz is definitely a huge one and United, of course, is definitely one of the biggest airlines.
MATT: Yeah, and that’s who’s suing him – it’s Orbitz and United. So, we’ve got two heavy-hitters going after this 22-year-old kid who apparently doesn’t even have a company which is unfortunate for him.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, if you look at the actual lawsuit, he has been sued personally even though he’s operating Skiplagged,
Nasir and Matt talk about expandingemail usage for employees to include non-work purposes. They then answer the question, "How do I get out of a lease? We have been there for years, but our lease is ending in two. We originally signed a guarantee, but we didn't in our renewal, so I'm willing to possibly walk away if we can stop ourselves from personal liability? In NorCal."
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business and I’ve already messed up the intro again. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matt Staub is joining us, nice. I love it.
MATT: You know, when you say the actual name of the podcast, that doesn’t mean you messed it up but…
NASIR: Well, yeah, that’s true. But, as we’ve discussed many times before, if I say the name of the podcast, then it’s like, why do we even have an intro to our intro? I guess… should we just start talking and not even have an intro?
MATT: Make it a choose-your-own-adventure so the audience can choose which way they want to go.
NASIR: That would be awesome.
MATT: I don’t know if that’s possible to do. Probably not.
NASIR: Oh, someday with audio and you can integrate it. I think we should implement that.
MATT: Well, Friday episode, I guess this is relevant because what do employees do on a Friday other than use their work email for personal reasons, right?
NASIR: I was going to say, other than spying on your employees and going through your employees’ emails.
MATT: Yeah, I don’t use my work email for personal reasons. Maybe, like, two percent of the time when people accidentally email me on the wrong one, but I keep mine separate, especially with technology these days.
NASIR: It’s so easy to do so, right?
MATT: Yeah, I mean, on your phone… Actually, I don’t check my personal email. I’ll usually check it in the morning and, like, around noon, and then not till I’m done for the day because I never really get anything that important in my personal email so I just don’t want to get distracted with nonsense.
NASIR: In my Gmail account, I have both my work email and my personal email going there, so I do happen to, once in a while, like you said, someone sends something to my work email and that’s the only time that you don’t separate it.
MATT: All right, and I think that’s our episode.
NASIR: That’s our episode. Thank you for joining us.
MATT: Email tips. So, what we’re dealing with is, it’s what decisioned by the National Labor Relations Board, basically saying that employees who have been given access to their employer’s email system, that those employees can then use that email for non-business purposes. You know, the big thing in this one was union organization was a possibility that these employees could use the work email for but I look at it as, for a range of non-business purposes, these employees can now use their work email which should be pretty interesting to see how employers deal with this.
NASIR: Yeah, the NLRA which is a board that has been charged with dealing with some union disputes but also unfair employer practices as well. So, it’s not often that they do have a limited scope but they do have some kind of wide-reaching effect sometimes with some of their decisions, especially in this case where the implications for employers are such that, now, you can’t do an outright ban or non-work use of the email system which can be interesting because a lot of people are like, “Okay, just use the email for work purposes only,” but now they’re saying that there’s a certain statutory protected communication that cannot be restricted during non-work time so long as there’s no – how do they put it?
MATT: Creates a danger of server overload or damage from excessive use.
NASIR: Yeah, that was a specific example,
Nasir and Matt talk about the recent motion filed by Uber claiming its drivers are not employees. They then answer the question, "As a business owner in California, what new laws should I know about?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener who is listening to this podcast, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com, and that’s an email address just to remember. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: We are in the middle of the year now, right?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Pretty much.
MATT: Yeah, took a big break.
NASIR: We can stop saying “Happy New Year!” now.
MATT: Oh, yeah, I don’t know when the cut-off is for that.
NASIR: I think January 2nd.
MATT: Is it?
NASIR: Yeah, in my mind.
MATT: It’s dependent on the year because it falls on a Thursday this year so people might not be… or this year the 5th is the cut-off so, by the time this episode comes out…
NASIR: Yeah, but if you use that logic then, if I see somebody for the first time in a year on December 1st then I would say “Happy New Year!” then. What’s the rule?
MATT: Well, I’m saying that I think that people aren’t going to see each other until the 5th. I don’t know. I’m going to test it out and see what people say to me and then I’ll let you know the…
NASIR: Report back.
MATT: Yeah, the results.
NASIR: All right. Well, what do we have?
MATT: Oh, one of your favorite topics, for sure.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Uber.
NASIR: Yeah, we’re talking about Uber, but I have to give some disclaimer. Obviously, Uber has success and they’re good at what they do and they raised a bunch of money and all that, but I guess my opinion is just that, man, how they’re doing it is just so annoying, you know? Those kind of “do no evil” kind of culture that we think start-ups have but they actually don’t, you know?
MATT: Yeah, and I’m probably going to have to take an Uber tomorrow.
NASIR: They do have taxis in San Diego, and taxi services.
MATT: It’s so much harder to get those if they don’t drive by.
NASIR: They have apps! They have apps, I think. Well, anyway…
MATT: So does Uber.
NASIR: Yeah, but Uber, et cetera, et cetera. We’ve already talked about it.
MATT: I will look up on Yelp which is better – Uber or taxis – and that’s what I’ll decide.
NASIR: No! Definitely, I’m going to make it my business to destroy those two companies this year. No, I’m not that crazy.
MATT: Good luck! So, with this, I mean, there’s actually a lot of things in the news with Uber. I think there’s a new story that comes out every day and mostly bad, but the one we’re going to talk about here is the drivers who sued Uber, and the reason we’re talking about this is it’s going to come down as a big thing of whether these drivers are going to be considered employees or independent contractors which should come as no surprise. Uber is filing this motion for summary judgment saying that its drivers are not employees because they do not provide services to Uber. Let’s see their actual argument here. Basically, they’re saying they’re a lead generation, almost, of sorts and they get the calls in and then they send them out to the drivers and, at that point, it’s all up to the drivers on, you know, kind of how they do everything. So, in that case, these people are not employees; they’re contractors. These are all their own individual businesses that they’re running.
NASIR: Yeah, and this is the exact same issue that FedEx drivers had to deal with earlier this year and we need a follow-up on that, too, because, I mean, that was a huge decision were a court said that FedEx drivers were misclassified as independent contractors and they were actually employees. But, if you recall on that case, as we know, we look outside our offices, we see FedEx drivers in FedEx trucks, right? They’re using the brand name and all that so there’s a little bit more cl...
The guys kick off the year by discussing the lengths a college QB has to go through to prevent profitingfrom his name or likeness and remain eligible with the NCAA. They also answer, "I purchased a business and did not realize that there are all these gift certificates out there (I don't know exactly how many) that customers keep coming in with. Since I had no knowledge of these certificates, do I have to honor them?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Welcome to our first new episode of 2015. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: We’re recording this in 2014 but I think the most frustrating thing is just getting the dates right on these contracts. We get to make sure we put in 2015 instead of 2014.
MATT: Yeah, that’s the biggest challenge. I don’t want to change any words – just the date; just the year.
NASIR: Exactly. All these new contracts we’re signing and drafting. So, let’s start off the new year correctly with a football issue.
MATT: New Year’s Day is always a big day for college football. I’m trying to think, when this comes out, I think we’re in-between the first round of the college play-off and the championship game.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: The person we’re going to talk about is not someone who’s going to be playing in that because his team didn’t make it. Dakota “Dak” Prescott is suing a t-shirt company who is using his name or likeness. The shirt is this, it’s “Dak Dynasty” with a picture of their mascot bulldog and with the Duck Dynasty beard on it and a phrase on it, “That’s a Fact, Dak!” It’s all right, I guess.
NASIR: Very clever.
MATT: Yeah, so this company’s making this shirt and selling it. I’m going to take Prescott’s word for it that he’s not involved in it at all, so much so that the NCAA basically, the rules are in place saying that he has to take some sort of action to stop them selling the shirt and making money off it because, as an amateur athlete, he can’t make any money or else he loses his amateur status and then he can’t play college football anymore. So, like I said, he’s not involved in this and this company initially refused to take it off the shelves – or virtual shelves, I don’t know if they’re selling it online or in stores. But he has to go as far as to sue them in order for them to stop so he can retain his amateur status which, to me, is pretty crazy.
NASIR: Yeah, that doesn’t seem fair. I mean, all of a sudden, because you’re doing well in college sports, now you have to actually pay an attorney that you’re not getting paid anyway. I think, just like Johnny Manziel, I think there’s an NCAA fund for these kinds of things, right?
MATT: Yeah, he used – was it the NCAA Opportunity Fund? “It helps student athletes,” here’s how they put it, “…when they can’t afford certain things such as legal action or travel home due to family emergencies.” So, he’s not paying, at least.
NASIR: Well, I hope not, but it is strange that the actual bylaw – which is, by the way, for those that are interested, is 12.5.2.2 of the NCAA bylaws – some action, right? It doesn’t really necessarily describe what an action exactly that is required. It seems like a demand letter would be sufficient but I guess that’s what the fund’s for and some lawyers have to get paid. That’s what we do.
MATT: Yeah, he might have just been advised to just do this as a just in case because you never know if the NCAA, how they’re going to rule on things. They kind of seem to be all over the board in terms of who they rule eligible and ineligible every year so I would tend to agree with him or whoever advised him to air on the side of being overcautious just because you’d never know what the NCAA is going to do; they’re just a wildcard.
NASIR: And some of the concern is the earning potential of the name or likeness of...
Nasir and Mattrelive their top moments from 2014.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Happy New Year! Welcome to our Best of 2014 episode of Legally Sound Smart Business! Welcome to our show! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. I guess you didn’t need me to be here. You could have done this by yourself but it’s all right. Thanks for having me.
NASIR: Actually, I didn’t even know you were here. That’s really weird. So, yeah, so we’ve had a huge year; a lot of legal issues that we covered. I think Matthew, our audio producer, has a nice surprise for you guys to put together a few nice little clips for this Best of 2014 episode.
MATT: Yeah, it should be a good one. I’m not sure right now as we’re recording what those “best of” are going to be but, really, all of them are good in my opinion so you can’t really go wrong.
NASIR: Well, what’s interesting is the actual Best of 2014 is just going to be one long audio file of all the episodes put together. It’s going to be like a 20- or 30-hour episode but probably more than that.
MATT: Yeah, it’d be more than that, I would think. I don’t think you could have a podcast file that large.
NASIR: Well, enjoy your week of listening and we’ll be back in a few days.
MATT: Yeah. Keep it sound and keep it smart. [PARTY HORN]
MATT: Let’s get right into it this week. There’s a story that came out. It’s going to be very interesting what happens with this and it’s going to be good news for some business owners.
NASIR: Yeah, I think it’s huge.
MATT: Yeah, and I can’t remember anything like this happening before. It was a lawsuit involving Yelp. It was in Virginia. There’s a company that had all these negative reviews and I believe they’re also anonymous reviews so the people didn’t say who they were and, essentially, there was a lawsuit that happened and Yelp was required to turn over the information of those so-called anonymous reviews which, like I said, this is going to be a big precedent. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. This was in Virginia but it will be really interesting to see what happens in other states and, just, if anything follows up with an appeal.
NASIR: This is where you have anonymous reviewers that are posting information about your business that not only is false but is suspected to be completely your competitors or something.
MATT: Right.
NASIR: This is a carpet cleaning business and they think that this is a competitor that is going on this website and posting these bad reviews about them. Keep in mind, people that are listening though, this is a Virginia lawsuit. This was a public court decision.
MATT: Yeah, this was done by the Court of Appeals.
NASIR: So, to understand what that means, unless you’re in the state of Virginia, that is not going to apply to you, but it is going to be persuasive authority in the sense that it could be used to help your argument in your respective state. And, also, keep in mind, I noticed that the basis of their lawsuit was a statute that was passed in Virginia which there are other states that have a similar statute which talks about basically anonymous posting and, if there’s a tortious or illegal communication, then the burden of proof going through First Amendment rights and so forth is lessened if it’s an anonymous post online. So, even if your case is similar but if you’re not in a state that has a similar statute, it may not even work.
MATT: All right, let’s get into the first question this week, and this comes from a start-up in New York City. “I was in a start-up competition where random teams were assembled. We didn’t win but still wanted to move forward. How do we determine who owns what?” I’m assuming they are talking about ownership of the entity – well, I guess they don’t have an entity yet – of the business of whatever they put together.
NASIR: Well, probably not, right? They misspelled the word “forward” so I’m sure they didn’t think about that as well.
The guys end the week by recapping the story on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and a local non-profit thatpaid homeless people with food and shelter to work concessions at games. Then they answer, "How risky is it to discuss my company's IP with job applicants?"
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener of our podcast, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha. Welcome to our show.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Also, welcome.
NASIR: Well, you just said welcome because I said welcome but, truly, I’m the welcoming person of the two.
MATT: I can accept that. Right now, as we’re recording, it’s raining here in San Diego. There’s a 100 percent chance of rain today which is pretty unheard of. I can’t remember that happening in a long time.
NASIR: I know, I love the rain, but San Diego freaks out in the rain. That’s the only problem with that.
MATT: I’m going to try to stay off the roads as much as possible because people don’t know how to drive in the rain down here.
NASIR: Everyone, too, is like, “Oh, it’s raining outside. I think we’ll take this, we’ll count this as our snow day,” right? “I’m going to stay home.”
MATT: Yeah, people kind of pack it in if it’s raining. So, we will see. But let’s go to a place where it rains sometimes – Tampa Bay.
NASIR: There was a doubt. It rains a lot over there actually, that’s true.
MATT: Yeah. So, Tampa Bay, and a football story, too. We haven’t talked about football in a while, right? Like, in the sweet spot of college football, the regular season’s over. The Bowl games are going to start here shortly. NFL season’s winding down – a few weeks left.
NASIR: Yeah, San Diego had a bad loss last week, unfortunately, and they have a hard game against the Broncos this weekend, I think.
MATT: Oh, yeah. Who’d they lose to last week? Oh, New England, that’s right. Yeah, that was a tough one.
NASIR: It was the Patriots.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Patriots. Did you say Eagles? No, Patriots, right?
MATT: No, I said New England.
NASIR: Oh, New England. I thought you said Eagles.
MATT: No.
NASIR: No, yeah, actually, not the New England; it’s the Patriots.
MATT: So, Tampa Bay, the Buccaneers have had a bad season, but I guess that’s not only on the field – off the field, too. I guess what they had been doing after investigation was done was they were employing homeless people to work in the concession stands at their games. So, it’s bad enough that they don’t get people to attend the games – which I don’t think they do – but they found homeless people and had them working games which, essentially, is human trafficking, I think.
NASIR: Well, okay, you’re correct on that. But the problem is that – by the way, I read this article the same way and I started looking more deep into it and it’s not clear what the facts are but this other company – I believe it’s a church called New Beginnings – only until I started reading what their perspective was that I realized, “Okay. Well, maybe it sounds really bad that you have homeless people that are in your concession stands, but what’s going on is that they are getting paid.” I’m giving you the position of New Beginnings. They are getting paid but they’re getting paid through shelter and food, okay? So, technically, I think a lot of people may still see this as exploitive and things like that, but the question is really, “Are they making a minimum wage out of that?” The federal law does allow you to be paid through food or lodging in lieu of wages under certain circumstances and there’s even special circumstances if the particular workers are in a disenfranchised – I should say and I believe they had a disability. Nonetheless, when you do pay employees in lieu of cash for food and lodging, then there are some other things like, for example, you cannot charge the worker for more than the actual cost.
Nasir and Matt discuss how signing up for free trials can backfire for consumers and businesses. They also answer the question, "I used to occupy the space next door but I needed less space, so after I left that area the landlord rented out that extra space to someone who offers the same type of services that I do. Should I sue the neighbor or the landlord, or both?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome everyone to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to our email address which I’m going to tell you in a second. Hold on one moment. It is ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Boom!
MATT: Got it.
NASIR: That’s it. We should just end it. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. And I guess you’d have to have a reason for sending something in the email, right?
NASIR: Yeah. Yeah, just send us a legal question.
MATT: If we ended the episode, people wouldn’t really have a reason for ever emailing us.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: So, we have something in Middle America today – I guess that, technically, it’s in Iowa but…
NASIR: When they say “Middle America,” do they mean…? I was always think the Midwest, but that’s not Middle America necessarily, geographically.
MATT: I wasn’t denying that Iowa is in the middle of America; I was just denying that this really had to do with Iowa.
NASIR: Oh. Yeah, same here, actually; I was saying the same thing.
MATT: Iowa is definitely Middle America. You’ve driven through there. They have the world’s largest truck stop. So, you can stop there. It’s pretty cool.
NASIR: It’s not that big. Don’t tell them I said that.
MATT: Is it the world’s largest? I think it was the world’s largest. It’s – at least – the largest in the US. Well, now I’m going to have to figure this out. I’ll figure it out before the end of the episode. This actually is an interesting thing that I’ve always thought about because I’ve fallen victim to this in the past, that’s why I don’t make the same decisions that I used to anymore. So, free trials, and you’ll see this a lot. It always seems like a good deal and the last time I remember it happening to me was in college when I bought something at Best Buy and they said, “Hey! You want a free trial?” You know, you can get one of these free magazines for three months. I was like, “Oh, that’s a good deal.” So, I got, I think, Sports Illustrated or something for three months. And then, they just kept sending them to me after three months so I kind of figured they just screwed up. And then, I look at my credit card statement and realized that they had actually been charging me every month for this new magazine that I had apparently subscribed to.
NASIR: How many months did it take you to find out?
MATT: Oh, only one or two after the…
NASIR: Oh, that’s pretty good.
MATT: I think I noticed that, you know, it had been past three months and they were still sending it to me so I realized something was awry so I had to look up and then that’s why I realized I was getting charged. So, it wasn’t much fun.
NASIR: Yeah. I had the same problem when I was in college, too. I think I was checking my credit report and it was one of those things were, you know how there’s like freecreditreport.com and then there’s another one, like, that’s not really the real credit report, this was before that commercial, it was popular or whatever. You get your free credit report and you put in your credit card but then they started charging you afterwards. And, with that, I wasn’t even receiving anything so it wasn’t as obvious that they were charging me every month so I think it took, like, four months until I actually noticed the $30 or $40 charge per month. I was able to get most of it back, if I recall, just as a complaint to the credit card company.
MATT: Yeah, did you write them a scathing email like our Monday episode?
NASIR: Yeah, like the Harvard business… I wasn’t an attorney the...
The guys start the week by detailing the story of a Harvard professor who fought with a restaurant over a $4 discrepancy in his bill. They then answer, "At what point can I make my employees clock out but take care of non work activities at the office?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to the our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundbusiness.com. Welcome. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: I don’t know why I’m very excited about this episode, mainly because we get to make fun of another attorney. I think that’s what it is.
MATT: Yeah, you do enjoy that so I could see why you’re excited for this and I think this has actually gained some… people have heard about this – I don’t know – in the past week. Maybe by the time this episode comes out, more people would have heard of it and there’s more of a resolution to it.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, there’s this professor at Harvard Business School who went to this Chinese restaurant and ordered roughly $53.00 worth of food. I think there was an exact number – $53.35 of food.
NASIR: Yeah, in case you were wondering, he ordered shredded chicken with spicy garlic sauce, sautéed prawns with roasted chili and peanut, stir-fried chicken with spicy – what is that? Capsicum? I don’t know what that is.
MATT: I don’t know.
NASIR: Braised fish fillets, Napa cabbage with roasted chili, and that’s it. Sounds like he has good taste.
MATT: It’s a lot of things, too. So, hopefully, he had more than one person with him. Or just more than just him. So, he gets – like I said, - $53.35. He gets home, notices he got overcharged by $1.00 on every single item.
NASIR: Wow.
MATT: And we’ll have to link, there’s an email thread that goes back and forth between the two of them which we won’t go in full detail but it’s a pretty good read but…
NASIR: If we can, hopefully, I will just put the image in. I don’t know if we have the rights to. We’ll see.
MATT: Well, it’s kind of long, too. So, we’ll see. But the business writes back, as it should. You know, they’re apologizing, saying… Basically, you get to the point they said he didn’t really overcharge them. The menu items on the website were off by a dollar. They had since updated it. But, despite that, he would give them the $4.00 refund for the four items because it was overcharged by a dollar on each thing. This wasn’t good enough for this Ben Edelman.
NASIR: Hold on. Technically, the restaurant didn’t offer the $4.00 refund right away. The restaurant’s first response was, “I apologize about the confusing—“ Confusion, I think that’s what he meant to say. “Our website prices has been out of date for quite some times. I will make sure to update it. If you would like, I can email you an updated menu.” Sent from an iPhone. So, he obviously didn’t put much thought into this. And then, after this guy, Harvard professor Ben Edelman, he responded with his response, then they offered a refund.
MATT: Yeah, I guess. I’m skipping over pieces because there’s a lot of stuff back and forth.
NASIR: It is, like, ten emails, for sure.
MATT: It’s an important point, though. But then, he gets into this whole legal argument and how, under Massachusetts law, you can’t advertise one price and charge something, and I think that’s where the restaurant owner says, you know, “We technically didn’t overcharge you. The items were just listed wrong. We’ll still give you the refund anyways.” And he said, you know, “According to the law in Massachusetts, you actually have to give me three times what the difference was. So, instead of $4.00, I need $12.00,” and it just goes back and forth. He, at one point, tells him he reported them to the authorities. “I’ve already referred this matter to applicable authorities in order to attempt to compel your restaurant to identify the consumers affected,” blah blah blah.
The guys end the week by talking about an international crowdfunding site getting censured by the SEC. They also answer, "I live in California but my LLC is setup in another state. At what point am I doing business in California?"
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: That’s right, and we are covering probably the most entertaining topic, I think, known to man – not pizza, but SEC censures.
MATT: Well, I don’t know. If people are listening to these in order, the last thing we just got done talking about was tax.
NASIR: Oh, yeah.
MATT: People really hate that stuff. I like it, but…
NASIR: That was the last episode and we lost, basically, I’m already predicting, like, the stats just… everyone just stopped listening after that point. So, that’s okay. We covered the San Diego Magazine and that’s still going on.
MATT: Yeah, we should get a trademark for “Hidden San Diego” for podcasts.
NASIR: If we get as much controversy as they did, it’d be a great hit for us.
MATT: All right. Well, like I said, this is a crowdfunding site. I assume it’s Eureka Capital SPC.
NASIR: Uh, yeah.
MATT: Eureka Capital.
NASIR: I was thinking, like, yeah, Eureka… Oregon or Washington? I can’t remember which. I think it’s Washington.
MATT: Oregon.
NASIR: Oregon.
MATT: Washington. I don’t know.
NASIR: They’re basically the same state.
MATT: There’s a Eureka, California, up north.
NASIR: Well, it doesn’t matter. They’re spelled differently and not in the northwest.
MATT: So, the reason it was spelled differently is because it’s incorporated outside the United States.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, I think that’s why, and that’s pertinent to this because, according to the SEC which is the South Eastern Conference which is a big football powerhouse conference for those listening.
NASIR: Ah, that’s right. Also, called the Securities and Exchange Commission, I believe.
MATT: That’s also true.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Apparently, the way this was set up, they’re not allowed to have investors come from the United States. So, the way they prevented US investors from coming in was asking them, you know, there’s a disclaimer saying, “No US individuals can invest” and they had a thing saying that but then, if you went to register, one of the options was the United States and then you were able to register and invest. So, obviously, that’s a problem. It’s like, if you went to a brewery website and it says, “No one can be on this site unless you’re 21 or older,” then you put in some information for 1998 as your birthday and they still let you in. Or, I guess, if you went to a bar and you’re like, “Oh, I’m not 21,” and it’s like, “All right! Come on in then!”
NASIR: Come on in! Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good analogy I would say, and the reason this is an issue is because SEC is obviously designed to restrict the sale of securities and, you know, whether you’re selling equity in your company or what-have-you raising funds, whatever you offer has to be regulated by them. In complying with that regulation, it’s not too easy for most companies – depending upon how much you’re raising – when a third party gets involved and getting a percentage, you know, acting basically as a broker dealer, that’s also prohibited unless you’re licensed and doing it properly. I think, in this case, they were set up in the Cayman Islands – that’s kind of suspicious in itself – and, even though they weren’t publicly targeting United States citizens, it seems like it was pretty accessible to them and it reminds me of the online gambling thing, right? Wasn’t there a time where all the legal gambling was a dot-net but then the illegal ones was dot-com or vice versa and, technically, you weren’t allowed to do so from the US side but they w...
The guys discuss the fallout from alocal San Diego blogger who accused San Diego Magazine of stealing her business name. They then answer the question, "I'm a sole proprietor. What is some good tax advice to reduce my year end profit?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, a business owner, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, this time, we have a nice local episode in San Diego.
MATT: Well…
NASIR: What?
MATT: Local for me; not for you.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, the topic’s local, that’s what I mean.
MATT: Oh, okay.
NASIR: It’s about this issue that’s going online with San Diego Magazine, but I’ll let Matt introduce it. He said he has some “hot takes” on it. I’m not sure what a hot take is, but I do have some takes as well.
MATT: So, San Diego Magazine, they published their September issue. On the front, it says, “Hidden San Diego.” It’s all these secret things to do and see and I kind of want to see where some of these things are, but I’ll have to buy the issue, I guess. Or maybe I won’t. I don’t know if I’m going to protest what they’ve done. But, apparently, what is this? A blog, I think, is what it is. I should probably know this.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s a blog. Or it’s a website.
MATT: I guess I didn’t go to the website which I probably should have.
NASIR: Yeah, you probably should have.
MATT: So, there’s a woman, they called her a blogger so I figured she just had a website/blog, but it’s also called Hidden San Diego. So, now, this issue came out and she is very upset because she’s claiming that the magazine essentially stole her idea. She’s been doing this for four years, according to her. Now, she’s basically had her idea stolen and all her hard work. So, this happens, she posts something on Facebook. There’s actually a pretty big backlash against San Diego Magazine. I guess she had a lot of people on her side. And then, San Diego Magazine posts a response about a story they allegedly stole which, I guess, it’s not even really a story they stole. I think it’s more of an idea. We’ll have to link the response so people can read it. But the response is pretty poor in my opinion. It’s really belittling the blogger and this is where I’m torn, I guess. The facts are, I think, in favor of San Diego Magazine, if everything is true, based on what they say; they just did it in the worst, you know, one of the worst ways possible. Like, they could have handled this with a lot more tact and come off a lot more professionally.
NASIR: I’m looking at hiddensandiego.net. So, it looks like this is a well-developed site. I mean, there’s a lot of content. It’s not necessarily the best designed site, but it seems like a lot of people do read it and, let’s see, it is a blog, I guess, and it looks like the last post was on October 26, 2014 – a couple of months still. But she’s already talking about how San Diego Magazine, they actually filed a trademark for “Hidden San Diego.” That’s pretty much the issue.
MATT: That was probably, like, the most important part of it. Sorry.
NASIR: That’s okay.
MATT: I thought I’d mentioned that for some reason.
NASIR: This is a trademark dispute. And so, what San Diego Magazine did, I think, as far as we know, all they did right now was file a trademark and they have one issue about hidden spots in San Diego. The response, like Matt said, it’s not really well-written which is unusual for a publication of this kind and it does seem kind of petty. But, nonetheless, they do make some arguments that are pretty compelling from a legal perspective. First of all, this blogger did not trademark the term “Hidden San Diego” as far as I know, as far as from what she’s published online. Second is “Secret San Diego,” first of all, it’s not necessarily original an idea. I mean,
Nasir and Matt start the week by discussing the blatant forms of sexual harassment alleged at Zillow. They also answer "My office is planning on doing a weight loss competition at the beginning of the year. Is this legal?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions, where you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Nice. Perfect intro, that time.
MATT: Perfect intro. Short intro, I guess.
NASIR: Nice and succinct.
MATT: I guess we’ll just get into the story. this is a pretty interesting one. We’ve talked about similar things in the past in terms of – oh, I guess we talk about employee – bad employee or employee practices all the time. This one’s a little bit different.
NASIR: Sure.
MATT: We’ve got to the point where we have to find very, very unique ones because we’ve basically talked about everything else.
NASIR: That’s true, but what’s interesting is that, for those that have been listening since for about a year, you can already tell what the biggest issues that small, medium, and large businesses go through just by the recurrence of the topics, and this is, I think, a very common issue.
MATT: I don’t know how big Zillow is, but it’s…
NASIR: It’s a good size.
MATT: Yeah, it’s a pretty good size. But, apparently, Zillow is a very – how did they describe it? – “adult frat house” culture. So, there’s a lot of men that work there and not as many females. Apparently, I guess the men just think they can do whatever they want. We’ll link this article because you have to see, I guess, read the text messages. I’m not going to read the text messages now of what was said, like, back and forth.
NASIR: You’ve got to give some kind of indication of what it is – maybe paraphrase or something.
MATT: Basically, I think this is the female asking, “Wanna go join a gym and work out tonight?” and then, the response is basically asking for sexual favors.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, like, very non sequitur at the least, right? And, of course, the response is, “Not really.” But it seems like a situation where the guy has just gotten way too comfortable. It’s definitely not a work environment – I guess that’s the point to really nail down here. The things that these guys were saying to this – at least this woman here, and I’m sure the other ones that work there – were just way past the line of anything that should be said in a work environment or probably even just a normal environment in general.
NASIR: Yeah, I’m just reading these texts and we read one text that it’s just obviously, like, not appropriate. But then, these are texts between also the possible victim of harassment and another co-worker, and they’re just kind of talking back and forth, you know, “I feel bad though because he’s already ready to have a kid and I don’t want to basically tell him,” and then the other person’s like, “Oh, he won’t get fired. I would just tell Eddie about it to watch this video,” and then it just shows you how they are reluctant to even report about it and, even if they do, they know nothing is going to happen anyway so what’s the point? And this is what I think the complaint is talking about – this kind of hostile work environment.
MATT: Yeah, and we’ve talked about culture before and how important that is in the work environment. But, like, in this example, there was some guy, one of the guys there watching non-appropriate video at work and the female was trying to figure out whether she should tell someone. I think the supervisor actually even knew about it and saying, “Well, he’s about to have a kid so he’s having a pretty tough time right now.” It’s like, well, that’s a whole different issue going on that this guy’s about to be a dad and is watching this video, but whatever. It seems like the supervisor knew what was going on and I think they’ve even ...
Nasir and Matt cap off the week by discussing rebranding strategies (pizza related). They then answer the question, "At what point can I file an intent to use trademark?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we are talking about the best topic in the entire world.
MATT: Yeah, pizza.
NASIR: Pizza. If this is your first time joining us on the podcast, this is a popular topic of ours.
MATT: Yeah, it’s definitely tapered off some. I feel like, the beginning, it was every other episode.
NASIR: Yeah. I mean, well, the main issue started with the concept of whether sauce or crust is better, or what makes the pizza right, and you were in the crust camp and I was in the sauce camp.
MATT: I still am.
NASIR: And the reason it tapered down is it just became well-established that it was the sauce so it became a non-issue, right?
MATT: I wouldn’t go that far. My wife agrees with me and she loves marinara sauce more than pretty much anyone. So, she’s a very huge sauce person, but knows that crust is more important than the sauce.
NASIR: Actually, I spoke to my wife and she also agrees with me which is, I guess, not unusual. So, I guess it’s a tie. So, two versus two so far and that’s about as far as we’ve got.
MATT: So, we’re going to talk about the rebranding with Pizza Hut and, I guess, the legal aspects of rebranding. But I think we were just looking for a reason to talk about pizza again because it’s been a while and I’ve actually seen some commercials, they’re doing a whole new re-launch; new logo, of course, which isn’t too different than the old one, I guess. But there’s an old logo of a guy holding the words “Pizza” and “Hut.” That must have been, like, an original. It’s a pretty weird one.
NASIR: This new logo is just this flat design that has been pretty well-established in the last – I don’t know – I would say at least five years, even more. And they’re a little late to the game. I mean, flat design is, like, pretty well-established.
MATT: Well, I think it’s supposed to look like a pizza because it’s a circle.
NASIR: Yeah, it is round.
MATT: And then, like, the crust.
NASIR: It looks like the sauce actually.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Doesn’t it? No, I’m serious. It’s like red sauce.
MATT: Yeah, it’s either that or, like, the white lines, like, along the edge on the inside could be where the crust and sauce divide. I don’t know.
NASIR: I think it’s the sauce. I mean, that’s what they’re focusing on because it’s more important.
MATT: Well, we’ll see.
NASIR: Actually, look, they actually promoted; they’ve rebranded with a logo inspired by a swirl of pizza sauce.
MATT: Oh, okay. Well, I guess that’s why they’re doing their new pizzas as well as all the sauces that were, like, anything else had a regular marinara or spiraled around the pizza. The classic example, BBQ Chicken is barbecue sauce base but now it’s just nothing – just cheese and the toppings.
NASIR: And then, they put the sauce on top?
MATT: Yeah, swirled around.
NASIR: Wait. They do that where?
MATT: San Diego, I’ve seen it a bunch of times.
NASIR: Oh, really?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I’ve never seen that actually.
MATT: The spot that I lived when we first moved here and I lived right by had it and I’ve seen it at a bunch of locations. It’s very popular. I don’t know why and I’m trying to think, they might do the same thing in some places in New York.
NASIR: They were showing pictures of their pizzas with the spiral sauce, I thought that might be something that they can trademark. But it looks like other pizza places do that all the time.
MATT: Oh, yeah, they’re definitely not the first ones. Again, Pizza Hut is way, way behind the game in terms of coming up with something new.
The guys discuss the racial discrimination filing against the makeup company Sephora. They also answer, "Can I allow my employees to bring their dogs in the office?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com– that’s an email address and not a web address. So, send in your questions that way. It’s not a phone number either. If you’re calling that, you’re just so off, I don’t even know where to start with you.
MATT: Well, I think the—
NASIR: Wait. Wait, hold on. Did you just interrupt my intro?
MATT: Yeah, I did.
NASIR: I’m not done yet.
MATT: It wasn’t going anywhere.
NASIR: My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: Mine’s Matt Staub.
NASIR: And I was going to say, if they ended up at the web address, it would take them to the spot where they could still submit their question.
MATT: I don’t know.
NASIR: I think. Yeah, you’re probably right.
MATT: Well, didn’t we switch stuff around with the website?
NASIR: Yeah. That’s true. If you guys are going there, you’ll be very confused. I don’t know what they’re going to see yet so it’s still in the (00:01:01 unclear).
MATT: But the email still works.
NASIR: The email still works.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: Hopefully, for you guys, it’s pretty much the same. Just ignore what we just said.
MATT: I was just thinking out loud.
NASIR: We’re going to talk about your favorite topic today, right? Makeup law.
MATT: Makeup law, yeah. Well, I don’t know too much about it.
NASIR: Didn’t you study it in law school? No?
MATT: Was that cosmetology? I think that’s an actual major.
NASIR: In law?
MATT: No, in real life.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, you can get your cosmetology license.
MATT: The place next-door to here is, well, I guess that’s more hair.
NASIR: That Paul Mitchell school?
MATT: I always want to say Paul Walker but that’s the guy from Fast and Furious. Paul Mitchell School of Hair Design. I always think it’s make-up because all the people that go to the school are wearing so much make-up, it doesn’t make sense. They’re probably the people that we’re going to talk about in this story.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, I’ll just get into the story. So, Sephora – which is a make-up store because I’ve seen that…
NASIR: I know you know about it. Don’t act like you don’t.
MATT: I’m going after this recording. So, I guess they have some insider, some VIP-type memberships and they’ll run special deals for them. I think, in this one, it was 20 percent off all products – no limits for a five day period starting November 6. So, running this promotion and they started cutting off some people’s access or shutting down people’s accounts because they thought that they were just buying products in bulk which they call the “grey market.”
NASIR: Basically reselling, right?
MATT: Resell, yeah. I guess it’s not an illegal product so that’s why it’s not the “black market.” So, they thought these people were buying in bulk so they shut down their account because they said, “Hey, you can’t do that.” Problem is, at least the people that have filed this class action lawsuit say, that’s not the case and they all happen to be women of Chinese descent so they’re claiming racial discrimination.
NASIR: Racial discrimination and…
MATT: They probably aren’t claiming gender discrimination. I don’t know. They’re claiming the only criteria for cancelling accounts were looking at their names, seeing that they were Asian names or Chinese domain names like qq.com and 163.com which I’ve never even heard of those so I want to know that.
NASIR: First of all, this is strange to me because they put this no-limit on their discount or sale and then basically they are getting upset because people are buying too much of it, right? It doesn’t make sense to me. If they wanted a limit then just say “limit one per customer” or what everyone else does, right?
Nasir and Matt discuss the new laws that require fast food restaurants and other sellers to post calorie information. They then answer the question, "One of my employees is consistently late in the winter and always blames weather. Can I fire them for this?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: And recording in the same room for the first time ever.
MATT: Almost.
NASIR: Almost first time ever. Well, 'tis the season to start losing weight.
MATT: A time when people probably ate a lot the entire weekend. I know I did, but I always eat a lot so it's probably about the same.
NASIR: No, I feel like I've been just eating for days since I've been in San Diego, since Thursday.
MATT: Nonstop?
NASIR: Yeah, nonstop.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: So, fast food restaurants, vending machines, grocery stores which isn't that uncommon, coffee shops, pizza joints -- our personal favorite - are starting having to put calories up for all the items on their menu. So, a while ago, it got past where they had to put the information up. I remember going to places and seeing something on the wall like a big poster or little brochures.
MATT: Yeah, they had to have it available or something, right? Sometimes, they didn't have a poster or you had to ask for them, they'd give you some kind of brochure that they had printed out or something like that.
NASIR: Right, and I guess I should mention that it's the Food & Drug Administration that's enforcing this. When does it actually start going into effect?
MATT: Oh, that's a good question. I know these regulations are in response to some of the laws that were passed within the Affordable Care Act. It's kind of a mandatory thing here. But I don't know when it's actually supposed to go into place.
NASIR: Neither do I. So, as always, good research on our part. I think it will deter people a little bit from maybe getting some of the more high-calorie items on there even though it's fairly obviously which things have more calories and which things don't. It just has to be calories, correct?
MATT: Yeah, it says calorie information which is interesting because I think even most nutritionists would feel that that's still not enough information to make an educated decision.
NASIR: Right.
MATT: Actually, calories are important from what I've been told, but there's more to it than that.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, I hate those exercise machines that actually measure how many calories are being burnt because I feel like that's... How do they know?
MATT: Yeah. I guess, if you enter your height and weight and things like that, but even then it doesn't seem like it's accurate. I wouldn't assume anything there is correct. Well, you actually, you saw a movie last night. Was it on the popcorn that you had? Because they're going to have to start doing that, too.
NASIR: Yeah, we saw the new Hunger Games and we got one of those large popcorns and it was huge, of course. Too big for any one person or two people and, I think amongst about six or seven of us, there was free refills. We filled it up twice and were able to not even get through it all.
MATT: Multiple times I've seen you just get the things of free refills.
NASIR: Yes, that's true.
MATT: Like at that at football game when you got the giant soda.
NASIR: And then, they didn't give me the refill because I didn't have the receipt.
MATT: Yes, because you obviously brought your own cup that was specially there.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly.
MATT: I guess I should mention too that this does deal with restaurants that are 20 or more locations. So, a lot of independent places have it already so it's a requirement for these bigger chain restaurants, but not places such as Ben's Chili Bowl which is the example here.
The guys talk about Aereo's recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, even after it had won multiple lawsuits. They also answer the special Thanksgiving question, "Can I provide a free Thanksgiving meal to my employees?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. Uh, I messed up.
MATT: You didn’t mess up. That’s the name of the podcast.
NASIR: All right, welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
Happy Thanksgiving!
MATT: It’s a day early but…
I assume people are traveling the day this comes out so they’ll probably listen to it during their Thanksgiving meal.
NASIR: I figure.
MATT: I know I plan on taking my phone out and just pressing play and letting everyone listen to it.
NASIR: Oh, I’m getting one of those stereo components that I just plug it into at the dinner table, and I’ll turn it up really loud so no one can talk.
MATT: People are going to treat this like the Serial podcast which I don’t know if you’ve followed at all. Have you followed that?
NASIR: Cereal as in cereal that you eat or serial as in a series?
MATT: The latter. Have you not heard about that?
NASIR: No.
MATT: It’s the most popular podcast right now by far.
NASIR: I’ve never listened to a podcast in my life.
MATT: I haven’t listened to it, but I’ve just heard about it. I think it’s fourteen episodes and there’s a new episode each week and it’s an on-going story, like a crime-related story.
NASIR: And it’s very popular with only fourteen episodes?
MATT: I don’t think they’ve even had fourteen episodes yet. It’s a series and it’s once a week and it’s insanely popular. But I won’t expect you to know because you don’t keep abreast of the stories in the news.
NASIR: A turkey breast?
MATT: Yeah, like what I did there?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: That was intentional.
NASIR: I wasn’t sure if you that intentional or not so I just wanted to connect the dots for everyone.
MATT: Well, let’s talk about a good story for Thanksgiving – or right before Thanksgiving – about this bankruptcy.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s always a big topic around this time of year.
MATT: Especially when they had big rounds of layoffs a couple of weeks ago, right before Thanksgiving, which is what everyone wants. I think the worst time to lay someone off is between Thanksgiving and Christmas, probably.
NASIR: Oh, okay. So, then we’ll get rid of you after then.
MATT: Is it Aereo? I’m assuming I’m pronouncing that right.
NASIR: I don’t know. I know we’ve covered this in the past but I think it’s derived from the “aer” as in a-e-o – never mind.
MATT: We’ll just go with Aereo.
NASIR: I was trying to break it down to its Latin root but then I realized I don’t know Latin.
MATT: No problem. Well, we’ll go with Aereo.
NASIR: It’s an over-the-air streaming service so that’s why I was thinking, like, kind of like aeroplane.
MATT: Oh, okay. Yeah, I could see that. Well, it’s described as near-live TV so I think that’s also called “delayed” but that’s fine. So, they filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy which a reorganization in bankruptcy court and, let’s see, New York this week? Sometime very recently. Yeah, so I guess that this came after a big round of layoffs which is no surprise there. This is pretty interesting. I mean, Chapter 11, that’s going to be different than a straight up discharge where you’re basically shutting down shop. They’re making an effort to kind of reorganize, pay some of their debt off while still continuing to survive. I think they’ve kind of just missed it on the technology front and not evolved how they should have so I don’t know if they’re going to make it anyways. But, you know, at least they’re making an effort to, I suppose.
NASIR: Yeah, I mean, the reason they had to go through this bankruptcy is because of all these lawsuits. So, basically,
Nasir and Matt discuss the pregnancydiscrimination case against AutoZone that resulted in a $185 million verdict. They also answer, "Can I protect our trade secrets in a confidentiality agreement?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha and joining with me today is just me, actually. So, perfect.
MATT: Just you. All right, that’s fine. That’s less work I have to do.
NASIR: Oh, Matt’s here, too.
MATT: I’m Matt Staub. I’m here; ready to offer my input on stories and other things.
NASIR: Yeah. So, we do have to say goodbye to our audio producer. He’s gone on to bigger and better things. His name is Chris and he’s been replaced by another Matt – Matthew, I should say, right?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And I actually offered him to replace you as a co-host.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: He refused. It would have been perfect, but I told him he would have had to change his last name, too. He refused.
MATT: Yeah, it wouldn’t have worked because I would have had to be the one who did the editing and producing, and I can’t do that. I can barely even record correctly half the time.
NASIR: All right. So, thanks again everyone for joining us, and let’s get to our first story.
MATT: Well, we have a local story – well, local for me, not local for you.
NASIR: Not in Houston.
MATT: Well, there’s probably AutoZones out there, right?
NASIR: Uh, I haven’t seen one. I don’t know if there’s pregnant people out there either so I don’t know if either of these things apply to us.
MATT: No one has cars. No one has kids. So, yeah…
So, this was in San Diego but this is a pretty huge case in terms of at least the payout. It was a lawsuit of a former – I believe she was a former manager.
NASIR: Some kind of manager, yeah.
MATT: So, she was pregnant and she was later demoted from her position as manager and, of course, terminated because that’s why we’re talking about it. So, she sued for discrimination for her being pregnant and – guess what – she got a huge award here; $172,000 worth of compensatory damages – so that’s pretty good – and then an astounding $185 million in punitive damages. Punitive damages are only for penalizing, you know, basically someone for screwing up and that’s a pretty excessive penalty. I would think this has to be one of the biggest single payouts for one individual in terms of discrimination lawsuit.
NASIR: No, I think you’re right. I did look. I think it definitely has broken records. But the problem is it is a verdict so I don’t believe this is a judgment, and this’ll happen often where a jury will decide some kind of million-dollar payout but then judge will reduce it, and punitive damages are often done that way. There’s some constitutional issues with having extreme judgments like that that have already been addressed previously. So, we should expect that to go down.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Nonetheless, for a store, for AutoZone that has quite a number of stores – 4,000 stores – across the US, this is not a small issue.
MATT: Yeah, and I just don’t see how companies like this still continue to screw up. I mean…
NASIR: This is a huge screw-up. I mean, they have the vice-president of Western operations, so that’s probably close to the very, very top, right?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And him pulling the district manager aside, saying, “What are we running here? A boutique? Get rid of these women.”
MATT: I didn’t see that. Gosh.
NASIR: Yeah, from a plaintiff's employer attorney, you can’t get any better than that as far as proving your claim against gender discrimination. And, by the way, pregnancy disability discrimination as well.
MATT: The actual promotion and then demotion happened about ten years ago. She got pregnant in ’05, demoted in ’06, and then she filed a lawsuit while she was still working there in 2008.
Nasir and Matt close out the week by talking about the Starbucks' promotion that resulted in untendedbuy one get one free offers. The guys then answer, "Can I have one of my employees also be a contractor for special events?"
Here is the image of the coupon and the tweet exchange with Starbucks from@daveraleigh.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right.
Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha and I have switched up the intro. I messed up already but that's okay.
Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions, and my name is Nasir Pasha– oh, no – and you can send in your emails because, if you’re listening, you can send an email to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: There we go. That was actually a perfect intro, and I assume it’s a perfect intro because Chris did his magic and just cut everything up perfectly.
MATT: It is definitely in the top 121, that’s for sure.
NASIR: Hey, wait a minute, we’ve done 121 episodes.
MATT: Yeah, made the top.
So, we’ve got a couple of things today and they’re sort of related to each other. The first one we’re going to talk about is Starbucks. I don’t go to Starbucks because I don’t think it’s good coffee – unless it’s the only option – but I guess, when it flipped to November, everyone was saying, “Oh, red cup, it’s red cup time!” I was like, “I don’t even know what that means – red cups.” I guess they bring their holiday cups out once it hits November 1st.
But people get really excited for these holiday drinks. I mean, the pumpkin spice latte, that’s in October but that’s a massive following. That’s like a cult following and then there’s these holiday drinks that Starbucks rolls out. It used to just be like a peppermint one and maybe an eggnog, and now they have all these chestnut praline latte – that’s just over the top.
But anyways, they give these little cards out and it was a “buy one, get one free” deal, “buy one, get one free” beverage for holiday beverages, but it does not specify that it needs to be holiday beverages only. So, one man went and they denied him the “buy one, get one free” and so, let’s buck this whole thing, this is contract interpretation at its finest and that’s what this is.
NASIR: I didn’t see it but the fine print is pretty clear. It says, “Buy any handcraft beverage.” It does say on the top, it says, “Buy a holiday beverage,” whatever that may mean.
MATT: Right.
NASIR: Usually, the specific and general always – and this is basic contract law – the specific always supersedes the general. And so, a holiday beverage is kind of, “Okay, what exactly does that mean?” But, when it says, “Buy any handcrafted beverage and get one of equal or lesser value for free,” that seems pretty clear to me.
MATT: Yeah, but I mean, this is like classic, right? Because how many times have customers either rightfully or wrongfully taken advantage of certain fine print core mistakes, you know?
You know, people that are really into coupons know about this very well because they read the fine print pretty clearly – you know, whether it’s transferable, whether you can use more than one coupon, and the classic scenario with Michael Scott, right? The five golden tickets.
NASIR: The golden ticket promotion. Does it say limit one per customer? No.
So, this is very classic in that respect. But, you know, the local Starbucks didn’t handle it properly, but the corporate Starbucks was very right in saying that, “We will honor the beverage offer because that is what is ascribed in the fine print and we don’t want the argument over fine print to be the customer experience,” and you don’t want that.
The idea of the coupon is to bring people in and so forth. But then, if they get in there and they have disappointment, then what’s the point anyway? I mean, it kind of turns you off the company from itself.
MATT: Yeah,
The guys discuss the recent data breach at the US Postal Service that led to confidential employee information being compromised. They also answer the question, "What do I need to do to my guest room to make it a writeoff for my business?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in via email to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. You can also mail us your questions, but we’re not going to read that so don’t do that. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And so, we are on our mid-week episode here covering, once again, a data breach except a little bit different though, I think. It’s important, right?
MATT: Yeah, and a little backstory to this one. Did we talk about the Home Depot data breach?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I think we might have offhanded mentioned it. We talked about Target; I’d know for sure.
NASIR: Yeah, I don’t know if we featured it, but we definitely mentioned it, for sure.
MATT: So, the Home Depot data breach was pretty big and I’ve probably gone to Home Depot, like, thirty times in the last however many months just to buy all this stuff so I’ve been going to Home Depot. Basically, I’ve used my credit card at Home Depot a significant amount over this period where there was potential breach.
NASIR: Where do you go? The one on Mission Gorge or Sunrise?
MATT: Well, I’ve gone to a couple, yeah.
NASIR: Oh, multiple ones, wow.
MATT: Mission Valley area? I don’t know if that’s the right way to classify it. I think that’s what you’re talking about.
NASIR: Yeah, on Mission Gorge.
MATT: Fairmont and then I go to the Point Loma one sometimes.
NASIR: Yeah, Fairmont – Mission Gorge, Fairmont. Anyway, sorry; sorry to distract all the non San Diegans are very confused right now.
MATT: So, you know, I got a notification from the credit card I use saying, “Hey, we don’t know if there’s a breach…”
NASIR: I just liked how you said “Hey.” Sorry, I got distracted.
MATT: We can cut that out. My throat got a little bit stuck. So, they said, “Hey, we don’t know if there was a breach but, just in case, we’re going to send you a new credit card.” I was like, “All right. Well, that’s fine.” And then, a couple of weeks went by like nothing. I just kind of forgot about it and they sent me an email saying, “If you don’t activate your card in the next however many days, it’s going to be invalid.” I was like, “Well, that’s a problem because I never got a card.” So, I called in. This was on a Monday I think I called in – for the listeners, a week and a half ago. I explained the situation. She’s like, “Well, you would have received it.” I was like, “I didn’t receive it.” Blah blah blah. She’s like, “We’ll send you a new one.” I was like, “Okay. When I get the new one, when I activate it, will it invalidate my current one?” She’s like, “Oh, no, we already cancelled that.” So, they cancelled the one that was apparently mailed and the one I currently had. She’s like, “You’ll need to re-setup all your automatic payments.” I’m like, “Well, I don’t even have a card to set it up because you just cancelled both of them so that’s a problem, right?” Anyways, that day, I had to go to the post office. This is a long story to get to my point but I had to go to the post office and I took my old credit card out and I swiped it and I was like, “Oh, yeah, I forgot it doesn’t work,” and she kind of look confused and I was like, “Does it not work?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I explained the situation of what happened. This story again. She’s like, “Oh, actually, we just had a data breach.” I was like, “Oh, when?” She’s like, “Just now.” I was like, “What? That’s not good.”
NASIR: “Is it because I swiped my credit card? Did I do that?”
MATT: Yeah, I was like, “Well, that’s concerning, right? I don’t have any cash so I can’t pay with cash and I have to mail this out so I’ve just got to ...
Nasir and Matt start the week by discussing Ohio State University suing a t-shirt company for trademark infringement and unfair competition after t-shirts were sold with school names, logos, and slogans. They then answer, "Many years ago we bought up a bunch of trademarks for potential names for new product lines. Someone approached us to buy one we didn't use. Is it possible to sell the trademark?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. And my name is Nasir Pasha, and I am the host of Legally Sound Smart Business. And, joined with me as a co-host for the second time, I believe…
MATT: I guess that’s me – Matt Staub. I thought I was going to be a featured player this week, but that’s all right; co-host is fine.
NASIR: No, you are now a co-host. It’s the second episode that you’ve been a co-host.
MATT: Well, this is exciting.
NASIR: Not really, but second, yeah. So, it’s 117 episodes of you being a guest, and now you’re an official co-host.
MATT: Well, I don’t know who to thank. Glad to be here!
NASIR: Thank the people. Thank the people.
MATT: It would be interesting if you had a different co-host every single time.
NASIR: I know; I wish I did.
MATT: Ah, that kind of hurts.
NASIR: I didn’t mean any offense for you. I just, in general, think it would be a good idea to not have you on.
MATT: Fair enough. Well, speaking of not liking things, we’re going to talk about a place I don’t like to leave this off and that’s, as they like to call it, the Ohio State University.
NASIR: The Ohio State University.
MATT: Which you’re familiar with.
NASIR: Yeah, I almost went there for my undergrad.
MATT: Oh, you did?
NASIR: Okay, yeah.
MATT: I did not because I don’t like Ohio State but how close were you to Columbus?
NASIR: About an hour west.
MATT: Okay. So, yeah, I imagine everyone there is a huge Ohio State fan.
NASIR: Most definitely. But, for some reason, there are a lot of people from Michigan, too. So, it’s like, whenever you went to those big games at someone’s house, there’d be, like, a third of the people wearing yellow.
MATT: It’s actually “maize” is the color but it’s all right. We’ll let that slide.
NASIR: Maize?
MATT: Yeah, their color’s officially maize – some sort of navy blue and maize. But, yeah, that’s the color of their yellow. Anyways…
NASIR: That’s amazing. Hey!
MATT: All right, that’s good. So, we’re talking about Ohio State in a battle with an online t-shirt company. The title is pretty creative – “Ohio State tries to buck online t-shirt company.” They’re they Buckeyes.
NASIR: I got that.
MATT: I like a good Monday morning pun. So, I’m sure this happens with a lot of universities but this one’s a little bit different. It’s online so it’s not like it’s somewhere that’s on the campus or in Columbus necessarily, I guess. So, the company is Teespring Inc. and basically Ohio State says they’re using unlicensed versions of Ohio State’s trademarks, logos, buckeye leaves, pictures of Urban Meyer who is their football coach, the chant they have, and I guess this business is doing well. Another thing too is Ohio State’s definitely known for being one of the bigger following, huge stadium. They obviously make a ton of money so they probably make a significant amount of money on that as well so I can see why they’re a little bit upset.
NASIR: Yeah. It’s one of the biggest campuses, for sure. I mean, I’ve been there. It’s huge. It’s like its own city within Columbus.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Well, you’ve heard of Teespring, right? I mean, there’s these other companies out there, too. But, basically, it’s a t-shirt printing company where you literally upload your art then you can sell it to other people and then Teespring gets a percentage of it. And so, it’s a good way to raise money for non-profits.
The guys end the week by discussing a recent lawsuit in New York involving restaurants being sued by the music industry for playing music. They answer the question, "One of our former employees filed a frivulous lawsuit against us. Our attorney is reluctant tocountersue for malicious prosecution soshould I just forget about it?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And that’s it. Thank you for joining us, everyone. Don’t forget to leave some positive reviews on our iTunes and thank you. That’s all I have.
MATT: That’s all you have for today?
NASIR: Yeah, we’ll give everyone a break today; a lot of legal issues this week that they’ve had to deal with.
MATT: That’s good because you sprung this story on me the last minute so I don’t have the background information that you do.
NASIR: Oh, like I do?
MATT: Well, you knew about the story, but I’m glad we’re talking about this because it’s something I have never thought about before. Now that I’ve seen the idea, I’m pretty intrigued. So, this is in New York – at least, this specific lawsuit – but I’m sure it applies to a bunch of places. So, restaurants in New York are being sued by the music industry for playing music in their restaurants which, you know, I guess that, when you think about it, is there a valid license to the music that’s being played? How exactly is it set up? Or maybe some restaurants are just having their owners records their own music and that’s what’s being played over the speakers? But it’s a really, really interesting idea that, like I said, I’ve never really thought about it.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Lucky for me, you’ve looked into music licensing for restaurants.
NASIR: I’ve dealt with this before. It’s actually, you know, we’ll pull out a story that we’ll link to of a restaurant – where were they? I want to say New Jersey but it’s probably off.
MATT: I thought it was in New York.
NASIR: New York? Anyway, so restaurants are being sued by music industry for up to $150,000 for playing music, and this is a big headline as if it’s a big deal, but the reality is this happens all the time, and the reason is because, just like Matt’s saying, it’s not a common issue that you would come across, but those in the music industry know it very well. There are these what are called “performing rights organizations” and there’s a few of them. There’s BMI, there’s ASCAP, there’s SESAC, and each one of them have a different focus and so forth. They’re not really important to all this but the point is that they govern not only stuff that’s playing on TV but also radio. By the way, there’s also – related to this – sports events too and I’ve dealt with that as well. When you’re watching the NFL, right? There’s always that warning that this is not supposed to be rebroadcasted, et cetera, and then you’re sitting in your living room thinking, “Wait a minute, am I breaking the law right now by watching this?” But the reality is that, when you have a restaurant, for example, depending upon whether or not the general public can listen to the music or whether or not how the size of your TV and all these very specific specifications will depend upon whether or not you have to pay a licensing fee to the appropriate organization for use of that. And so, oftentimes, like, for radio, if you have more than, like, six loud speakers, or more than four loud speakers in any one room, or joining outdoor space, there’s always those technical details, but the point is that, if you want to play the radio or even, like, people say Pandora or Spotify, you can’t just play that and say, “Okay. Now, this is my media entertainment for my restaurant.” You actually have to get that license to actually play that. And so, oftentimes,
The guys talk about the email Nasir received about AmmoToGo.com informing customers of a security breach. They then answer the question, "Every quarter we have to take care of some corporate stuff and many of my employees are required to work on the weekend. Some of the employees have voiced complaints but can I legally do this?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha and I’m your host for today.
MATT: My name’s Matt Staub. I’m also a host for the show, I suppose, today.
NASIR: For your wonderful, quick 10, 15-minute episode. Actually, the topic that we’re covering today is pretty interesting because I think this is our first, like, we’re making up our own news story I guess because I received an email from a vendor. What was it? It was ammotogo.com.
MATT: You got the email but, actually, I’ll ask my question later that I have just for your specific to this email. So, you got this email. I feel weird telling this story since you’re the one that received it, but I’ll go through it. I’ll go through it then you tell me what’s right, what’s accurate.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, you got this email, I guess it was a security breach – I don’t know if you want to call it a security breach – but it looks like some of their customer information was sold to a third party and this is Ammo To Go. Their customer email list was sold and they were able to kind of verify that through a couple of different avenues. They basically sent the email out to, I think, only the people they believe were affected – I think they mention that in there – and they said it looks like it might have possibly been sold to Target Sports USA which I assume is related to Target the store but maybe I’m making an inaccurate assumption.
NASIR: No, I don’t think so. I think it’s target like ammo and guns, but go on.
MATT: Oh, yeah, that makes sense. All right. Well, scratch that! So, yeah, they said no credit card information was on there and, interestingly, they said it at about the same time they had re-launched their website and changed their security and this happened conveniently around the same time which - I don’t know – if they’re going to say that, I’ll take them for their word, but who knows if that’s accurate or not. But, yeah, they said no credit card information was taken and, as a result of their new security, they put in place that, you know, everything’s fine, they don’t expect anything in the future. They suggest changing your password if you haven’t already, especially if you use the same password on multiple websites. Like I said, they said they only sent this to the people that they believe were affected which I thought was interesting. I don’t know how you could, I guess if it happened, people that signed up afterwards? I don’t know how they’re drawing that line.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s true. But what’s interesting is that one of the ways that they’ve confirmed all this is that this other Target Sports USA, they actually purchased, or this is what they believe, they purchased an email list from who they thought was Ammo To Go and, from their perspective, that didn’t happen. And so, then they started looking a little bit deeper and found out, “Okay. Wait a minute. Some of our data’s been breached and basically all the emails have been taken and now is being sold on the open market to companies like these.” So, lots of issues here but I think one of the coolest things is that – and we’ll post a screenshot of the actual email because I think – this is a very good representation as to a great way of dealing with a problem like this. I mean, a small business that is, you know, being hacked and we’ve talked about it in the past and I’m sure security experts will agree that there’s only so much things that you can do to prevent a security breach...
Nasir and Matt talk about the COO who left Lyft for Uber and is now being accused of breaching confidentiality agreements and soliciting employees. They then answer, "What is some good advice to avoid copyright infringement issues?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business legal news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to our email address which is the following… Go ahead, Matt. What is it? I guarantee you; Matt doesn’t know what it is.
MATT: No, I’ve got it – ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
NASIR: Okay. You’ve got it. Well, my name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub, and I don’t think I actually even have access to that email now that I think about it. You’re the one that looks at all the who-knows-what emails we’re getting other than you.
NASIR: Oh, yeah. I try to keep that to myself for my guilty pleasure reading before I go to bed.
MATT: Extreme screening process that you do for everything we do. What do we have? We’ve got something I know you’re going to like today.
NASIR: Is it about pizza?
MATT: No, it’s not about pizza, but it is about one of the topics that are highly talked about on this podcast. We’re combining a few things here. We’ve got a dispute between Lyft and Uber.
NASIR: Oh, nice.
MATT: I know you are anti-Uber and I think this is actually going to probably make it worse for you because…
NASIR: Worse or better? I think it’s going to be more support. Like, people are going to join my cause after today.
MATT: Yeah, I’m saying you’re going to dislike Uber more after this.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I need to get this guy’s name too because he had a pretty awesome name. I want to make sure I find it before I get into the story.
NASIR: Travis VanderZanden.
MATT: Yeah, great name. So, he’s the former COO of Lyft and now Lyft is suing him for a breach of confidentiality. There’s a confidentiality agreement and then a breach of fiduciary duty. Basically, he was a COO of Lyft so pretty high up exec and he’s being accused of essentially taking all this confidential information from Lyft before he then went to Uber. So, a few things that he’s done here that are obviously still accusations so I don’t want to say he’s done it or not but downloading non-public documents to his personal Dropbox before leaving so we’re talking confidential strategic product plans, financial info, forecasts, growth data. I guess they had a meeting set-up right before he was about to leave on – I believe – a Friday about his resignation. He cancelled a meeting last minute and then went home and backed up a number of emails and confidential documents to his home computer and cell phone.
NASIR: Oh, man.
MATT: Synched personal Dropbox to the company for up to three months out. So, those are a few of the things. I’m sure there’s more than that but, obviously, it’s accusations. But the problem with this is Lyft hired someone to go back and look at what happened and that’s how they know this happened because they can look at his computer and see that he pulled this information from his work computer and work phone and synched that to his personal accounts. Not looking good for old VanderZanden.
NASIR: Gosh! There’s so many issues here. Well, one thing I was looking at the complaint – this was filed in California – they have only named him as the defendant so Uber has yet to be included in that and I say “yet” because either it’s a strategic decision not to include them or they don’t have the prerequisite fact allegations to do so. I would even imagine that, once this is filed now, they can start doing discovery and I don’t know what his position is at Uber. I mean, he was COO of Lyft and now he’s going to Uber. How does that confidential information not fall in the hands of Uber to not be included in the lawsuit? Maybe they wanted the discovery to see if that’s actually the case and see what culpability, if any,
The guys end the week by talking about Chevrolet awarding the World Series MVP a possibly defective truck. Nasir and Matt also answer a pizza related question about Yelp!
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is our Friday episode – always a very exciting topic – somehow we get to talk about sports.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Which is my least favorite topic. And then, after all that baseball.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And, apparently, there’s a World Series going on which – I don’t know – will that be over by now? No, it is over, right? San Francisco won?
MATT: Well, the story we’re talking about is about the guy who won the MVP for the World Series so I would wager to say it’s probably over.
NASIR: Okay. So, that’s done.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Who won? San Francisco, right?
MATT: San Francisco won, yes.
NASIR: Nice.
MATT: I’m not surprised. I know you don’t follow baseball so I won’t hold it against you.
NASIR: I don’t think most people follow baseball but okay.
MATT: Yeah, I do. So, basically, I’ll explain this to the listeners – and to you, too – so you understand how this works.
NASIR: Okay. Tell me.
MATT: In the World Series, two teams play, one team wins, and when the World Series is over…
NASIR: Two teams play and one team… Okay, I got that part.
MATT: They select a World Series MVP so it’s basically the player that performed the best. I will assume it’s always been from the team that’s won. I know, in the NBA one time, the winner actually was from the team that lost somehow.
NASIR: Whoa. And is it MVP of that game or of the league?
MATT: Just the series.
NASIR: Okay. Sorry.
MATT: Just for that seven games. So, the selection was pretty easy this year because one pitcher for the Giants basically won three of the four games himself which is unheard of. So, he won and, recently, they started giving out cars – maybe ten years ago, maybe less. But, this year, Chevrolet was the sponsor and they gave out this 2015 Chevy Colorado which, yeah, great. I mean, actually, the guy who won loves trucks. He loves hunting. It’s going to be good for him. The only problem is this truck just had a recall on it for airbag concerns. So, basically, they gave this guy who just had a great performance this truck with potential liability issues and I assume that they got those fixed. But it got me thinking about, you know, if a business gives away something free – like, let’s say you have a promotion as a business and you give away a free prize, like when we gave away that… what did we give? An iPad Mini?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: What if that would have, like, exploded when the winner used it?
NASIR: Like, what if the recall was that, “Whoops! Our iPad Minis are actually bombs. Careful with that.” We actually give away a bomb to somebody, that’d be horrible.
MATT: I was trying to think of something. Obviously, a truck is going to be a lot more dangerous than an iPad, but it’s a consideration. I don’t know. From a legal perspective, this seems pretty questionable and, just one little tangent on this, I don’t know if you’ve seen the guy who actually presented the award. I feel bad for him because he was obviously, like, very nervous and he was reading off of like a paper of paper he had and he’s like, “This truck has really cool technology and stuff.” That’s what he said.
NASIR: Why was he so nervous?
MATT: This is less than 24 hours. Chevrolet is already using that slogan in their commercials. I saw a Chevy commercial last night and it’s like, “We’ve got cool technology and stuff.” From a PR perspective, they nailed it.
NASIR: You don’t think it was planned? Oh, obviously, it was probably not planned, but they were just good to react, huh?
MATT: If it was planned,
The guys talk about the nationwide ban of Google Glass in movie theaters. The later answer the question, "Some of my employees travel to our different offices during the week. Normally this wouldn't be a big issue but some of our offices are in different states. What should I be concerned with?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: You know, I’m wondering if we should slow down our pace, like, as far as how we talk because, you know, if you listen to NPR, they talk very slowly and are very methodical on everything that they say that it makes you want to fall asleep.
MATT: Ah. Well, for me, in my opinion, I like fast talking better. I talk a little bit in general, but I listen to a good amount of podcasts. I speed it up sometimes – maybe give it a 1.5 speed or maybe even a 2.0 times if they talk… some people talk really, really slow and so you can actually double the speed.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: And then, it sounds like they’re actually talking normal.
NASIR: It sounds normal?
MATT: Oh, really? Yeah, I think the NPR podcast are a 2.0-speeder, as you would say. Maybe our podcast, at most, 1.25 – what would you say? 1.25er?
NASIR: Yeah, I don’t know. There’s other podcast apps that allow you to go, I guess there’s a newer one – I don’t know how new it is now but it’s pretty cool. I don’t know how it does it. You can just download this podcast – or whichever one – and, at any breaks in-between talking – so, like, right now, when I pick up again, it would automatically cut that out of the podcast. Like, I guess, just any dead time, even if it’s a fraction of a second. It just automatically cuts it out so it’s just continuous talking, nonstop, which I don’t know how it does that, but it’s kind of cool.
MATT: That’s strange.
NASIR: Can you do the break example again? I didn’t get it.
MATT: I thought it was a good example.
NASIR: It was a good example. It was just funny. All right. Let’s get to our motion picture article today.
MATT: Yeah, so the MPAA and NATO – but not the NATO, not the one you’re thinking of.
NASIR: Not the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
MATT: Yeah, so the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) I guess have gone on – in the US, obviously – a nationwide ban of Google Glass in movie theatres. I think there have been some banning throughout the country here and there, but this is just a blanket ban that people can no longer wear that in movie theatres. I think from the legal perspective, it’s a little bit interesting because we don’t like to talk about – well, I don’t like to talk about constitutional rights on this podcast or I guess in general at all but…
NASIR: Yeah, you’re anti-constitution and freedom of speech and freedoms in general so that’s why you tend to not talk about these things.
MATT: That constitution is an overrated document, let me tell you.
NASIR: Overrated, overreaching, it should be banned. You like the more confederate style of governance.
MATT: Did you see – this was a long time ago – the Simpsons episode where they’re going through the museum and Homer is eating something and he picks up the constitution to, like, use as a napkin.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: And they come up, they’re like, “Oh.” Lisa’s like, “Dad! That’s the Constitution!” and then the security guards come up and they’re like, “Oh, you just wiped out the part about cruel and unusual punishment.” Like the Constitution could just be there for someone to pick up without any sort of protection. I mean, what do you think about this? I mean, I understand the reasoning – because it’s illegal to bring recording devices into movie theatres for pirating reasons. I mean, I guess that’s a whole other legal aspect,
Nasir and Matt start the week by discussing Lindsay Lohanstealing an app from a previous business venture. They then answer, "Should I take any Ebola precautions with my employees?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: And, here we are, bringing you another episode of Legally Sound Smart Business #100 – 100th episode.
MATT: I think we’re a little bit past that.
NASIR: Oh. 100?
MATT: Uh, what is this?
NASIR: 100-something episode.
MATT: 113.
NASIR: Oh, 113. I got excited for a second. I thought we were at 100.
MATT: Yeah. Well, I guess we can count backwards. Maybe if we subtract 13 episodes from now. We’ll just go in reverse and get back down to zero.
NASIR: That would be so confusing.
MATT: Yeah. Ah. Well, speaking of confusing, we’re going to talk about the life of Linsday Lohan.
NASIR: I was wondering where you were going with that.
MATT: I never have any planned lead-ins, but I guess that one kind of made sense, but – not surprisingly – she’s in the news again for something bad. This time, she’s getting alleged of stealing a business idea. I guess she had a joint venture. Her and I believe her brother was involved too and then a friend of her brothers were in this joint venture to develop this shopping app.
NASIR: I think fashion app, if there’s a difference.
MATT: Fashion app?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Revolutionized user shopping experiences. So, whatever that means but anyways. So, they had the idea. I assume Lindsay Lohan was only involved for name purposes only because I don’t know why you would choose her as any sort of business partner. But, basically, they had this deal or this joint venture with her brother’s friend and I guess, eventually, she just kind of stole his idea and ran off with it. And now, he has just filed in Manhattan Supreme Court for $60 million for her theft of his business idea. So, yeah, Lindsay Lohan.
NASIR: That’s a good way to put it. Well, they also alleged that she signed a couple of contracts, one including a confidentiality and non-compete. She agreed to somehow be a spokesperson of some sort to this thing. And so, the app that they were working on uses some kind of image recognition technology that allows users to basically identify clothing or accessories in photographs or social media feeds which I swear sounds very familiar to – what’s that show? I don’t know. My wife loves that show. I forget what it’s called – The Big Bang Theory. That girl in there came up with an app idea where you take a picture of shoes and it will automatically tell you where it’s from or something. It kind of reminds me of that.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Not to get too distracted with that. This other app which is – what’s the name? Vigme?
MATT: Hers is V-I-G-M-E. I don’t know how you would pronounce it.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: I don’t know what that even means either.
NASIR: Yeah. So, of course, they were responding that the two apps aren’t clones and that the suit’s meritless, of course, and that’s their defense. But I think the focus is going to be on these actual written contracts because there’s so many app clones of different games and so forth of each other and a lot of times – we’ve talked about this in the past – from an intellectual property perspective, the only thing that you can really rely on is trademark and copyright, and trademark in the sense that it may have some likelihood of confusion of affiliation and then copyright if you’re actually copying images and so forth. But, in the business process and so forth, the only way to protect that is through patent protection and, oftentimes, with apps, because these come out so quickly, you don’t have that kind of protection.
MATT: Yeah, and that’s what I was going to say. I mean,
The guys end the week by talking about short-term leases for Halloween costume shops. They then answer the question, "We are planning a Halloween costume contest but I was concerned about liability. Is there anything I should prohibit or any rules I should put into place?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast – our very scary podcast – where we cover scary business news and also answer some of your scary business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com/scary.
MATT: The Halloween Episode. It’s Halloween today.
NASIR: Oh, it’s Halloween?
MATT: I’m dressed up. You’re dressed up.
NASIR: You’re still sporting the 5 o’clock shadow which is cool.
MATT: Well, you made a big deal of the beard last week when we recorded and, after we got done, I instantly went and shaved because I hated it. Like, immediately afterwards, because I was like, well, I think you said it at every episode.
NASIR: Well, very good. Well, we get to talk about some actual real Halloween-related legal issues today which is fun.
MATT: Yeah, we’ll get to the question later. I think that one’s a pretty obvious one. I think it’s a question that every employer probably thinks about. But the story we have that’s Halloween-based, it’s something I’ve always wondered, or at least I’ve always thought about, because you’ll see these pop up and, you know, in the last few years, it’s gotten even more. It used to be maybe one, maybe two months a year. Now, it seems like it’s almost, like, four months that these businesses will be around. I’m talking about, like, the little pop-up shops, the Halloween costume stores. But, yeah, it’s these short-term leases that these businesses are going to enter into because, obviously, you’re not going to have a Halloween store that’s open year-round because I think, once November 1st hits, you’re probably not going to make many sales. So, these businesses are signing up for these short-term leases and I don’t know if there’s any specifics on how long. I would say anywhere from two to four months, probably?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Maybe four might be generous.
NASIR: Yeah, four months might be generous. I mean, I definitely saw them in September so at least 60 days or so.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: What’s interesting though, you know, pop-up leases – this is what they call them, “pop-up leases” – very familiar with this Halloween industry. But, you know, you also have other seasonal stuff and it’s great for retailers, especially, like, after the commercial leasing spaces just all opened up after 2008. This was great for landlords because it’s much better to have something there than this empty space that makes your shopping center look kind of dreary. So, it’s a great compromise in that respect. Dreary, yeah, get it.
MATT: I thought you did that intentionally.
NASIR: I didn’t.
MATT: Obviously, the model for landlords is to lock a business in long-term to an agreement, not have to worry about anything, but it’s a nice alternative if you do have that vacant space and you need someone to fill it for a few months. I mean, this is the way to go. There’s going to be some costs involved in dealing with them and getting them in and out of the space, but it’s better than just eating the rent for however many months.
NASIR: Yeah, and one of the things though that I’ve seen when we’ve done any kind of short-term leases – I haven’t done any Halloween-related pop-ups – but I think anything less than a year, right? I think one of the things that is – I don’t know if the word is “underestimated” – I should say “overlooked” is that, even though it’s a short lease, you still kind of have to approach it as if it’s any other lease in the sense that everything from how you handle utilities to additional rent to whether or not, especially in this case, if you’re only going to be there for two months, what about maintenance during that period?
Nasir and Matt talk about Facebook's lawsuit against DLA Piper and other law firms accused of furthering a fraudulent lawsuit. The guys also answer, "Can I ban e-cigarettes in the workplace?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And don’t forget, you can also send in your questions to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness and dotcom is also necessary.
MATT: And, sometimes, I put the reflection in different parts of my name. So, I went up towards the end of it for some reason today.
NASIR: I didn’t even notice.
MATT: Stay tuned for what’s going to happen on Friday. Who knows?
NASIR: All right. So, we get to talk about some other law firms here and some other attorneys.
MATT: Yeah, you love this type of story because you love every time that bad things happen to lawyers.
NASIR: That is definitely partly true, I think, but – I don’t know – I think I’m going to be defending them in this case so go ahead.
MATT: Yeah. So, we see Facebook get sued or threatened to get sued all the time. This is the opposite. I guess it’s the exact opposite because it’s Facebook’s suing DLA Piper and other firms and attorneys. This was just filed this week, right? Yeah or I guess last week. It’s a very fresh lawsuit.
NASIR: Fresh off the press, and DLA Piper – everyone should know – is a very large law firm, by the way.
MATT: Well, DLA Piper, they’ve been in the news a lot the last year, too. They’ve kind of been dropping, shutting down offices, laying off a lot of mid-level attorneys.
NASIR: That’s probably true. I mean, a lot of these big firms – since 2008 – have gone through massive downsizing and then upsizing and then downsizing again so that wouldn’t be surprising. But I know they were in the news quite a bit when this whole Facebook lawsuit came up because this guy, Paul Ceglia, he claimed that he owned a majority interest of Facebook.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And was able to secure representation from DLA Piper and three other law firms, or I think eventually other law firms and other attorneys, but long story short is that this guy was a complete fraud, apparently – which is not too surprising, I suppose.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: So, then these guys at Facebook – after everything was said and done – were obviously not too happy about the lawsuits and, this last week, they turned it around and sued these attorneys for basically representing this Paul Ceglia because they basically conspired with the fraud that he was trying to extort money out of Facebook.
MATT: Yeah, what they’re saying is, you know, once information was discovered and that’s a certain point that they were acting in that conspiracy of the fraud that this guy was trying to impose against Facebook. So, once they found out about it, then they’re part of the deal, too. I mean, I kind of like Facebook going after these firms because, if they knew about it and they were just furthering the fraudulent actions of this guy, then why not? They should have to be responsible for their actions.
NASIR: Yeah, you don’t often hear about attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits being sued against, especially in such a publicized manner – in this case, a very well-known national law firm – but I haven’t read the complaint and I wish – in fact, I could read it right here. Let’s just pause here for a half-hour and let me read this.
MATT: You can do a live reading.
NASIR: Okay. I’ll just start reading here.
MATT: Start from the caption.
NASIR: It’s still loading. Otherwise, I would have. I’m going to bring up the lawsuit here because, okay, it’s Facebook Inc. and Mark Elliot Zuckerberg.
MATT: Who is that?
NASIR: That’s the CEO of Facebook. The reason I’m looking this up is I want to understand the causes of action. Okay. So, it’s basically for filing a frivolous lawsuit, et cetera. And so, in this case, the lawyers,
Nasir and Matt discuss the legal fallout froma company scamming consumers with work from home opportunities. They then answer, "We sent some of our employees to a conference and one of them lost their laptop. Are we responsible for buying them a new one?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. By the way, last week, I don’t know if you knew, I forgot to say “dotcom” and so I’m sure, like, all these people sent these emails to “ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness” and it didn’t go anywhere so I apologize.
MATT: Well, that’s the most likely result of what happened – people just couldn’t figure it out. I know, when I don’t hear dotcom after something, it sends me in a tailspin.
NASIR: I agree, and don’t forget to add “wwwdot” too to that email address. I always forget to say that.
MATT: Is that…?
NASIR: Actually, don’t do that. I wonder if that would work. I don’t think so.
MATT: I don’t know.
NASIR: If you send it to ask@www.legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. I don’t know. Let’s try it We won’t be able to know if it worked.
MATT: This is what people want to listen to on a Monday morning.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Hopefully they’re listening to this later in the day.
NASIR: Even though this comes out on Monday morning, I don’t think most people are listening to it on Monday morning.
MATT: Yeah, that’s true.
NASIR: Maybe, like, 10 percent, I suppose.
MATT: Probably even lower than that.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, if I’m watching it, I’m at least 10 percent of the 10 people that are listening. No, I’m just joking.
MATT: We never said who we were. Should we just leave it this way?
NASIR: Oh, I don’t know.
MATT: Keep it a mystery. We get introduced during the song so I think we’re okay. Let’s just keep it this way. I like it so people don’t know who’s who.
NASIR: Yeah, I feel like the listeners went crazy there. They’re not sure who we are and – I don’t know – I guess we should go forward.
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: Actually, no, my name’s Nasir Pasha.
MATT: I guess I’ll also introduce myself as Matt Staub. The cat’s out of the bag now. Okay. Well, we have a pretty cool story to talk about today, I think. I’m sure people are familiar with this. This is a Michael Scott special right here. I think he definitely would have been pulled into this at some point.
NASIR: Definitely.
MATT: We’re talking about this company. This is one company in particular but I know there‘s a bunch of different companies out there that have or are still doing this. It’s one of those scam companies where, basically, it cons people into paying money. I kind of view it as just like a pyramid scheme almost, right? If you get people to pay money and then, you know, well, I guess I don’t know. I don’t know how those people then make money. Anyways, this company cons people into paying X amount of dollars to get this package to start off whatever they’re going to end up doing and then it has all these upsells, blah blah blah. Basically, there was just a lawsuit or an order that was decided and this company has to pay $25M to consumers who made no money through whatever this service is, and just to get to the specifics, I guess they had about 110,000 people who signed up for this.
NASIR: Wow.
MATT: More than 99.8 percent of them didn’t make a single penny. So, not good numbers overall. I was trying to figure out actually how they ended up making money. So, they get people to pay to get the startup package, the quick sell program, and then there’s all these upsells on how to, if you really want to make money, we’re going to sell you this $2,300 extra add-on. But I don’t even know how they… I mean, some people obviously made money off of this.
NASIR: I don’t know what the software actually did. It seems this quick sell program. However,
Nasir and Matt close out the week by discussing the validity of the noncompete agreements Jimmy John's has employees sign. They then answer the question, "I own a bunch of restaurants and we are considering expansion. Is there anything from a legal standpoint that I should be considering that's different from what I have now?"
Vote: Is Jimmy John's Overrated?
[yop_poll id="1"]
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business legal news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Welcome to the program! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matt Staub’s still sporting the beard even though I’m looking at him right now and his video is frozen so I can’t tell if he just shaved it between the lag.
MATT: I intentionally froze it. This is Episode 109 and we had Episode 107 this week. So, a week of two shows with prime numbers as the episode; this is a good Friday fact for people.
NASIR: Yeah. Actually, that’s something that everyone’s writing down right now and really cares about. One thing I like about our show is that we really talk about the issues, you know, that people are really concerned about.
MATT: Prime numbers, they’re good ones. Okay. Well, we’re actually going to talk about a topic today that I like. I think there actually is one out here in California because I looked it up before but it’s not necessarily that close. The restaurant, Jimmy John’s…
NASIR: Wait. Wait. Wait.
MATT: So, if I you’re from…
NASIR: Hold on. You like Jimmy John’s?
MATT: Oh, yeah! You don’t?
NASIR: What?
MATT: How are you from the Midwest?
NASIR: No, no, I’ve been there many times, but I think it’s one of the most overrated places.
MATT: Overrated?
NASIR: Mostly by you.
MATT: I might quit the podcast.
NASIR: I threw you off, didn’t I? Okay. Sorry, go ahead. Jimmy John’s… Go ahead.
MATT: So, Jimmy John’s, for those of you who don’t know, it’s a sandwich place. I think they have roughly 2,000 locations. I don’t know exactly. You know, their kind of thing are sandwiches that are really quick and they’re also good in my opinion. But, you know, there’s nothing that’s really that unique about them, I guess.
NASIR: Yup!
MATT: Well, their sandwiches are good. The bread’s really good. But the big things is, like, speed. There’s been many times I’ve gone there where I’ve ordered at the front and, like, by the time I walk to the cash register to pay, the sandwich has already been made. They’re huge in college towns, obviously, because that’s the prime market right there.
NASIR: Which should tell you something, but go ahead.
MATT: Wow. So against Jimmy John’s. I don’t know what to say. So, anyways, there’s a new lawsuit evolved, of course. Why else would we be talking about it? Of course, they talk about forcing employees to work off the clock like every business does so that’s nothing new but what I want to talk about here is part of their agreement deals with a non-compete – and this is for the people that make sandwiches, not the owners or anything – a non-compete agreement for the sandwich. You know, I’m sure people making roughly minimum wage. There’s a couple of restrictions, but they cannot work within 3 miles of any of the roughly 2,000 Jimmy John’s locations because they have, you know, they don’t want people leaking… Do they talk about trade secret, too? They don’t want people telling them how it’s done?
NASIR: Yeah, you can’t work at any place that does 10 percent of their business from making sandwiches and it’s connected to trade secrets. It seems like that’s what they’re worried about which makes me laugh. Like, what kind of trade secrets are there for making deli sandwiches? I mean, frankly, like you said – I’m using your own words – they don’t have anything unique about them in that respect. If you guys haven’t been there,
The guys discuss thetrademark dispute between a CrossFit gym and Nike over the Jordan Jumpman logo. They then answer, "Can I prevent my employees from showing tattoos during work?" What do you think, did this CrossFit gym infringe on Nike?
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: My name is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Oh, I messed you up, right? This is our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Very fun episode today. I’m really looking forward to something that I’m very much into which is CrossFit. Actually, I’m not at all. Never done it in my life but I feel like I should say that.
MATT: Yeah, I’ve never done it, never plan on doing it. I have friends that are all about it and I’ve seen people do it. It just seems like it’s asking to be injured. It’s not natural. They’re just, like, jerking around tons of weight awkwardly and – I don’t know – it just seems very questionable but I’m sure it can get you into good shape, if done correctly.
NASIR: Yeah, I think the problem is a lot of people do it incorrectly because they’re either not being trained properly or the trainer doesn’t know what they’re doing. Actually, what I am into is all the CrossFit videos of people getting injured doing crazy stuff. That’s pretty funny.
MATT: I like to watch injuries.
NASIR: Yeah, but they do some really, really dumb stuff and it’s obvious bad form. And then, of course, it’s really what not to do in CrossFit.
MATT: Well, it’s one of two things, right? It’s either people that are pushed too far – like, they just go on to keep doing more and more weight or more and more reps so they’re going to push themselves and compromise their body; or, two, they’re just so tired at that point that you’re not 100 percent and you just let something slip and that’s how you get hurt.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: But I’m not like you and like to watch people get injured.
NASIR: Uh… Well, I mean, that’s about as close as I can get to CrossFit.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But there is a joke with CrossFit that I think there’s one rule about CrossFit that you don’t stop talking about CrossFit which is totally true because people that are in it are way in it. I don’t know what it is.
MATT: It’s a cult, basically. So, what we’re going to talk about, this is a CrossFit gym in West Palm Beach, Florida. The reason I like talking about these is they’re just good conversation pieces and we’re dealing with trademark infringement, just to let people know. I like to have the debate of whether this is an infringement or not for these things. So, basically, those of you who are familiar with Nike – which I hope everyone is – they have the Jordan brand which, I’m sure, everyone has seen – even you, Nasir.
NASIR: Michael Jordan!
MATT: Even you who doesn’t watch too much basketball, I’m sure you know who Michael Jordan is and have seen the logo at some point.
NASIR: I stopped following basketball when he retired the first time.
MATT: 1998. Well, that’s a while ago. So, we’ll link it on the show notes but it’s him, you know, just jumping through the air. It’s the iconic shot of him – like, the ball up in the air, one leg up, one leg back.
NASIR: Dunking.
MATT: On his way to dunk. So, this CrossFit gym, their logo is basically the exact, it’s not exactly the same but it’s the Michael Jordan Jumpman logo but upside down.
NASIR: It’s pretty close.
MATT: I just don’t really understand it, I guess. Is it trying to make some sort of message? I don’t understand it to begin with, but that’s why Nike is going after them, saying, “We own the rights to the Jumpman logo. This is infringement. You’ve just taken our logo and flipped it upside-down.”
NASIR: How come I can’t find their actual logo? I keep finding the Nike logo.
MATT: Yeah, I was just trying to find that, too. If you go to their website,
Nasir and Matt talk about the possibility of a law being changed to make franchisors liable for unfair labor practices. They also answer, "I am the sole managing member of a Delaware based LLC. Recently, I was engaged by a company to do consulting work. They requested that I fill out a Federal Form W-9. According to the instructions in the form, my single member LLC is considered a "disregarded entity" and the W-9 instructions instructed that I should use my social security number as the Taxpayer ID number instead of my FEIN. Does this mean that the payments will be considered direct to me and not through my business? Am I losing any of the "limited liability" benefits of the LLC this way?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Welcome to the program and my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matt Staub welcoming a new beard, actually. So, we’re going to have to change our podcast logo. Thanks a lot.
MATT: Oh, there’s a decent chance that, by the time this comes out, I will have shaved it because I’m already sick of it so we’re, like, right in that danger zone where I can’t handle it anymore. It happens, like, once or twice a year so it’s usually around this time of year because I just actually had lunch with someone this week who, the last time I saw, the exact same thing was happening. So, as far as he knows, I just have a terrible beard year-round.
NASIR: Year-round, yeah. No, I think what we’ll do is we’ll change the logo and you’ll just have to match what the logo is. We’ll have fun with it.
MATT: Yeah, that’s fun.
NASIR: I’ll change it up every once in a while. I’ll make it a half-beard on half your face and see how you respond.
MATT: Uh, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that, actually.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: I had a half-beard once, just to mess with people, and some people didn’t even notice. It was kind of, you would think, but…
NASIR: Oh, yeah, it takes a while for you to grow it in but I remember a TA back in college had a neck beard and what was funny is that my roommate and I were like, “Man, wouldn’t it be funny if we just grew neck beards?” and, like, a month later, literally, our TA had just a beard on their neck and shaved everywhere else – very strange. It was thick, too. Like, he’d probably be growing it for a few months, at least.
MATT: Some people like it.
NASIR: That was astronomy.
MATT: Sounds like astronomy.
NASIR: Yeah, astronomical.
MATT: Well, to kick off the week, we have a story, I guess it deals with fast food companies. The focus is a little bit on McDonald’s but it’s probably just because they’re the leader in this, I would think, in terms of number of employees. So, McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, and a bunch of other fast food companies are actually franchises and so there’s this law that’s been in place, I think it’s about thirty years old now, it was a case, a legal ruling that basically said that, you know, these bigger companies – McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, et cetera – can’t be liable basically for unfair employment practices, (00:02:29 unclear) of workers of the companies if it’s not directly in-charge of hiring and firing. Like I said, it’s all done through the franchisees and then you have the companies overrunning everything. So, I think they’re looking to change this, this would be a big change. I think it would be – well, I don’t want to give my opinion yet, I haven’t decided how I want to go on this – I was going to say it’s a good thing but I could see it being a bad thing, too.
NASIR: Are you holding it for suspense?
MATT: No, I’m holding it because I don’t know which way I’m going to lean on this because it’s definitely a good thing in terms of the employees but, at the same time, first of all, I don’t even go to fast food places so it’s not...
Nasir and Matt end the week by discussing the accountant who got fired from his job after a dispute he had with Comcast. They then answer the question, "We just brought on our first set of employees. How should we structure their pay to make them happy now and not have it backfire long-term?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We welcome your questions and we will give you the answers and this is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Now that we’ve got that intro out of the way, let’s start our episode.
MATT: The hardest part of every episode is the intro, I think.
NASIR: For who? For you or for me?
MATT: For me, it’s easy because all I do is say my name but that’s…
NASIR: Ah. Then we’ll try it again with you one of these times. I know last time we tried it, you messed up horribly.
MATT: I don’t know if I’d say “horribly.”
NASIR: I know you wouldn’t say that.
MATT: Let’s see. So, we have an interesting story for today, for this Friday episode. There’s actually a lot of detail so I don’t think we’ll be able to go through all the details, all the facts, but it’s pretty interesting kind of what happened. I’ll try to give as brief a summary as possible. So, this guy signed up with Comcast, as most relationships like this begin, some sort of promotional deal. So, he went with that. This was back in the beginning of 2013. Of course, we wouldn’t be talking about this story unless there was a lot of issues involved. So, like I said, this guy signs up with Comcast. There’s all these issues. They think they’ve misspelled his name so that was one thing so he was not getting bills. You know, all these different surcharges that are mystery charges that are coming up, blah blah blah, you know. Eventually, he tried to back out and, you know, a dispute back and forth between the two of them, it goes on and on. One way or the other, they found out, I guess, it looks like they might have searched online to find this out but they found out where this guy worked for and he worked for an accounting firm. And so, like I said, there’s a dispute back and forth between Comcast and this customer. At some point, Comcast actually reaches out at calls the partner of his accounting firm that he works for and kind of just informs the firm on the situation. One thing leads to another and the accounting firm actually ends up firing this guy soon thereafter Comcast calls them to inform them that he’s got some issue. I think they tried to bring ethics into it. So, that’s basically where we’re at. I mean, there’s been a couple of updates. I think Comcast has since kind of apologized – no, no, I take that back – they apologized for their bad billing services and all that, but they didn’t apologize for eventually him actually getting fired. So, from the accounting firm’s perspective, this is a bad decision, right?
NASIR: From the accounting firm’s perspective?
MATT: Yeah, from the accounting firm’s perspective.
NASIR: Well, their reasoning of termination was because somehow they were under the impression – which, of course, the employee denies – that the employee used his firm’s name as basically saying – look, I’m challenging this in behalf of them in the sense that they have their employer’s backing them. Somehow, he used his employer’s name in a way that was improper from the employer’s perspective and it’s unclear exactly how he could have done that and why. He probably mentioned, “Hey, I’m an accountant at this firm and I went through this accounting process to go through all these charges that you mishandled,” and that’s probably what really happened. But it’s unclear the exact reason why the employer did this. I don’t know if you mentioned it – I don’t think you did – that Comcast is actually a client of this accounting firm.
MATT: Oh,
Anita Ron, President of BriteWorks, joins the show to talk about how her companyhas been affected by being a certified women-owned business and the the increase in minimum wage. She also provides her input on the question, "I allow my employees to BYOD for their jobs. What should be my biggest concerns, or should I scrap the idea altogether?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And my name is Matt Staub, and that sounded like you were just reading a script right there almost. That was so fast and it was like a disclaimer at the end of commercials and things like that.
NASIR: Well, I wanted to rush through it because we have a guest today so I had to get through it fast.
MATT: Yeah, we didn’t have a guest for a few weeks. Getting back into the second week in a row, we have a guest and, today, we have Anita Ron with BriteWorks. Welcome to the show, Anita! ANITA: Thank you for having me! I’m really excited to be able to let you know a little bit of an insight about the small business world.
NASIR: Sure. You know, Anita has been somebody that we’ve been looking for for a while and we’ve been looking for a business owner that she’s a woman-owned business and it has certain certifications for that so we definitely wanted to touch that and then, also, in California, we just had a minimum wage increase back in – was it June or July? ANITA: July.
NASIR: Yeah, July, and so we wanted to talk to somebody that has been affected by that minimum wage increase. And so, what’s the idiom? Two birds with one stone? I’m so terrible with that.
MATT: Yeah, you’re terrible with those but it’s fine.
NASIR: Well, anyway, Anita, first, please let us know kind of a little bit about what you guys do and how maybe the women-owned certifications that you’ve gone through, how that’s kind of helped your business out. ANITA: Well, I started a company about 18 years ago which was called BriteWorks Inc. We started the company with $700, three vacuum cleaners, and a lot of determination not to fail. Fast forward to now, we are at 70 employees and we’re right in that situation where we’re over 50 employees and now we’re going to have to provide health coverage and that’s kind of like a big hurdle that we’re going to have to go through but we provide high-end quality janitorial services for commercial, industrial, and government organizations throughout the Southern California area and we’re hoping to extend that in 2015 into other areas and regions.
NASIR: Very cool.
MATT: Anita, we actually get this question a lot when people call in to us and they ask – not the podcast, I’m talking more on…
NASIR: Yeah, I was going to say, we don’t have live callers.
MATT: Because we’ve written a couple of things about certifications for women on businesses and they can read through it and see the process that you have to go through, but the question that usually comes up at some point is, “Is this worth it?” and “How is it going to benefit my business?” We were hoping, if you had some insight on just how exactly your business has been affected once you’ve gotten that women-owned small business certification? ANITA: Well, one of the things is, if you qualify for business small certification, if you qualify for being a woman doing business, or if you’re a minority owned business, then you have some opportunities out there because, as you know, the government is trying to assist other individuals to go up on the scale as far as being able to be successful in their businesses or what they’re trying to start up and provide jobs in our communities. And so, there is some certification, one is for women and it is an extensive process. You actually should be in business for about three years because you’ll have to provide your tax ...
The guys kick off the week by discussingthe new requirement for California businesses to provide identity theft solution services after data breaches. They then answer the question, "We developed some IP for clients and could not decide on who owns the IP. As a result, we decided to jointly own it. Should I be worried about the client if they go under or get sued?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I'm Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matthew Staub is joining us once again today to our Legally Sound Smart Business podcast. Very fun.
MATT: Happy to be back. 104th straight of episode for me being the guest. So, until you have somebody better, I guess it'll just be me.
NASIR: I'm just waiting to see if we can get some positive response from our listeners. Still waiting for that to make sure you become a permanent part of the show.
MATT: Over a hundred episodes. It had to have been over a year now at this point too, right? I'm trying to remember.
NASIR: No, it hasn’t been quite a year yet, but I just wish someone would give – I mean, instead of all the negative feedback I get for you, I just wish somebody would just give one positive comment – just one would be good enough, you know?
MATT: All bad?
NASIR: Yeah, it’s been all bad, but I love the feedback. We get a ton of feedback – a ton – but just all negative about you. So, that's okay.
MATT: Ugh. I'll work on it, I guess. This will be the episode, I think this is the one I’m going to turn people on, and what's a better way to do it than talking about data breaches? That’s an exciting topic that everyone wants to hear about.
NASIR: Yeah, agreed.
MATT: This is California, once again, kind of being the, I guess, early adopter- the first ones to really step forward and do this. So, a little bit of background, in 2002, they were the first state I believe to require businesses to notify people affected of data breaches which seems ridiculous now that, prior to 2002, you could just have data breaches as a business and not tell anyone. It seems pretty important but I guess, over ten years ago, things were a lot different but still that's far enough in time where they should have been telling people beforehand. But, anyways, now California is going to be the first one again to require businesses to provide free identity theft prevention services to people affected by a data breach. It’s credit monitoring in fraud resolution services. I think it span in one year in length. I don’t know if this just the way this is worded or if it only does apply to California residents, but it's at no cost to California residents. I would think it might expand further than just people from California but I don’t know. It’s a little bit vague on how that works out.
NASIR: Well, what it does mean is, if you are operating even outside California and some of these data breaches affect California residents,, then you may be subject to this law, but I'd like to look into more on how that actually can be implemented because you know there are aspects of states rights vs federal rights whether states can actually regulate interstate activity and especially if you're not actually necessarily operating in that state but may have customers in that state, it might be a different issue. But, you know, you mentioned California taking the lead on this and that's one really cool thing about being a licensed lawyer in California because we operate in different states around the country and one thing about California is that they are always on the forefront with many different laws and they do set trends and they do set items that sometimes don’t work and other states don’t follow because basically they look to California to see how it can work out.
MATT: You're right.
The guys end the week talking about why the valet mode in Corvettes may be illegal in some states. I want to make a short web series that is similar to a popular TV show. How much should I be worried about copyright infringement?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And my name is Matt Staub and we do answer some of our questions as well. I heard what you're going with that intro.
NASIR: Nice! So, this is our Friday episode where anything can happen, including covering business legal topics in the news and answering business legal questions, including that as well and many other things.
MATT: It sounds eerily similar to every other episode we’ve but that's all right.
NASIR: No, no, it's Friday, so add a little spice to it.
MATT: Yeah, we’ve got a pretty cool story and I didn't know – you know this better than me because you own, what? Five Corvettes.
NASIR: Actually, four – I lost my fifth one.
MATT: Well, that's too bad. Well, maybe if you would have use the valet mode, then you have known where it went. But, apparently, this could be illegal, too. I wasn’t aware of this, apparently, for the latest Corvettes that has been released, they have this thing called “valet mode” which basically, you get out of your car, you can turn on this little thing, you can basically kind of track everything that happens. I think you can even record the audio of inside the car of what's said and, obviously, you can just see what's going on. Basically, they don’t want the Ferris Bueller situation where the valets take the car for a joyride. So, that's valet mode but, apparently, looks like this could be illegal because you can’t record video without the consent of both parties involved in some states. I think there's eleven states, right? Yeah, eleven states in which both parties are against this. Obviously, you're going to consent as the car owner but are the valet drivers going to consent? I don’t know, maybe they will, maybe the wont. But the problem is they need to.
NASIR: And so, I'm just wondering, like, if you're in a two-party consent state like California, if you are close to the border, you know, you can just valet to another place, but then why would they do that? With the Corvette, you can get there pretty quick.
MATT: How long are the valet processes you're thinking of?
NASIR: I’m just trying to imagine how different Ferris Bueller’s Day Off would be in the event they had this valet device.
MATT: It is pretty interesting though. I mean, I obviously understand the law that you need to have both parties to consent. But, at the same time, this is a car that you owned – or at least presumably you’re leasing – you have some sort of ownership on it. It's your private car, you should have a little bit of a right to record what's going on to see if somebody is, I mean, I guess when you walk into, what's the difference between this and a store that’s recording video of customers that are walking in and out? People are consenting to that. Maybe they are implicitly, I don’t know.
NASIR: Well, yeah. For some reason, audio is treated differently. Video is one thing because you may be in public. But then, audio, if you're having a private conversation, for whatever reason, the law treats a little bit differently because there's a little bit more expectation of privacy and so when you are recording inside your store or whatever, you do have to have proper notices. But, you know, not all states are like that. I mean, like you said, it's only ten states, I believe. Texas and New York, for example, are classically one-party consent states and I understand what that means is that one party of the conversation so that means that you can’t eavesdrop or wiretap as the third party unless one of those two people or more that ...
Nasir and Matt welcome Mark Faggiano of TaxJar to discuss how business owners cancomply with the various sales tax rules. They also answer, "I'm looking to incorporate in the next few months. How much should the tax consequences play a factor in my decision making?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast. This is Nasir Pasha where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions, and we also have Matt here too, for once.
MATT: Yeah. You can just take over the entire show if you want.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: You’d have thought, after a hundred episodes, we would have gotten a good intro by now but I guess that’s not the case. We have a great episode today. We haven’t had a guest on in a while – at least it seems like it's been a while. But we have Mark Faggiano with TaxJar, the founder and CEO of TaxJar. Did I get your name right, Mark? MARK: You did. Nice work. Good to be here guys.
MATT: Oh, yeah, thanks for being here.
NASIR: Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, so taxjar.com is a company in San Diego but what's interesting about what they do – and obviously Mark can speak more of it – is on sales tax and dealing with it, especially from a small business perspective doing online e-commerce. I know a popular business that seems to be kind of sprouting up probably the last few years – and, Mark, you can probably correct me if I’m wrong – is these kind of online sellers that are using Amazon to fulfill its shipment and basically uses a shopping cart instead of setting up their own website. It’s an easy process if you have your own product that you can buy at wholesale or something to that effect, then it might be a good way. But what about the sales tax implications in that? I think sales tax in general is just a mess of laws. I mean, because you have to deal with how each state applies the different taxes, depending upon where it's being sold and who it’s being sold to. So, Mark, this is something you deal with every day, right? MARK: Yeah. So, to call it a mess is really an understatement. There's probably some more words that you don’t want to use to better describe it but you're exactly right. So, you know, five years ago, if we were having this conversation, if you talked to an online seller, they would probably say, "I'm an eBay seller” or “I just sell on eBay" and what's really happened and where we’re at now is that folks are multichannel, right? They’re selling on eBay. They're also selling on Amazon most likely. They also have their own website and they're using a point-of-sale device. They’re using Square to go to a craft fair on a weekend or, you know, some kind of trade show. And what that’s done is dramatically change their sales tax complexity. And, using Amazon as an example, by the way, there's no barrier to entry, right? To do all those things.
NASIR: Exactly. MARK: It's not very hard to get a presence set up across the board on all those things. So, what's happening now is that there are so many sellers and they're competing, you know, head-to-head. One of the biggest differentiators for them is shipping. So, if you and I are selling a pair of Air Jordans, right? Just as an example, and you're offering next day – Amazon will provide this eventually – same-day turnaround and I’m providing kind of the traditional three to four day, I don’t stand a chance, right? So, that's why folks are using this Fulfillment by Amazon service because it allows them to compete much better and also the customers demand just quicker turnaround. What happens is when they use Fulfillment by Amazon, they are literally sending all of their inventory to Amazon and then Amazon takes care of the rest. But what Amazon is doing is just distributing that inventory based on their kind of internal algorithm to say, "Okay, Matt’s selling Air Jordans. We know that those sell in a particular part of the country so we’re going to send everything to our warehouse in Fresno,
Nasir and Matt kick off the next 100 episodes by discussing the religious discrimination lawsuit involving Abercrombie. They also answer, "The retailer argues in its brief that job applicants should not be allowed “to remain silent and to assume that the employer recognizes the religious motivations behind their fashion decisions.”
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Returning to our Episode 101 after our big 100. That was fun. I miss San Diego already. I already left.
MATT: Yeah, you should. It’s nice here today. It’s probably not as nice where you’re at.
NASIR: It’s terrible here. It’s like I’m in a swamp.
MATT: It is much hotter here than normal. So…
NASIR: Wow. That sucks.
MATT: It’s probably still hotter where you’re at, but that’s fine.
NASIR: So, what do we have today to launch our next hundred episodes? More football?
MATT: More football? No. I mean, we talked about this earlier in the week – you and I, off podcast – how we basically could do a football story – an NFL story – every single episode, just the way things have shaped up. We haven’t even gotten to – I think I mentioned this before – there’s always something in college football that pops up at some point during the season so you know there’s going to be something big that we’re going to be able to discuss then as well. So, I don’t think we have any football lined up for this whole week. We’ll see. But what do we have? Abercrombie. So, this is a clothing store, apparel store, though I know of that because I long, long ago shopped there but I haven’t shopped there in at least three weeks.
NASIR: What’s funny is I never shop there and I felt like I was missing something because all the cool kids were wearing that and I never… I don’t think I have one shirt or anything from them. I feel missed out.
MATT: Well, maybe I’ll get you one. I didn’t even know they were even still around. If you go to the mall, you can tell who they are because it's the store that’s pumping out very loud music and it's like just dumped bottles of cologne on the ground because it’s very strong.
NASIR: Exactly, yeah.
MATT: It’s pretty weird.
NASIR: I was going to say pumped out cologne outside. Yeah, you walk by and you smell really nice afterwards.
MATT: Like most of the stories we deal with businesses, it’s usually some sort of employment issue and that's exactly the case here. This is dealing in Oklahoma and someone who had applied to a job at a kids’ store of Abercrombie, and I don’t know if that really makes a difference but it's a little bit tricky because she basically is claiming that she wasn’t given this position for religious reason s and Abercrombie's stance is that, well, you have to specifically ask for the special – I don’t want to say special treatment.
NASIR: Accommodation.
MATT: Accommodation, yes, that's the word.
NASIR: I've been paying attention to this story quite a bit and here's what I believe are undisputed facts – or if they’re not undisputed, at least what’s alleged – is that, okay, Abercrombie & Fitch, they have a specific dress code policy. It doesn’t really matter what it is thoroughly but one specific thing that they have is you're not supposed to wear any kind of head gear or hats or anything like that. And so, this particular woman who's interviewing wears a head scarf over her hair and she wore it at the interview and, even previously, she had asked her friends who work there. It’s like, "Yeah, I know somebody that used to wear a Yarmulke who work there so I’m sure yours is fine, too." And so, she went there and one thing it has to be is she can’t wear any black. None of the employees can wear any black. They have to wear white or other colors. And so, she happened to be wearing a black one that day an...
Nasir and Matt recordtogether for the first time forthe 100th episode. They give some updates onstories discussed in previous episodes of the podcast, including Arian Foster's failed IPO, the Ryan Seacrest patent dispute with Blackberry, Johnny Manziel's trademarks, the outcome from the Airbnb squatter, the settlement from the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders, and the podcast patent lawsuit involving Adam Carolla. Special thanks to Co-Mergefor providingspace for the recording.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast, Legally Sound Smart Business, where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: My name is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we are at number 99 episodes – or no, what are we at?
MATT: 100.
NASIR: Oh, 100, yeah, that’s right. 100 episodes recording live in… where are we right now, Matt? This is your pad.
MATT: Oh, yeah, Co-Merge in San Diego. Finally made it out here.
NASIR: Voted one of the top co-working spaces in the nation.
MATT: Yeah, number three co-working space in the US, recently voted.
NASIR: Voted by Matt and Nasir Pasha.
MATT: Yeah, I didn’t like it number one, but we’ll work you out of here for a while.
NASIR: Yeah, we’re recording in San Diego together for the first time ever after a hundred episodes and probably last.
MATT: It’s not really live though because this is going to be edited.
NASIR: Oh, that’s true.
MATT: It’s not live streaming.
NASIR: Yeah, though we do have a very wide live audience in the lobby.
MATT: There are a lot of people here for some reason that showed up, yeah.
NASIR: Not for us, though.
MATT: Well, there’s a lot of seats so there’s a lot of space for people to sit. There’s a lot of people outside.
NASIR: I don’t think we’re going to do any question this time around but we’re going to have a nice update on some of the old stories that we’ve covered in these past years – less than a year but in the last hundred episodes – or 99 episodes. So, what do we have starting off?
MATT: Well, I figured, what’s what best place to start than Episode 1? And this is actually pretty funny. So, I’ll give a little bit of background for every story we do just so, if people didn’t listen…
NASIR: No, they listened. Everyone has listened to every episode.
MATT: First episode, we talked about Arian Foster, the NFL player. It was basically an IPO for him, sort of. He was going to get paid $10 million for 20 percent stake of his future income – so, contracts, endorsements, and other business ventures. We talked about this on October. Let’s see. Well, actually, I guess it came out October 21st. I don’t know. We recorded it before that. And he got injured on October 28th and he was out for the season. So, he actually never played… he got hurt on the game on the 28th but, you know, had four carries and then didn’t play for the rest of the year. So, Fantex which was the company that was supposed to do this 10-million-dollar offering ended up just kind of pulling out on this or postponing it. I don’t know if it’s going to ever circle back around because he’s playing this year. Today, we’re recording on a Sunday. He’s questionable for today but he actually has played a couple of games.
NASIR: Yeah, I feel like we had cause of his injury or something because we basically called that as one of the biggest risks in investing – that these running backs get injured all the time.
MATT: Right.
NASIR: Literally within a week. I think we recorded on a Friday and that’s Sunday that occurred, right?
MATT: Yeah, that would have been it, yeah, because it came out on Monday the day after.
NASIR: Okay.
MATT: Yeah, we recorded on Friday, he gets – forget what he heard. He heard something about this seriously on Sunday and then Monday episode came out – our first episode ever and it was already…
NASIR: Yeah, if you guys remember, it was kind of a novel way to raise funds for him. But, what was weird is that,
Nasir and Matt talk about one woman's revenge against Huffington Post after she realized it used her photo without giving her credit. They also answer the question, "We are trying to negotiate a deal on entering into either a joint venture or some profit sharing partnership for our service and wanted to know if we can just use a term sheet before putting everything formally in writing."
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Very excited. This is our 99th episode. That’s about… if you take 101 and minus 2, that’s 99, to kind of help you out with that math. Very exciting.
MATT: And it only took 99 episodes for you… I think that’s the first correct math problem you’ve done on the podcast so that’s always good.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: We should stop here. Well, not because of the math thing which is… I don’t know if I want to get to a hundred.
NASIR: No, we can’t stop. We have to do our 100th episode which I’m excited for because at least what plan is – who knows if we’ll actually do it – we’re planning on recording live together in the same room which we never have done in about 99 episodes, if I did my math correctly.
MATT: Yeah, I guess, by the time it comes out, we won’t know whether we’ve done it yet so it will still be accurate, I guess.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly, but look out for the next episode. Either way, Episode 100 will be a big one.
MATT: Hopefully!
NASIR: Yeah, I hope so. All right. So, what do we have today? I’m actually excited about the 100th episode but I’m also excited about this topic as well – this story.
MATT: Yeah, you’re overly excited about it. You don’t get excited about these articles too often, but this one… I don’t know what it is.
NASIR: This is actually the first time I actually read the article or story that we’re covering.
MATT: Usually, you just read the title and look at the pictures which actually is applicable to the story. So, it’s dealing with Huffington Post and I’ve been to Huffington Post before, I believe. I had to have.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, it’s a pretty popular news source. I mean, even when people link to different news sources online, it comes up pretty often. Are you being sarcastic? Or I don’t even know.
MATT: Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve been there. I don’t know.
NASIR: Okay. So, you weren’t?
MATT: It was an Arianna Huffington? Is that there?
NASIR: Yeah, Arianna I think.
MATT: I don’t know. I just know her from the impressions that are done on SNL but they lost that cast member so I don’t know if they’re going to do that anymore. Basically, there’s a bunch of pictures that are up on these articles. One Reddit user, FrancescaO_O specifically – I assume she’s listening to this podcast – basically, she found out that one of her photos was being used on Huffington post and she wanted to do something about it. She tried to reach out and I think she was ignored initially, right? But, at one point, someone got a hold of her or she was able to get in contact with someone and they said, “We’re not going to give you any credit because you posted it on this other site so the only way to get rid of it is for you to delete the image yourself.” But she got a little bit of creative and I guess the way they had it set up the links which you understand better than me…
NASIR: Yeah, let me take care of this tech part.
MATT: Yeah, go for it.
NASIR: I love how you glossed over the other site. The image was posted on a site called “Imgur” which, by the way, even though you may not know, this is one of the biggest sites in the world, by the way.
MATT: I didn’t want to pronounce it incorrectly, that’s why.
NASIR: Well, I’m not necessarily sure how it’s pronounced but it’s something like “Imgur” but everyone know about it. So, Huffington Post,
Nasir and Matt talk about the recent court decision that requires insurers to inform consumers of the name of a competitor. They then answer the question, "One of our employees is a backup driver for our food delivery business and we get a discount from our insurance company if our drivers take a defensive driving course; that employee ended up taking the course but did not get approval from HR, but from her supervisor. HR says we don't have to pay her for the day and tell her we're docking her a vacation day, I wasn't as sure. What do you think?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and, of course, follow us at askbizlaw.
MATT: And you are?
NASIR: Oh, yeah. And my name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: I’m Matt Staub. I guess that was my opportunity to say my name first and I didn’t do it.
NASIR: You totally blew it! That was your opportunity.
MATT: That’s fine.
NASIR: In fact, that was a test and you failed, miserably.
MATT: We like to do alphabetically order so I wouldn’t want to get out of place.
NASIR: Oh, is that why we did it that way? Obviously, by last name.
MATT: Yeah, I guess that’s true. Well, that’s what I was thinking. Who goes alphabetical by first name?
NASIR: People that forget others’ last names, I suppose, I don’t know.
MATT: Okay. We’re going to go a little bit outside our states here in Connecticut but we can talk about this as a whole because it’s pretty interesting. So, I guess this was in the federal court of appeals but it was in the second circuit. There is a new Connecticut statute that’s restricting insurers in claim administrators for mentioning the name of or scheduling an appointment with an affiliated glass company unless they also give the name of a competing glass company in the area. So, basically, they have to inform the consumer of I guess the name of the competitor before scheduling this appointment and I am sure there is more details that go into this but there’s protections in place. I would think it’s to help the consumer but, yeah, this is pretty interesting. I have never really even come across something like this or thought about it before.
NASIR: Yeah, if you have ever been into an accident or your windshield breaks or whatever, sometimes you will get referrals, especially depending upon whether they are going to write you a check or they have to go through an authorized dealer or whatever, they will tell you or give you a referral to who you can take your car to, right? To get your glass repaired or whatever. And so, what this Connecticut law is saying, “Okay. Look, if you are going to make a referral like that, if there is an affiliation between you and this other company, then you also have to mention a competitor.” And it sounds nice and I think the public court here thought the same, “Okay, it sounds nice, but does this really protect the consumer or does it protect the competitor?” And, if you look a little bit deeper where the statute came from, it definitely didn’t come from consumer protections advocates; it came from these other competitors, specifically in this glassware industry, apparently.
MATT: Yeah, I guess I should have mentioned it in the beginning that, when I said glass, that was the reason I said that. It’s kind of confusing but I am thinking back to the last time I had my windshield replaced and I think – this was not in Connecticut but – they gave me three different options and I can’t remember if they just gave it to me because they wanted to give three options or, you know, maybe that was just the way they do business.
NASIR: Yeah. This is in California, right? I don’t know; I’d be surprised. I have never heard of any such law that does that but I wonder if they did that out of requirement or not.
MATT: Because it was, well,
Nasir and Matt kick off the week by discussingApple's assertion that itcannot crack into user's devices under the new operating system. They also answer, "Would like to find out if on-call, temporary Registered/Vocational Nurses who are paid "Per Visit" in a home care agency can be classified as "Independent Contractor"? They usually work for other home care agencies and visit other patients."
Nasir and Matt talk about the legal fallout from the Ray Rice suspension by the NFL and answer "I'd like to know about the legalities and liabilities from a safety standpoint - whose responsibility is it to check that items conform to safety laws, what can be done to ensure that CE Certification, Kitemarks, RF certification and so on are genuine? If a product breaks, who is liable? If a product causes harm to the end user, who is liable? What about textile or similar products requiring fireproofing treatment? Is liability insurance something the end seller should have or the manufacturer?It seems lots of people on here are eager to start importing things, but I'm deadly scared of ending up with something illegal or unsafe on my hands." See info for products liability for importers.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And here we are on another episode. Today, we’re talking about football, right?
MATT: Yeah, we’re going to talk about football and this story has been pretty overblown. I mean, even by the time we’re recording this, this story’s oversaturated.
NASIR: Played out so to speak?
MATT: Yeah, we’re going to do it a little bit different; talk about kind of the legal aspects of this Ray Rice issue of the NFL. So, if you are not familiar with this, basically, Ray Rice is a football player for the NFL. Originally, he got suspended for two games for what was assumed to be some sort of domestic violence. New video came out last week by the time people listening into this that showed that it was much worse than the first video. Basically, he punched his now wife, at the time fiancé, knocked her out cold. Somehow, the NFL claim that they never saw the video up until this past week so I won’t get into that because that seems questionable right off the bat. As a result, what happened was the NFL suspended him indefinitely and the team he played for, the Baltimore Ravens, cut him altogether. So, we are going to talk some of the legal aspects of it. There’s a few things that come to mind in terms of what his options are or what kind of legal fallout could be. But, I guess, first things first, before I get into it is keep in mind, whether he should even get involved in this in the first place but I don’t know if we will discuss that or not, but that’s just the consideration. So, you can petition a court for an injunction that would say he would be available as a free agent following the second week because the original suspension was two games; now, it’s indefinitely so the argument there is kind of a double jeopardy argument – can’t get penalized twice for the same violation. Can file civil loss against the NFL for monetary damages and then can file a grievance with a collective bargaining agreement and go that route as well but, like I said, I don’t know if any of this is even worth it honestly for him and it’s definitely not worth it for the NFL because – I kind of alluded to this at the beginning that – the commissioner’s definitely in some hot water, boiling hot water, after this and, if they get into the court process and the NFL does not settle this out or do whatever, they’re going to depose the commissioner and all the people. So, at that point, he can’t lie anymore; I guess he could but there’s a much more severe penalty than lying to a media in person.
NASIR: Yeah, and I think what’s interesting is that the NFL has created rules almost… I don’t want to say ambiguous but kind of generalized on purpose because I don’t believe that the league itself has specific rules that dictate any kind of mandatory suspensions on physical abuse of their players, et cetera. There is some discretion involved with the commissioner and so forth.
Nasir and Matt discuss the recent ruling which allows Yelp to alter reviews based on whether a business purchases advertising. They also answer, "Hi, I am 16 and my partner is 15. We have started our own car brokerage business. When do you think we should actually establish and when we do, what should we establish as ensure we split control and ownership 50/50"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to this podcast. Oh, I screwed it up. We had it so good but then I messed up.
MATT: Yeah, should have maybe played it out for more than fifteen seconds, but I like it. it’s change it up, middle of the week. You know, people need some sort of something new – something new to listen to.
NASIR: It’s like the seventh inning stretch and change it up, right? Change up the pitcher.
MATT: Unfortunately, this isn’t a new topic because we’ve talked about this before. I don’t like to repeat stories but, in some instances, we have to just because of what’s involved and this is going to affect businesses and there’s really no other way to put it. The Yelp case which I think we discussed after the result in the trial court level, didn’t we? I think we did, right?
NASIR: Yeah, I think so. I know you and I talked about it. I can’t remember if we did it over the show or not.
MATT: Okay. They just had their verdict from the federal appellate court and basically they said, I guess I’m paraphrasing what this says but this is a summary. A little background, obviously, people are upset because Yelp was being accused of paying clients favorable reviews and people that deny their advertising, they’re giving them fake bad ratings. That’s the accusation that’s out there. But the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals said that Yelp is entitled to set a price for its ads and the businesses review to have no legal right to a high rating. As Yelp has the right to charge for legitimate advertising services, the alleged threat of economic harm is utmost hard-bargaining and not extortion or unfair business practices. Basically, what this is saying is Yelp can pretty much do whatever they want. That’s how I’m reading this. You know, if someone denies wanting to have the advertising, if the business denies the advertising then, you know, Yelp can dock them accordingly. I don’t know if they talked about the actual fake reviews but isn’t that more or less what this is saying here?
NASIR: Yeah. I mean, I would definitely agree with that. Keep in mind that the court didn’t actually look at the facts as to whether or not Yelp was actually doing this or not because this was a review of law before it even got to that point because Yelp has vehemently denied despite many businesses’ accusations that basically their Yelp reviews are distorted depending upon whether they’re an advertiser or not and Yelp says: “Our algorithm does not take into consideration whether it’s a paid advertiser or not.” And so, that seems a little bit unbelievable to some businesses, but let’s just assume that’s true for a moment and that’s what they did. The court says that’s okay because this is a private business and it doesn’t fit the legal definition of extortion in both the criminal or civil capacity. And so, therefore, it’s perfectly fine. You’ll probably find this surprising, Matt, and I know we’ve attacked Yelp many times before but I almost hope that Yelp starts manipulating its reviews this way a little bit more openly because – think about it – from a user experience, if you know that Yelp basically just shows good reviews for those businesses that actually pay for advertising and bad reviews for businesses that don’t pay for advertising, then the value of those reviews are less than even more than they already are and I almost hope that Y...
The guys discuss the beneficial license granted to Fig Newmans from Nabisco and also answer the question, "What things can I do to make my C Corp more attractive to investors?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to the business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to our podcast at ask@email or…
MATT: I feel like you’re doing it on purpose now.
NASIR: No, I’m not – ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. You can email us at ask@email. Ah, all right, just don’t even email us. Just call us and leave a message. But you can also send us a tweet at @askbizlaw as well. And that’s our episode!
MATT: I don’t even have a comment. Yeah, I feel like that took the entire time.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, I’m sorry about that. I was just so excited about today’s episode that I got distracted.
MATT: Yeah? You’re a big fan of Fig Newtons or Fig Newmans?
NASIR: It’s kind of confusing. I went to get a snack out of the pantry and I found some Fig Newmans and I didn’t even know they were Fig Newmans. In fact, my wife and I had a whole conversation about figs in general for some reason and we kept referring to Fig Newtons and I’m like, “Wait a minute! These aren’t Fig Newtons. They’re Fig Newmans!” and she was like, “No, I thought I bought Fig Newtons.” But, apparently, there’s this other brand that’s called Fig Newmans that is pretty much the exact same thing as Fig Newtons and it was a little confusing. I was trying to figure out how the heck did this company name their brand? Was this some kind of generic brand or what have you and somehow they were able to get away with this trademark infringement? Because it’s so obvious. There’s no likelihood of confusion; we were confused! We thought we bought Fig Newtons but we didn’t. And so, I was very frustrated so I had to some legal research on some of the trademark. First thing I found was that both Fig Newton and Fig Newman were registered as a trademark under the same category. It was like some weird category like cookies or miniature cookies or something like that so I couldn’t figure it out. I had to do some research on it.
MATT: Yeah, I’ve heard of the Newmans. I didn’t know they made Fig Newmans. I started laughing multiple times because I just can’t stop thinking of Newman from Seinfeld – how this would be like Kramer’s knock-off product that he could create, Fig Newmans.
NASIR: There was no picture of Newman on the outside in the old man’s uniform holding these cookies.
MATT: You know, you looked into this. How did this happen? I looked into this story, too. For those of you that don’t know, Fig Newtons are owned by Nabisco which I think people have heard of. I guess one of the guys started Fig Newmans, they were just trying to make these Fig Newmans, he wrote a letter to the president of Nabisco and said, “My daughter’s got a great idea for a product. Can we sit down and talk about a small royalty deal? All the profits will go to charity.” I guess the president just wrote back, “You know what? This sounds good. How about $1.00 a year?” which is pretty unbelievable that this would ever happen. I mean, obviously, I don’t think Fig Newtons were really worried about losing a chunk of the market or any sort of significant amount – not worried about that at all. But we talk about so many bad things that happen in the intellectual property world. You know, the fact that they can come to this sort of agreement that there’s no sort of infringement on the name, it’s finally nice to hear a good story.
NASIR: It also shows you that I did more research. I couldn’t figure out if it’s still going to charity or not because I was like, “Oh, well, at least we’re contributing to something,” but I think what’s funny in this concept is that the legal department of Nabisco had said that they had a fit bec...
Nasir and Matt discuss the IRS looking into taxing free lunches provided by Silicon Valley companies. The two then answer, "I'm a franchisor, can I be held responsible for labor law violations of my franchisees if I don't know about it?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. You’re listening to Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: That’s correct. Welcome to the business podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and also ask us on Twitter @AskBizLaw and that’s our Twitter handle and you can also follow us and we may respond but we probably won’t.
MATT: At least we’re honest.
NASIR: No, we will respond. I’m just joking.
MATT: I might not. I don’t think I have enough control of it.
NASIR: Someone will respond out there. I’m not even in control of it either. It’s just some random guy.
MATT: Just hoping that we convinced him to put the logo from the podcast up.
NASIR: Exactly.
MATT: It could be a fan, I guess. Maybe that’s what it is.
NASIR: Super fan.
MATT: Yeah. If you really want to tweet at us, go to @TheRealAskBizLaw on Twitter.
NASIR: Verified account.
MATT: Yeah, I think that’s kind of gone by the wayside. That was pretty big at the beginning because so many people were jumping on celebrity and athlete names but I think, at this point, it’s all kind of been sorted out, interestingly enough.
NASIR: Yeah, you’re right. Now, it seems like it used to take a while to get a verified account but, apparently, now it’s pretty streamline and so forth.
MATT: The only one I can still think of is Shaq but I don’t think he’s even @TheReal Shaq anymore. I think it’s just @Shaq.
NASIR: That I don’t know.
MATT: Well, we’ll get into the story because I know everyone wants to listen to people talk about tax issues.
NASIR: That’s my favorite!
MATT: I don’t want to deprive them of that.
NASIR: Well, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I had to say that.
MATT: Aww, man.
NASIR: Were you going to say that?
MATT: That’s pretty good. I was going to say, “It’s two topics I like talking about – lunch and tax.” It’s a good story for me.
NASIR: Wait, wait, you like talking about lunch? Who talks about lunch? Not dinner but lunch?
MATT: Well, any meal, really. It doesn’t matter, yeah.
NASIR: Oh, okay. I think you like food. I think it’s called food.
MATT: Yeah, I would say that’s accurate. Free meals are always good, too. That’s what we’re getting into here. Google I think was the company that was really known for this. I didn’t realize that other companies too. I guess a lot of them and some of the bigger ones in Silicon Valley do this but they offer free meals to their employees. If you’ve seen the movie The Internship with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, they talk about it in there and Vince Vaughn kind of abuses the system. But that’s not the issue here. It’s that the IRS is looking at this and saying, “You know what? I think we can actually tax this somehow and so we’re going to look into possibly saying these meals are actually income of the employees and we’re going to start taxing it as income.” Obviously, that’d be bad for the employees but, on the employer’s side, guess what, that means you have to pay half of that for payroll taxes.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Basically, this boils down to this, and there are rules in place. To summarize it, employers are allowed to provide free meals for their employees but it has to be for the convenience of the employer. I think a very easy example would be if you had a business and there wasn’t any places to eat close to the business and you provided a free lunch for your employees. You know, you’d be fine with that. That’s a convenience of the employer because the employees would have to leave for a long period of time. Another classic example is bank tellers. If you need someone to be at the front,
The guys discuss the trademark infringement case involving Mickey Mouse and Deadmau5. They also answer, "What should I include in a general release?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. You’re listening to Legally Sound Smart Business with Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and, of course, follow us on Twitter. The Twitter handle is @askbizlaw.
MATT: I don’t know how the intros get worse as the week progresses. I know I always talk about this but you’re so good at everything else. The intros, not as good, but that’s fine. Actually, I want to get into the story here but first it’s dealing with Mickey Mouse and a DJ but I just wanted to know. I’m guessing you don’t know who this is but I wanted to see how you would pronounce his name.
NASIR: Oh. Uh, yeah, of course, it’s Deadmau5.
MATT: Okay. I think that’s what a lot of people say. It’s “deadmouse” is the actual pronunciation.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s what I said. Yeah, “deadmouse.”
MATT: Okay.
NASIR: I was saying how most people would say something stupid like Deadmau5 but, yeah, “deadmouse.”
MATT: Well, I don’t hold that against you at all but, like I said, a lot of people probably say this – even people that listen to the music. For those of you who don’t know or maybe those of you who’ve heard of him, there’s a very iconic thing he wears on his head when he does all of his DJ-ing. I’d say one of the most popular DJs right now in the last few years. But how to describe it is he wears this thing on his head that essentially makes him look like Mickey Mouse – an electric techno version of Mickey Mouse. We’ll definitely link a story so you guys can check it out for yourself to see what it looks like because it’s hard to picture it if you haven’t seen it but that’s where this whole lawsuit’s come into play. There’s a dispute over the infringement of Mickey Mouse’s head, more or less. And so…
NASIR: You know, I hate to interrupt you but I was looking at this article that we’re referencing here and it says, “Here are the two logos side by side. You be the judge.” It’s not a picture of a logo. It’s literally a picture of someone in a Mickey Mouse costume and then this Deadmau5 character and a picture of him DJ-ing. It’s weird to just call them logos. I don’t know what the definition of logos is but apparently it’s changed.
MATT: That’s poor captioning by…
NASIR: The Daily Beast.
MATT: Yeah, The Daily Beast. We talk about these infringement issues a lot and they do look similar but there’s a few different things about this case and other ones – one of which being that Deadmau5 has – well, the guy, I forget his actual real name, something Zimmerman – he owns trademarks to this logo – there’s your logo – in thirty different countries and has been using the image for over a decade. That definitely works in his favor, I would say. I’d assume that Disney had some sort of trademark for the Mickey Mouse logo. I would think they have to have it.
NASIR: I would assume so.
MATT: Obviously, they do because they even have an act that’s better known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. Deadmau5, he already has a lot of these trademarks filed so that definitely works in his favor. Another thing too is it’s not whether he can trademark this. I think they’re kind of saying that he can but it’s whether it’s infringing upon what Disney has with Mickey Mouse.
NASIR: In other words, I think they’re saying that, “Okay, you can still use it,” but, as far as making it a registration, I think they’re opposing that and I can understand that. You mentioned that he registered in another country. Sometimes, it’s easier to do so in other countries like China is classic that it’s basically first to file. In fact, just as a side note,
Nasir and Matt kick off the week by talking about the newly introduced legislation that will require California employers to give all employees paid sick leave. They then answer the question, "Can someone claim trademark infringement if my name is similar to theirs but I pronounce it differently?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is your host and co-host, Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And your other co-host, Matt Staub
NASIR: Yes, and welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @askbizlaw. Just follow us there and you can also ask your questions there.
MATT: It’s the Monday following the first weekend of the NFL which I know you actually watch from time to time.
NASIR: Yeah, I missed the Thursday night games but I do plan on catching the Sunday games that have already occurred by the time of this listening.
MATT: We should have some sort of side proposition where I’ll take San Diego even though I’m not really a Chargers fan but I’ll take San Diego and you can take the Texans and we’ll see who gets more wins.
NASIR: Neither of them had a good season last year but I’ll watch the Chargers game tonight – or Monday night, I should say.
MATT: Oh, yeah, I forgot it is on Monday night. This will be airing the day of.
NASIR: I am a Chargers fan. Speaking of the Chargers, San Diego, huh? And California, doing some crazy stuff with paid sick leave.
MATT: I should probably be the one that sticks to the tie-ins but that’s okay.
NASIR: I know.
MATT: But, yeah, this is pretty big. I mean, we typically don’t talk about these sort of things unless they’re really big and they’re going to have a big effect. This is going to have a big effect.
NASIR: Huge.
MATT: But the actual number of sick days that people are going to get isn’t that many but it is going to have a huge effect for employers. Basically, starting July 1st 2015, employees in California are going to be entitled to up to three paid sick days per year. And so, I believe it can start accruing now, right?
NASIR: Oh, that’s a good question – whether it starts accruing. I’m not even sure. I didn’t even think it would. I thought the law doesn’t go into effect until next year.
MATT: I thought I read that it starts accruing some time this year but I guess I said it wasn’t a huge effect necessarily but, you know, looking at the stats, 44 percent – this basically is going to affect 44 percent of employees in California. I guess those are the ones who are not getting this paid sick leave. Let’s think about the number of employees in the state and 44 percent of them. That’s a huge number overall.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is actually pretty huge to make it a state-wide law. I think there is one other state, I think it’s Connecticut, that would be the other state that has a state-wide sick leave and I mentioned San Diego because they just passed their own which was back this last summer and I think that paid sick leave goes into effect April 2015 – a little bit earlier – but I think their sick leave Is not dissimilar to this. I think it’s the same amount of accrual. I think there’s a different cap on it but, other than that, it’s very, very similar and, just to mention it, that was also the same provisions that also increase the minimum wage in San Diego above the state minimum wage starting January 1st in 2015 to $9.75. This is pretty big, I think. I think this is, again, another trend that will go across from California to other states as well – Connecticut being the first and San Francisco and other cities have already had local laws for that but I can really see this spreading to other states as well.
MATT: It definitely will and I don’t want to downplay that it’s not significant because it obviously is but I think,
Nasir and Matt end the week by discussing the recent study that shows how women may be discriminated against for the possibility of having children. They then answer the question, "Can my work monitor my cell phone usage at work if it's not a company phone?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is the podcast, your only podcast and only source for business in the news and, also, It’s not the only source for business in the news, it’s the only source for business legal news where we add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: And the only source of struggling intros in every single episode but that’s fine.
NASIR: Ah. Well, I’m not a radio disc jockey as they would say.
MATT: You were on the radio for a long time.
NASIR: Yeah, but not as a DJ – more of a radio personality.
MATT: Yeah, in the guest capacity.
NASIR: In a guest capacity.
MATT: You were introduced; you weren’t introducing anything else. I guess that’s true.
NASIR: That’s right, exactly.
MATT: Maybe I should take over the intro.
NASIR: I know that’s what you want to do.
MATT: I don’t know. I’d probably screw it up. I don’t want to risk it.
NASIR: We’ll switch it up one time. That’ll be fun. Actually, why don’t you just practice right now? Let’s hear it. Do it on the spot. Do it.
MATT: So, this is Legally Sound Smart Business.
NASIR: Terrible.
MATT: Horrible.
NASIR: Okay, sorry, go ahead.
MATT: It’s a business legal podcast where we talk about a story in the news and answer your legal questions. That’s pretty much what you say, right? I don’t know, it’s engrained in my mind.
NASIR: What email? What email do they send it to?
MATT: Oh, ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com or @askbizlaw on Twitter or go to our website.
NASIR: All right, don’t get fancy on us.
MATT: So, I heard that 40 percent of managers avoid hiring younger women to get around maternity leave – by heard about, I mean, that’s a recent survey that came out. I mean, 500 managers is I guess kind of a small sample size. It’s still pretty sizeable.
NASIR: I think it’s big enough. Yeah, it’s big enough to give some kind of weight to it.
MATT: This is obviously an issue and this is something that could give rise to a lawsuit. These numbers are out there but the problem is going to be proof that a woman was discriminated against based on gender. I guess that’s what it comes down to for me. I don’t know. That’s unfortunate for these women but I don’t know how they get around this.
NASIR: Yeah. I mean, we’ve been kind of dancing around this issue for a while, even in our blogs and podcast regarding maternity leave and so forth and how I think, in general, there is definitely I’ve seen more this year than last year of this aspect of discussing this maternity leave as compared to other countries and the law surrounding it. I think even last year they were talking about some standards of putting in leave for fathers as well to be able to share leave in 2015. I’m not sure what happened to that and whether that was state or nationwide or not but it’s understandable from an employer perspective, especially when you’re maybe a smaller company where maternity leave may affect you, specifically in California where other is more for 50 or more employees. When you have an employee leave, that can be pretty dramatic, even though you may not be paying them but then also being able to hold that spot for them when they come back, and it may not fit in every kind of business but this is the reality of where we live in. I’m just telling everyone who’s listening, this is going to be the trend. I don’t think we’re going to see these kinds of benefits taken away. If anything, they’re going to be expanded more, and one way not to react is just not hiring people that may get pregnant.
Nasir and Matt talk about what to do when someone outside of your business takes control of your social media. They also answer the question, "Who can sign off on an agreement for a specific type of entity?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is… Matt Staub.
MATT: Oh.
NASIR: And Nasir Pasha.
MATT: I would like to be introduced first one time, I guess. We’re only 89 episodes in, it’s still yet to happen, but…
NASIR: One day.
MATT: You never know. Actually, no, the one time you weren’t there, I introduced myself first.
NASIR: Oh, that’s right.
MATT: I forgot about that.
NASIR: Oh, because it was a best of episode. You like to talk about that time that you did it by yourself. That’s interesting.
MATT: It was only, like, a minute long at most.
NASIR: All right. Well, welcome to the business law podcast. This is where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Or you can send direct tweets or direct messages through Twitter @askbizlaw.
NASIR: @askbizlaw.
MATT: I wonder how we got that name. It seems like that would have been taken.
NASIR: I was going to put ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com or @smartbusiness but it was so long and I didn’t want to put the acronym because that didn’t really look right, and “Legally Sound” was too long too or something, I don’t remember.
MATT: Yeah, we left out.
NASIR: Yeah, it was a good one.
MATT: So, what do we have on the docket today? We’re talking about Facebook.
NASIR: On the docket, I like that.
MATT: Yeah, and we’re talking about Facebook likes specifically. I know our Legally Sound Facebook page has hundreds of thousands of likes because we’ve paid lots of money for that.
NASIR: About a dollar.
MATT: No, just joking.
NASIR: All international.
MATT: Let’s talk about in the story $500 for 10,000 likes, it seems like a good deal, I guess.
NASIR: I think that’s for US likes, though, right?
MATT: For $500, you get 10,000 likes in the US. There’s a cheaper rate for international.
NASIR: What does it matter where it comes from if you’re just paying for likes? It’s still just a number. No one can see – or maybe they can, I don’t know.
MATT: Anyways, well, I guess we’re not getting off-topic because that’s kind of the story here.
NASIR: Let’s not talk about Facebook likes anymore, that’s off-topic.
MATT: Who owns these Facebook likes? That’s really the question that it comes down to and this all came about because I guess there was a show that was on BET which I’m not really familiar with the show.
NASIR: Called “The Game.” I’ve never heard of it myself.
MATT: The Game, yeah. They started a show, it went off-air, but their Facebook page lived on and they ended up getting two million likes on this Facebook page for this show. So, BET was trying to say, “Hey, you need to give us these likes,” I guess. I’m not even sure how this works. Because they have the likes, do they have the information for all those people? Is that what it’s boiling down to?
NASIR: I’m trying to think about it. I don’t think you have very much information. But this case comes with a story, just like any court case. I think it’s semi-interesting that, even though this fan page came out when the show came out, the person who ran it was not an employee or even associated with the show. So, it wasn’t an actual official page. But, after the show went off-air, it continued to just get more likes and I think people missed it or whatever – who knows? And then, when it came back, instead of the game, the show BET creating their own new page, they were like, “Okay, well, this page is still out there, let’s just use hers. This is just some fan.” And so, they entered into some kind of contract agreement where she’d post for her and she’d be paid like, $3,000 or $4,000 per month, and there are some different terms in there. But then,
Nasir and Matt discuss the recent case against FedEx that will affect many businesses. They also answer, "I noticed that there is already an (my business name)registered under FBN with the county. From a legal standpoint, are the names too similar for FBN? I was planning on checking name availability with CaliforniaSecretary of State anyways, in case I want to incorp down the road. Should I be legally worried about the names being so similar? I know this is separate, but I've already done a preliminary trademark search and haven't come up with much, but I though I should check that out too."
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you have graciously sent in to us at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and that you can also do so in the future as well.
MATT: I think the listeners are excited because, later in the week, you’re going to do a live ice bucket challenge. You’re going to dump ice water on your head mid-show or actually right as you’re answering the question so people are pretty excited for that.
NASIR: Well, tune in. What’s nice is that this is an audio so you can have no idea whether I actually did it or not. In fact, hold on, let me just… All right, there’s no ice in here. I was holding up my glass of water which I realize the ice melted.
MATT: Well, I hate to keep talking about this but we’re going to have to.
NASIR: It’s a big one.
MATT: Yeah, it’s just issues that constantly come up but, yeah, like you said, this is a pretty big one. We’re dealing with another misclassification of independent contractors’ issue – this time, with FedEx. A recent ruling, I think this week, right?
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: The appellate court ruled that 2,300 drivers in California were misclassified. That’s going to be huge. You’re talking an insane amount of penalties and back money that’s going to be owed to them. But the facts of this are pretty interesting and I don’t know why these FedEx drivers were even agreeing to do this but talking about they made the drivers – let’s see – shifting the costs to them for the branded trucks, uniforms, and scanners. Obviously, they weren’t giving them sort of the right labor law rules of meals and rest periods, things of that nature. How did they try to get around it? “Oh, we’ll just put in the operating agreement that they’re independent contractors and that should be sufficient, right? I mean, that’s never failed before.”
NASIR: Yeah, they made extra efforts, too. I mean, one of many factors of a contractor relationship is that the contractor provides for their own equipment. Literally, the company, instead of just providing it to them, leased the trucks or sold the trucks to the contractors themselves. All the equipment like those devices that they carry to track shipments or whatever are also some kind of package that they purchase and so forth and they pay for their own gas and et cetera and their maintenance. That’s one aspect that they took care of but it seems like they failed to do a lot of other things as well.
MATT: Yeah, I’m wondering, from the driver’s perspective, how do they even make money? That seems like a pretty big expense.
NASIR: The reality is all they did was paid them a little bit more and then deduct it from their pay check. That’s how I see it. I mean, this case is actually pretty big. To put it into perspective, this is a three-judge panel, Ninth District US Court of Appeals and this ruling impacted both a Washington class action and a California class action which is why there’s 2,300 drivers impacted. But this case is also going to affect 20 other cases going around nationwide in the country on this very issue. By the way, UPS, I believe, does the exact same thing with its drivers too as well. This ruling may have pretty big consequences.
The guys end the week discussing another well known company making critical labor law violations. The two then answer, "We are going through a rebranding process, what should we look for on the legal side?"
For a more in depth analysis of today's question, check out Nasir's blog post.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to the business law podcast where we cover business legal news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: After the two debacles earlier in the week, you finally got a good intro.
NASIR: I know.
MATT: Good job.
NASIR: I’ve been practicing.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: It took me three times.
MATT: I hope so. Once it gets to the end of the week, I hope you’ll be a lot better.
NASIR: Sorry. Next time, you do it.
MATT: Well, this isn’t like our last episode which dealt with football but we’re going to talk about…
NASIR: Tesla.
MATT: SpaceX.
NASIR: Oh, we’ve talked about SpaceX.
MATT: We’ve talked about him before – Elon Musk. I think last we spoke about him was when he opened up his patents to anyone who wants to infringe upon them.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Or I guess it wouldn’t be infringement if it’s asked for but…
NASIR: Please, infringe on my patents. No, yeah, Elon Musk is definitely a…
MATT: Innovator.
NASIR: Innovator but also, like, they like to change things and do things differently.
MATT: Disruptor.
NASIR: Disruptor – that’s the word.
MATT: He might rethink that patent strategy after these recent labor lawsuits.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, he sued SpaceX, one of his companies here – the private space launch provider, for those of you who don’t know which many people can afford, I think. It’s being sued by former employees. You know, the typical employee lawsuits – weren’t allowed to take breaks, weren’t paid overtime, company failed to give them enough time before a round of lay-offs. This was in California?
NASIR: Yeah, we haven’t dealt with it a lot because, when you do lay-off a number of people, there are some extra processes that you have to go through as far as notification and things like that – everything from how you handle the actual benefits package to that effect. Also, California law, I think, requires 60 days’ notice if you’re laying off more than 50 employees up to a certain amount. It’s not something we deal with a lot, obviously, but that was a big issue. I know we covered LinkedIn, was it last Friday? About their labor law violations but I just want to reiterate, once again, a huge company. Well, SpaceX is probably not as big. I mean, they’re kind of new but I know they have a lot of money into it but the point is that a company that should know, obviously they know enough about patent law – at least Elon Musk knows enough about patent law to applying on that. They make these labor law mistakes all the time and, though many of you guys may not be laying off more than 50 people in one day, when it comes to allowing them to take breaks, paying overtime, these things are very common to every business.
MATT: Yeah, and they said they laid off 200 to 400 workers last month which I just looked up. At the end of last year, they had about 3,800 employees.
NASIR: That’s a good size.
MATT: It’s actually a pretty decent chunk but, yeah, like you said, 60 days before lay-offs that involve 50 to 499 employees in California. Should have done that and I guess that’s the moral of the story, right? We talk with smaller businesses all the time. They can definitely make these mistakes but these other companies too that are making the same mistakes, I don’t know if they think they’re immune to it or what the deal is.
NASIR: I think it’s just ignorance of the law. You know, picking on the CEO of the company, obviously, these kinds of mistakes are made my middle management. For example, look at this,
Nasir and Matt get into a discussion about the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders labor dispute. They also answer the question, "I want to start a fantasy football league with my employees. Are there any legal issues with this?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to the NFL episode of Legally Sound Smart Business and this is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to the podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. If it’s a question about your NFL football team, then just put in NFL in the subject line so we know that’s you.
MATT: Are you going to be able to contribute this episode? I mean, you actually know a good amount about it. In your whole sports realm, NFL seems to be something you know about so I think we’ll be okay.
NASIR: Yeah, I think so. I’m not really sure what NFL is though. What does it stand for?
MATT: You know. I don’t know. I can’t come up with something funny on the fly. I’ll come up with something funny and we’ll edit it in and it will be funny down the road.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly.
MATT: Well, like you said, football episode, first one is this – a lawsuit dealing with a couple of the Oakland Raiders cheerleaders and they sued the NFL and that seems to be one of the important parts of this story. A little bit of background, I guess, in the past, prior to this year, the Raiders cheerleaders were paid $125 a game, that’s it. I don’t know how many hours that breaks down to.
NASIR: Okay. Let’s say… how long is a game? Like, three hours? Including halftime?
MATT: At least, yeah.
NASIR: Maybe three and a half including halftime and maybe an hour before at least and then maybe a half hour after so that’s four or five hours? But not including travel time either.
MATT: And not including practices.
NASIR: So, they don’t get paid for practice?
MATT: I mean, I could be wrong but I thought, the way this is worded, it seems like they just get paid the $125 a game.
NASIR: Yeah, you’re right, and hadn’t received compensation for anything beyond that so that’s all they get is per game.
MATT: If you look at the current minimum wage, $9.00 an hour breaks down to a little under 14 hours for the $125. That’s what they used to get paid. Now, they’re getting paid $9.00 an hour which is California’s minimum wage, and this is just the Raiders. But they sued the NFL for obviously minimum wage claims and the NFL’s response was this, and this is an interesting response saying that, you know, “We don’t have to do anything. We’re immune to these state labor laws and you should have sued the Raiders and not us, the NFL.”
NASIR: I don’t know what we’re missing here because I think what the attorney or the argument they’re trying to make is saying that it’s not that they have to be in compliance with any state law but basically they’re saying that they’re under federal law because they’re a national organization and so forth. I understand the argument. I think it’s a silly argument because, when you have a national entity hiring employees throughout the different states, there’s a well-established law that the state where the employee works is the law that applies – very simply.
MATT: And this is just so stupid because the NFL makes – let’s see – I think this year they’re estimated to make $9 billion in revenue. I think you can afford to pay the cheerleaders. I guess they are part of the individual teams. Either way, the teams make a ton of money too so it’s not like they’re not making out with anything. This just seems like pretty silly thing all around. Like, the NFL is not doing the right thing and the teams aren’t paying these cheerleaders enough. I don’t know who would even want to be a cheerleader if you’re getting paid this little for so much time. I guess you get a lot of presents.
NASIR: Yeah, I don’t really understand that industry and it’s strange.
The guys kick off the week by discussing the Red Bull lawsuit over false advertising. They then answer, "My employees are receiving small tips on credit card receipts and we get hit with a processing fee each time. Can we deduct the fee from our employees' tips?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to the business legal podcast that covers business in the news and also answers some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, could ask a question at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Oh.
NASIR: By sending in an email address.
MATT: Terrible intro.
NASIR: Actually, the intro was good, but the conclusion of the intro was a little faulty.
MATT: It’s all right. I mean, there’s a little bit of leeway on Monday so I’m not going to hold it against you.
NASIR: True, just getting warmed up.
MATT: I shouldn’t give you the leeway because this isn’t being recorded on a Monday morning but people are listening to it on a Monday morning so maybe they’re not firing on all cylinders. They won’t even notice how bad that intro was – other than the fact that I’ve gone on about it for another minute.
NASIR: People are still trying to figure out if it’s Monday or not. I’m still trying to figure that out at least.
MATT: All right. Well, actually, we’ve got a good story that’ll help people wake up I guess indirectly – a lawsuit involving Red Bull – more accurately, a false advertising lawsuit. There’s a possible settlement, that’s not as important but basically it boiled down to this. It was a false advertising claim. I think everyone knows what Red Bull is, it’s an energy drink.
NASIR: It gives you wings.
MATT: Yeah, it gives you wings which does sound like false advertising right there, but the actual false advertising claim was it provided more benefits to consumers than a cup of coffee or a caffeine pill. And so, basic arguments – breach of express warranty, unjust enrichment, violation of other acts, things of that nature. I guess the moral of the story is, for any business, you have to watch out what you assert in terms of what your product or service can do for the customer.
NASIR: Yeah, also note that they’re alleged to have violated 30 different state consumer protection acts and we have a lot of clients and a lot of businesses sell their products and services – they also spell their products and services – they sell it on a nationwide basis and, though the consumer protection acts are pretty similar in the sense that what they intend to protect, there are differences. For example, California and New York are inherently more consumer-friendly than some of these other states. At the end of the day, especially when you’re selling on a national, you need to think about being very conservative of how you’re selling your product. What were their statements as far as what was told to be false?
MATT: I don’t know the exact quote but more benefits than a cup of coffee or a caffeine pill which I used to drink Red Bull a lot back in college but, if you’ve ever looked at the actual liquid or tasted it, there’s no possible way it’s going to be more beneficial than coffee. I mean, I don’t know about a caffeine pill but it just doesn’t seem natural. It has that Taurine in it which is supposedly very bad for you, so they say.
NASIR: Every time I drink it, it literally tastes like toxic waste to me. I feel like I’m drinking some chemicals. And the fact that it says that they provided more benefits compared to a cup of coffee and caffeine pill, that implies that Red Bull has benefits. It seems awkward to say that for some reason to me.
MATT: Yeah, and have you seen – and this is fresh on my mind because I watched the beginning of it the other day – the movie Role Models? The two main guys, their job – at least in the beginning – is going around, speaking at schools, talking about energy drinks.
Nasir and Matt cap off the week talking about San Diego Comic-Con suing a comic con in Salt Lake City for trademark infringement. They then answer the question, "I want to bring on a new shareholder in my S Corp. The only problem is they are not a US citizen. How can I get around this issue?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha and… this is…
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matt, Matt Staub. Darn it. Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com, and that’s an email address so just don’t mail that in to that address. You have to use your email system to do that.
MATT: You know, all week, you’ve been trying to introduce me, say my name at the same time I say it. It’s two different audio recordings so I guess, if you really wanted to, you could just have it be at the same time. I don’t know if it really matters. Even if you would have gotten the exact same recording, we could have changed it anyways.
NASIR: Well, I assume you haven’t been listening to the previous episodes because I’ve had Chris cut out your name pretty much every time, and your voice. So, it’s just been me this entire time for the last few weeks. I was wondering if you were going to mention anything but you didn’t say anything so I assumed you knew.
MATT: Just dead air time in times when I was actually speaking?
NASIR: Yeah, and it sounds like I’m talking to myself and I’m hearing voices which, sometimes, I do feel that.
MATT: Well, we’re going to go close to home with this story because we’re dealing with San Diego Comic-Con, specifically a lawsuit, of course, because that seems to be what we usually talk about. This is interesting because I obviously knew San Diego Comic-Con. It’s a huge event every year but I had seen some other Comic Cons that have popped up and I didn’t know if there was an affiliation with the San Diego Comic-Con or what the deal was and this kind of gives me an answer because San Diego Comic-Con is suing the Salt Lake City Comic Con. I guess this lawsuit was just filed – very fresh lawsuit, basically saying that they’re infringing upon their trademark with the Comic Cons. I guess the difference is the Salt Lake City Comic Con must have been awful. I take that back. It was either awful or it was so good and so lucrative that San Diego is trying to get money from it. It’s one of the two, probably.
NASIR: Yeah, and I don’t know, have you ever been to the Comic Con in San Diego?
MATT: I’ve never been. I’ve gone down to the area a few times but I’ve never actually been inside for any of the actual stuff.
NASIR: Yeah. I’ve always wanted to go and I’ve come close but then I feel weird. I feel like it’s not for me. I feel like I’m almost depriving other people that are more interested in those things than I am so I feel like, “Okay, I’ll just let other people go,” because there are very limited tickets and it gets sold out every time and you have to go in the wait list. They come out I think six-plus months in the year and so forth for the San Diego Convention. But, the Salt Lake Comic Con, it’s actually pretty popular apparently. It’s only been going on for a few years and so forth. In Utah’s defense, they talk about that’s why they’re being targeted – because of their recent popularity and so forth. But what’s interesting is what you said. You were assuming that there was some kind of affiliation and that’s kind of an issue. The organizations are suing this Salt Lake Comic Con because it confuses fans into thinking the two are affiliated and that’s pretty much the basis for an infringement – if there’s a likelihood of confusion. Here, obviously, I mean, you have Salt Lake Comic Con and San Diego Comic-Con. When people say the Comic Con, pretty much everyone I understand knows that that refers to San Diego Summer Comic Con...
Nasir and Matt debate about whether a monkey can own a copyright to a photo and answer, "There has been a lot of chatter with my employees. Can I ban gossip in the office?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha… And this is Matt Staub.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Oh, nice. And welcome to the business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Our video has a little bit of a delay so you can’t see when I’m talking. I know you were trying to time that so you said it at the same time but I got you on that one.
NASIR: Even if I was a little off, we’ll have Chris line it up perfectly.
MATT: Yeah. Now I’m concerned about the Friday episode because I feel like you’re going to see me. Actually, I’ve got something in mind. We’ll figure this out. But enough monkey business here because we have a story to talk about – about monkeys.
NASIR: Enough monkeys now.
MATT: Actually, I didn’t realize, I’d heard this story in the last couple of weeks but I didn’t realize that this was so long ago – well, not so long ago. 2011 was when this actually happened and what happened was I don’t know all the details but basically they were at (I would assume) a zoo or some sort of something like that. Basically, a monkey somehow got hold of a photographer’s camera and just took a ton of pictures. One of them was a pretty funny selfie of the money that the monkey took that I guess only recently went viral – probably because selfies have become popular this year so maybe that’s what it is.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: Anyways, someone went up on Wikipedia – I don’t know on what page – and the photographer said, “Hey, you’re infringing on my copyright. I have a copyright on this photo. You need to take it down.” Wikipedia’s response was, “Well, you don’t own the image” or “You don’t have a copyright on it so we’re not going to take it down.” It raises a couple of interesting questions. I guess the first one is, “Can this monkey actually have a copyright of the photo?” and we’re going to answer that – that it’s no – but, since that’s the case, who actually owns, who has the copyright to this photo?
NASIR: I feel like we talked about… wasn’t it the selfie at the Oscars we talked about?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Who owned the copyright for that?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I don’t remember who took it. Do you remember who took the photo at the Oscars?
MATT: Bradley Cooper, right?
NASIR: Oh, yeah. Yeah, Bradley Cooper. So, it was well-established that, even though it was Ellen’s camera – a Samsung Galaxy S – was it S4 at the time?
MATT: I don’t know.
NASIR: This little plug-in, I’m sponsored by them, by the way, just so you know. We established that Bradley Cooper, as the photographer himself, was the one that owned the copyright to the image even though it was Ellen’s camera, even though it was maybe she’s the one that published it. So, this makes it interesting. Can a monkey own a copyright? Obviously not. But CNN actually goes through a nice little legal analysis to whether or not it’s possible that at least the camera owner owns the copyright and I started thinking about this because, okay, forget about it that it was an animal that actually took the photo, if I set a camera out to take a landscape photo and have it take a picture every five seconds or ten seconds or whatever – like, a time lapse or whatever – then I would obviously own the copyright. Even though a lot of people are saying, “Okay, well, this needs to go to court in order to actually determine because it’s kind of a sketchy area,” I can see an argument being made in proponents of the camera owner that it’s something similar. Like, if I left a camera in a certain position where let’s say that it only goes off if the animal goes by or there’s a motion detector, right?
Nasir and Matt kick off the week by talking about Uber's deceptive tactics against Lyft. They also answer the question, "I recently incorporated in California, but when I tried to file for a DBA, my name was taken. Should I be concerned about this?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt…
NASIR: And I’m Matt Staub – oh.
MATT: You’re both people today. Well, I’m Matt Staub, but you can be both of us if you can emulate my voice.
NASIR: And we’re both Matt Staub and welcome to the business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: All right. Well, I’m going to jump into it and I tease this a little bit if anyone follows me on Twitter that we were going to talk about this again because one of our favorite topics – or maybe not “favorite” but one of our most talked about topics – is Uber and it looks like they’re at it again. I think this is the most interesting story we’ve talked about with them. Basically, there’s been some investigative work by Lyft. For those of you that don’t know, Uber and Lyft are both essentially taxi cab-like services, more or less. So, Uber, what they’ve been doing over the last couple of years is ordering and cancelling rides through Lyft and a lot of them have been to Uber employees that have been doing it. They say roughly 5,000 rides from Lyft have been ordered and cancelled. You would think, you know, “Why would they do this?” It’s basically just to eat up Lyft’s time so they can’t take other rides because, supposedly, if someone would be deciding between the two, I guess, if you tried to get a Lyft and it was really backed up, you would just go to Uber. I only use Uber so I don’t know but I guess I know people that use both so maybe it’s whichever one is most available. Anyways, they’ve been doing that which is obviously an issue. And then, two, Uber employees have been requesting short rides via the Lyft drivers and, more or less, have been trying to convince them to switch over to Uber. That’s just a couple of things that have been going on.
NASIR: We were thinking about covering this earlier. This has been happening for a while now. There’s been a lot of stories about Uber’s very aggressive marketing tactics – both here and abroad – and, of course, there’s also the legal issues with the taxi cab industry, with whether they need to be licensed or not in particular cities, and that’s a separate issue. But one thing I noticed is that, this issue with Lyft, it’s not unique to that. Even the city of Seattle had issues with how they were marketing. They were gluing up stickers and flyers up on so-called city property and that would otherwise require a permit so they weren’t too happy about that. what I do notice, though, in most cases, especially with this whole cancelling of Lyft and so forth and trying to convince Lyft drivers to join up to Uber, they’re specifically trying to stay on the legal line of things in the sense that they’re getting right to the edge. I mean, there are laws about unfair business practices, and even dealing with competitors, but usually those unfair business practices are for protections of the consumer. Right now, it’s kind of crappy what they may be doing, but I don’t see a lot of legal liability there when it comes to it. What do you think?
MATT: Yeah, and that’s what we’re going to get down to – the legal side of it. Unfortunately, you’re right. I will say one thing about Uber; they’ve really done their research – not just with this but in general – and they’ve really pushed the legal limits of what they can do and I think they even had a statement come out saying, “We recruit hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs to build their own small businesses on the Uber platform where the economic opportunity for drivers is unmatched ...
Nasir and Matt close out the week by discussing how restaurants across the US are offering discounts to customers when the bring a gun with them. They then answer the question, "If I put a project up on Kickstarter and receive funds, do I owe taxes on it?"
The guys talk about the big payout LinkedIn made to its employees for backed pay. They also answer, "I wanted to incorporate as an S Corp but I heard there are restrictions. What rules do I have to follow?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also add our legal twist – almost like a lemon in a piece of fish or a drink of some sort. And then, we’ll also answer some of your legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: I want to know how you’re preparing your fish.
NASIR: You put, you know, a little bit of twist of lemon at the end, you know?
MATT: I guess. Usually, you’ll see that people will slice a lemon in, if you do some sort of grilling especially on a plank, they’ll put a slice on top and then that’s how it’s served. I don’t know. You can do a twist but…
NASIR: Of course, you always put lemon in. You know, it just depends on the fish. For any kind of fried fish or grilled fish, I like to put a little lemon at the end because I do tons of cooking. That’s all I do every day.
MATT: Ah, this podcast is basically like a fish is what you’re saying.
NASIR: Yeah, or a drink. You can put a little lemon twist in your drink.
MATT: I think that’s the better analogy, yeah.
NASIR: Oh, yeah.
MATT: A twist of lemon.
NASIR: Either way.
MATT: Oh, all right, well…
NASIR: A little twist of lemon in your lemonade is really good, too. Just a tad right at the end.
MATT: Well, before we get too off-topic, we’re going to talk about LinkedIn today. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a company where you can post your resume online, more or less. That’s how I look at it.
NASIR: I think that’s a very old school way of describing it. I think that’s how they started but, yeah, obviously, you were partly joking but still…
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: That’s funny.
MATT: A little bit tongue in cheek. But, I mean, that’s more or less what the site is. It’s basically your resume on there.
NASIR: LinkedIn is another one of those sites I just don’t 100 percent get yet. I will, someday.
MATT: But, apparently, they do a lot of business. Let’s see. They made $1.53 billion in revenue last year. That’s pretty solid. But they’re dealing with a lawsuit and I guess they actually are going to pay out money, $6 million to 359 employees in back wages and damages for unpaid overtime. It looks like we’re getting into an exempt/non-exempt issue.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I’m guessing that’s what happened with this.
NASIR: Well, I think it’s a mix of things because it looks like they also did not track certain hours and, you know, this exempt status in California for inside sales persons, it’s somehow unique to California. Not every state has this and there’s no such thing that I’m aware of for inside sales persons in the federal law but, in California where LinkedIn is based – but I don’t think a lot of these sales persons were actually in California – you can be exempt from overtime if you’re paid more than 1.5 times the minimum wage and you’re inside sales and so forth and even if you’re 100 percent commission or whatever. But, at the end of the day, you have to be paid at least more than 1.5 times the minimum wage. But, these other cases in the other states, it looks like, when all these people were working overtime, they weren’t tracking it which that’s more of an issue – when they are working overtime, you have no way to determine if they are and so, therefore, you’re never even going to know that you’re supposed to be paying overtime.
MATT: And the production comes with outside sales positions and I guess what this one was was inside sales commission employees. I think that’s one of the reasons that this ended up the way it is but, yes, the not tracking the overtime, too – that’s probably the bigger issue than the inside versus ...
Nasir and Matt get into the story that may rethink your decision for terminating someone for having a headache (migraine). They also answer the question, "I want to hire an employee from a competitor but I think he may have signed a non-compete. What can I legally do to steal him?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you have graciously sent in to our podcast at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com, including a question from someone we know that is in San Diego that… oh, wait.
MATT: That’s not today, though. Well, if they’re listening, they know we’ll address their question later in the week.
NASIR: Oh, that’s true. Yeah, they sent in a question – not by email, though – which I guess they can do. They can stop us and write a note and fold it and then hand it to us. That’s one way to do it.
MATT: Well, it wasn’t a note, but he or she just said, “Hey, I have a question for you,” and I said, “Okay.” They told me it and it was actually last week. It was actually, like, three weeks ago, I think – the last time I saw them.
NASIR: Three weeks ago?
MATT: And then, I said to them, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to actually use your question this week, if you’re fine with that. I’ll keep you anonymous,” and they said, “Yeah, that’s fine.” So, that wasn’t a great story.
NASIR: We should give a clue of who it is. Like, we should give a clue that it’s a male in San Diego.
MATT: Well, maybe. We’ll decide on how we want to handle it when we get to Friday.
NASIR: Okay, all right. Let’s just go to Friday now.
MATT: Ah
NASIR: So excited.
MATT: Well, we have something that’s less exciting I guess to talk about today. This deals with the FMLA which, for you those of you that don’t know, is the Family and Medical Leave Act. Basically, what this story comes down to is you can make an FMLA claim and it typically deals with, I think probably one of the biggest issues of this is usually pregnancy leave or things like that
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I mean, that’s usually when the FMLA gets brought up. But this deals with headaches and specifically migraine headaches. So, I don’t think I’ve ever had a migraine headache so I don’t know how bad it is for people.
NASIR: Have you known anyone with migraines?
MATT: Well, that’s what I was going to say. I know people that have had issues with it and I guess, when they get the migraine headaches, they just can’t really do anything. But, like I said, in my shoes, it’s hard to figure out how bad it is because I don’t think I’ve ever had one.
NASIR: Yeah, I’ve only experienced it through other people as well, but I know someone that gets it probably – I’d have to ask them but I would estimate – maybe once a month. When he gets them, he literally shuts himself off from the world, turns off all the lights because, you know, it creates a huge amount of sensitivity to light – you know, you can get nauseous and so forth, depends on how severe it is – and takes the medicine or whatever and just kind of sits there the whole day until it goes away and there’s not much they can do besides that. You know, he’s tried a number of different things but I’m just trying to highlight that the Family Medical Leave Act does provide for medical leave only to certain conditions. Obviously, a mere headache is not enough but the Department of Labor has considered migraines as to be covered under FMLA as a covered medical condition.
MATT: Yeah, and that’s basically what this is despite the fact that the picture is of a dog with an icepack on its head. I thought migraines were only for dogs until you just informed me.
NASIR: Well, yeah, it’s for people, too. And FMLA doesn’t cover dogs, I don’t believe. We’ll have to check into that.
MATT: Yeah, we’ll look into that.
Nasir and Matt get into the story about a woman being accused of trademark infringement after changing her middle name to "Skywalker." They also answer the question, "What is the agent for service of process and who can I use for my business?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Coming from a far, far away galaxy and this is our podcast where we cover business legal news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: You’re really amped up for this episode. Remember you mentioned on a previous episode – I can’t remember which one you were – if you were Star Wars or Star Trek.
NASIR: Star Wars, for sure.
MATT: Star Wars, for sure?
NASIR: Well, honestly, I just never watched Star Trek so I can’t even really judge but yeah.
MATT: Yeah. Well, you’re going to like the story that we have today and maybe you’re going to do this, too.
NASIR: Great! I’m excited!
MATT: It’s going to be some advice for you because I know you’ve mentioned before wanting to change your middle name.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: This is going to be your legal advice on how to do it correctly. So, this is a weird story but there’s this woman in Europe, in the UK, and she legally changed her name, her middle name, to Skywalker. You know, whatever, you can change your name, not that big a deal, you would think. She’d changed a bunch of official documents, no problems. I’m sure other people have the name “Skywalker” maybe as a middle name because people that really love Star Wars, they can see that happening. Anyways, on her passport, apparently, there was an issue because they said the name Skywalker actually infringes on a trademark that I would assume that George Lucas or whatever company runs the…
NASIR: George Lucas, he did sell some of the rights to create the movies to Disney which they’re creating the other ones, but I still think he retains most of the rights, if I recall, but I could be wrong.
MATT: So, basically, they were saying, “Hey, this infringes on a trademark, you can’t use this and this isn’t going to work.” So, long story short, she’s going to be able to get around it so far with some weird process of she’d have to submit a new form with her old signature, blah blah blah. But this can’t be the first time that someone has changed their middle name to this – or I can definitely see two parents that are obsessed with Star Wars making “Skywalker” a kid’s middle name, right? I don’t think this is the first occurrence.
NASIR: Exactly, and I find it very strange and I think it’s because she changed her name to that. Also, this is in the UK so it’s hard to really know what’s going on here, but it does show you the power of trademarks and copyright. You know, once you have it and you establish it and you enforce it, you have the home office in the UK of passports enforcing a law that they don’t even need to enforce necessarily. It doesn’t make any sense but it shows you that power.
MATT: Yeah, you’re exactly right. I mean, you wouldn’t even think this would be an issue, and I’m sure she obviously didn’t because she might have thought twice about it. But there is a lot of power. It’s like they say; it’s not about getting the trademark or whatever piece of intellectual property. It’s all about the defense. I mean, that’s where the power comes. The story doesn’t even say whether George Lucas or Disney even cared.
NASIR: No, I don’t think so.
MATT: I don’t see why they would care. If anything, she’s just appreciating their work. They stopped it before it could even get to that point. It’s just so weird. Like, Skywalker, I’m sure there’s people with other middle names that are trademarked as well. I don’t see what the problem is.
NASIR: And I can’t point to any specific case specifically but I’d be very surprised if some court found trademark infringement for som...
The guys talk about UrbanSitter, the company that matches up parents with prospective babysitters in the area. They then answer the question, "Can I get in trouble for having my employees give our competitors negative reviews on review sites?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is co-host, Matt Staub.
NASIR: Hey, can’t do that!
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Okay, it’ll be off but welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business legal news – actually, business news and then we add our legal twist to it – and then also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. And, oh, I did some research on dot-pizza.
MATT: And?
NASIR: So, apparently, they’ve been taking applications in 2014 but I can – or whoever handles these domain names – hasn’t yet released any dot-pizzas yet to the public so I think we can put our application in but we still have to wait. But it’s weird. The application process just seems like you just say that you want one. It’s not like you have to prove that you’re a pizza shop or anything. So, I may do that. But, if anyone knows anything about that, then we could use some help in understanding how that works. That’d be great.
MATT: If worst comes to worse, I make pizzas all the time. So, I think we can justify it.
NASIR: I think we can just add a pizza to the end of the website somehow.
MATT: Or change the logo to just a pizza.
NASIR: Yeah, that’d be great. All right, what do we have today?
MATT: This is a business that I had never heard of. Why would I have heard of it, I guess? It’s called UrbanSitter and it’s basically a way to – how would you describe this? Like a matchmaking way to find a sitter for your kids if you need one and it’s kind of like, at the same time, a mix between that and sort of reservations – like, dinner reservations.
NASIR: Yeah, I guess it’s that easy. To me, it’s kind of like an old tradition, right? I mean, you’ve had young babysitters being used for quite a while – since the dawn of time, I would say – and finding a way to easily find a babysitter for you – not that I have kids – I think is a great service. But it seems kind of weird to me because you’re trusting your kids with somebody. Finding someone that you can trust and using this third-party site, it reminds me of Uber, right? For whatever reason, we assume that, when we use Uber or Lyft or these other third-party services – or frankly even a taxi – that somehow the person that we’re getting in the car with is someone that we can trust. In general, I think you can trust most people. In this case, just because you’re using a third-party software doesn’t necessarily mean you can trust that babysitter.
MATT: That’s true, but it’s not like you just get matched with somebody and that’s that. I mean, there’s recommendations. I would assume that the company does some sort of background check on the possible sitters because I know other sites have done that. What’s pretty interesting about this though, they actually tried to launch this before Facebook even existed.
NASIR: Oh, interesting.
MATT: You know, that’s a long time ago – at least that’s what this article says.
NASIR: At least in internet times. It looks like they do some background checks and it’s paid for by the actual sitter – which is interesting – but we all know that background checks, they’re not foolproof, obviously, right? Second is I think this UrbanSitter is going to go through the same, especially when they start to get really popular which looks like now they have more than 35,000 sitters and 75,000 parents nationwide. But the point is that that they’re going to have the same problems as all these other sharing economies – whether it’s Airbnb or Uber or what-have-you. What happens if that babysitter does something wrong? I think the law is pretty much all there but the question is,
Nasir and Matt discuss how the Supreme Court will address the upcoming technology based cases on the docket.
They also answer, "What is the difference between a Trademark and Service Mark? Which do I need for my advertising golf cart business?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to our email address.
MATT: Which is…?
NASIR: Oh, ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: I’m glad I’m not a guest anymore, or else I would have not known that.
NASIR: Yes, you’ve been upgraded once again to co-host but, at any time, that is subject to change.
MATT: Great. We’ll see what happens. I think, last week, I was fine on Monday. And then, for some reason, I got downgraded Wednesday and Friday. I don’t know what happened.
NASIR: Well, you listened to Monday’s episode, right? Obviously, you should do some self-reflection there.
MATT: That’s true, yeah. I have to go back. I didn’t hear anything but I’ll go back and listen a second time. All right, well, I think this is going to gain a lot of publicity here as we get closer to it. We usually don’t talk about specific stories so much but I kind of need to talk about this story because it paints the picture as a whole. There’s all these big cases that are going to hit the Supreme Court here pretty soon – these big cases that deal with tech. What this article is basically saying is these nine people aren’t the best people to be making huge tech decisions and, like I said, it’s the Supreme Court. This is going to be the final word here and this is basically saying these aren’t the best nine people for making decisions on tech, on what the law is supposed to be. You know, he kind of details some of the justices. Some of this might be overblown. It talks about a couple of them really aren’t sure, haven’t really gotten to email, find Facebook and Twitter a challenge. I don’t know how true any of this is. I mean, I find it hard to believe that they don’t know how to use email. I don’t care how old you are. They’re obviously all pretty bright so I think they can figure it out and stuff like that. But, I mean, this is an interesting topic. Have you thought about this at all? Because I think it is going to be interesting if they get into some really complex issues, but this isn’t the first time, I’m sure, they’ve encountered issues they weren’t familiar with.
NASIR: Yeah, you’re right. It’s not the first time but, I think, in general, the Supreme Court is generally going to be older and they’re going to be of some – I think, in my personal opinion – kind of a status of which they’re not as in touch with most of the US population and I think, in general, whether it’s technology or not, a lot of people feel that way that a lot of the decisions that come out of the Supreme Court are sometimes a little bit distant from what’s actually going on in the ground. Eventually, that usually catches up. It just takes a little bit of time. But the system design to the law has not changed too quickly. But, from my perspective, one thing I think about technology is, when it comes to defamation. For example, the statute of limitations – and I’m not even talking about the Supreme Court but in most appellate jurisdictions in the state – for the statute of limitations for defamation is one year in most states, okay? That means that you have one year from the date of publication to bring your claim. Most states follow a single publication meaning it doesn’t matter if it’s republished over and over again. They look at the first publication. But where this comes into play that I think the law has not caught up with technology is that, when someone posts a defamatory comment online as opposed to a newspaper or a story,
Nasir and Matt talk about the New Jersey Highway complaining about infringement of its logo by a pizza shop in Florida.*
They then answer, "How long do I have to wait until I can terminate an employee who was on maternity leave?"
- Apparently toNew Jerseyans, the logo is alluring.
The guys discuss Fixed, the company that fights parking tickets in San Francisco. They also answer "In our industry a few competitors have very very vague patents. For example one has patented "exit intent" technology that pops up something when a user is about to leave a website. This feature essentially can be replicated in a few lines of code. Do patents like this hold up in court? Especially when there's lots of prior art? Should these patents prevent us from innovating or should we ignore them? Should we consider patenting our own vague features?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matthew Staub joining us today. Welcome to our business podcast that we cover business legal news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: I guess, if someone’s listening to this for the first time, they will not realize that I have been on the previous 73 episodes as well.
NASIR: As a guest, right?
MATT: As a guest. It’s the intro of Saturday Night Live where you have the actual cast members and then the featured players. I just got the bump up to the actual podcast host. I was a featured player for 73 episodes.
NASIR: No, you’ve been downgraded to just a guest. You were a co-host. Now, you’re just going to be a guest from now on.
MATT: All right, that’s fair.
NASIR: Sorry to inform you in this method but it was the best way I could think of and I think we should do a new service. Like, if we want to do a demotion or firing of someone, if one of our listeners wants to do that, they can send in the name of the person and have them listen to the podcast and we’ll do it on-air for them.
MATT: That’s like George Clooney’s business that he worked for in “Up in the Air” where he would travel around the country firing people.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, new service.
MATT: Which, I mean, I guess that would probably actually exist somewhere at least, right?
NASIR: Well, if anyone knows one, we’ve been trying to find a guest like that because we’ve talked about terminations in the workplace are one of the hardest things for a business owner to do – not only because it’s difficult to actually logistically do it but, also, it poses a lot of liability. And so, finding someone that has experience in that, that’d be great. If so, if anyone knows anyone, that’d be great.
MATT: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, there are a lot of things you need to be careful with. A lot of people would probably be fine with it but I would assume there are managers out there who don’t want to do it and they’ll probably bring in someone outside. That’s got to be the worst for an employee. You’re getting fired and your boss doesn’t even… He can’t even come in and fire you themselves. It’s pretty ridiculous. I wouldn’t be happy.
NASIR: Not to extend this off-topic but it reminds me of one of the very early episodes of The Office where Mike the boss is supposed to fire one.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Not only does he fire somebody and then takes it back and then he brings someone else in and then considers taking it back and then doesn’t want to take it back because he just took it back with somebody else. That was a great episode.
MATT: Yeah, it’s pretty good. Actually, for those of you who stuck with it all the way through in the last season – well, after Michael Scott leaves – Dwight actually hires back that guy who got fired in that episode. Devon, I think, is the name.
NASIR: Really?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I didn’t see that.
MATT: Yeah. Well, it was towards the very end. I think it might have been one of the last couple of episodes when Dwight took over. He’s like, “Yeah, actually, I hired Devon back,” or whatever his name was. A nice little callback. Yeah, because that was in the first season and one of the first episodes.
NASIR: Yeah, it was in the first season. I’ll have to check that out.
Nasir and Matt kick things off by discussing the Airbnb squatter who refuses to leave the condo he rented. They then answer the question, "Can my website be sued for publishing public records?"
Update: apparently the Airbnb squatter may haveraised some $40,000 on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter for a video game that never materialized, leaving scores of angry donors in their wake.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to the business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can submit to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and, if it’s a really short question, as Matt pointed out last week, you can send to your Twitter account @askbizlaw.
MATT: I think the question we have for this episode is definitely short enough. It wasn’t sent through Twitter but it would work so we might just write it in Twitter just so it’s in there but, yeah, it’s always good. It’s hard to write any sentence in under 140 characters but it’s doable.
NASIR: That’s why I don’t even do it. I just keep writing and it gets cut off.
MATT: It’s a challenge. Sometimes, when I’m trying to write a tweet, it gets pretty difficult. You have to abbreviate things, cut words out.
NASIR: It’s a whole mess – that whole concept.
MATT: All right. Well, we have a pretty interesting story here for this episode and we’ve talked about Airbnb and we’ve talked about it a few times and we talked about it pretty recently, too. We’re not going to talk about – well, we might actually end up talking about their awful logo but we’re going to talk about what happened here in California. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Airbnb, it’s basically a way to rent out space in the spot that you live. It’s kind of like a hotel in that sense but not like a hotel in terms of regulation or that’s arguable. Anyway, this person rented out their condo. She rented out her condo in California and I guess she did it for 30 days. The guy rented it out, 30 days. She’s like, “All right, it’s come to an end.” He basically is saying, “No, I’m not going to leave. At this point, it’s been 30 days. I’m entitled to certain rights in California and I’m just going to sit here until you evict me.”
NASIR: Ah.
MATT: Pretty awful situation for her. She’s just trying to make some money on the side. Yeah, California. Unfortunately, that’s just kind of the legal procedure and she is going to have to go through some sort of eviction process if she wants to get him out of her condo.
NASIR: Yeah, this is a total nightmare or horror story. I really think that this owner had no idea that this would even be a possibility. But what’s more important is that the person that moved in seemed to have every idea that this was going to happen because who would think that, like, okay, they’re staying for a month and you overstay and you know your legal rights that your power is going to get cut off. You’re like, “No, you can’t; if you do, that’s a violation and you have to actually go through the eviction process.” I mean, that’s just terrible.
MATT: I call these people backseat lawyers – like there’s backseat drivers. A lot of times, it’s people that think they knows these laws and they’re actually wrong or misinformed. In this case, the guy had done his researched and he knew he could get away with this for I think there’s up to even three months this could drag out. He’s basically going to be staying there. It’s a pretty unfortunate situation for her. Like I said, she has to go through the court process. She has to evict him from her place that she owns just because of the length of the stay that he had there.
NASIR: Yeah, and that’s what I’m wondering about – Airbnb’s side. They graciously gave the money back that whatever money that Airbnb collected from the owner, she was able to get some of it back at least – if not all.
The guys end the week by discussing the harsh employment standards surrounding reality shows. They then answer the question, "My friend has a file with over 10,000 pieces of debt that he received from a collection agency that went under. What legal steps do I have to take to just be able to sit in my house and call these people up and have them send me money?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our Friday episode of Legally Sound Smart Business – once again, I’m telling you the name so you don’t forget – where we cover business in the news and answer some of the business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @askbizlaw and, also, you can now participate in our weekly AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit on various sub-Reddits. Just search for “Legally Sound Smart Business”. You should be able to find us and participate.
MATT: If there’s anything this podcast is good for, it is repetition because the intro comes in before we talk, saying what the show is, and our names, and then we instantly say our names and the show multiple times.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: So, the first thirty seconds someone’s listened to this podcast, they should know who we are and what it is, hopefully. If not, then we’re just going to randomly shout it out during the middle of the show.
NASIR: Well, I agree. I think we should play the intro just in the middle of the show just so people know what’s going on but you are against that.
MATT: We do have a little sound break between the story and question but there’s no one speaking during that time.
NASIR: Yeah, we just need someone saying, “You are listening to Legally Sound Smart Business with Matt Staub and Nasir Pasha.”
MATT: Or some cool question of the day cut that we get someone to tell us. All right, I’m just going to get into the story. Going nowhere with this.
NASIR: All right.
MATT: So, I don’t really watch reality shows but I’m familiar with them. I’ve heard of Temptation Island. This story is about the real heroes of these reality shows – the crew that has to film. This is something I’ve always wondered, too. You’ll see all these crazy things and all this stuff but, as bad as it can get for the actual people on the show, it has to be ten times worse for the people filming it. This particular story with Temptation Island kind of evidences that. We’ll get into the legal side but I’ll give a little background. This person is saying, when they worked on the show, they worked in 90-plus degree heat for three weeks straight with no days off, “18-hour days and, every third night, I was required to pull an overnight shift. So, a 36-hour shift every third day.” I mean, there’s some issues with that, kind of – there definitely is – but they’re saying they were only paid $600 a week. They’re complaining about that. It breaks down to I guess $600 a week isn’t going to be enough if they’re working that many hours. I didn’t do the math in my head. It sounds like there’s some minimum wage issues just with all the overtime that they would be required to pay.
NASIR: But these guys are in Belize, right? It doesn’t even matter. These guys aren’t protected by anything. That’s the problem.
MATT: Oh, was this filmed out of the country? Yeah, that makes more sense then.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s the issue.
MATT: So, that was the financial issue. I guess they flew all the important people home first – the cast and all that – and then, I guess, a hurricane hit before the crew could fly back so they were stuck there for days. The summary of this is shows are really cheap with the actual crew and it’s pretty unfortunate for them but the problem is they can find other people to do it if these people that are complaining are going to continue to not want to do it.
NASIR: Yeah, and I’m just reading some of these comments because t...
Nasir and Matt talk about the recent Yahoo sexual harassment claim involving two women and answer, "Why is it that manufacturers refrain from mentioning one another in their advertisements (eg. "Tide cleans better than these other brands - bunch of white bottles with no labels")? This is observed with, well, basically every niche of the commercial market, with two exceptions I've regularly noticed, Pepsi vs. Coke and cars."
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and also follow our Twitter account where you can also ask questions @askbizlaw. I want to say “askbizlaw.com” but it’s just “askbizlaw.”
MATT: I don’t think we have that one.
NASIR: Twitter.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: We probably have the dot-pizza one.
MATT: Are you asking people to send their questions via Twitter?
NASIR: Yeah, that’d be cool.
MATT: That’s tough – limited number of characters.
NASIR: That’s true. I didn’t even think about that but we’re also accepting questions on Reddit. That was cool. We do that every week. We do an AMA. I have lots of options for you. If you have a short question, Twitter is good for it.
MATT: They’ll have to find out who we are on Reddit, I guess. It should be pretty obvious.
NASIR: Search “Legally Sound Smart Business” and then we should come up.
MATT: All right. Well, we have a pretty interesting story for today because it deals with a lot of different things going on. It’s a Yahoo executive. She and Yahoo in general are being sued by a former principal software engineer for sexual harassment and wrongful termination. Now, we’ve talked about similar things in the past but it’s typically been a male superior and the lawsuit’s been brought by a female – I don’t want to say…
NASIR: Inferior. Uh, subordinate.
MATT: A female employee. Now, we have a female executive or superior and also a female employee. That’s a little bit different. Also, typically, with these there’d be some sort of reaction from the company. Yahoo is just straight up denying any of this happening and is very strong in their stance.
NASIR: Yeah, that seems unusual.
MATT: Yeah, I won’t get into the specifics of this unless you want to, but we’ll link the article so they can read because there’s a lot of accusations made. This also is taking place in another country, too, I believe, right?
NASIR: I don’t think so. I thought it was still in California. I know the suit’s in California so I assumed it’s in California but maybe not. We’ll take a look. But, you know, what’s interesting about this is, well, first of all, again, Silicon Valley is another scandal when it comes to the workplace environment. We covered Tinder. There’s this other case with a Google executive who overdosed on heroine on his yacht and some kind of killing as well. Silicon Valley is just being hit with a lot of issues right now. But I think what people may find significant – and this isn’t the first time that it’s happened – it’s when you have a female supervisor that’s being accused of this. I think people need to understand that these issues, when it comes to sexual harassment and wrongful termination, they stem from having power over another. That’s the main issue and that’s the main concept of employment law protections because, when you have an employee, they’re in your control as opposed to an independent contractor where the control is a little bit more loose. But, when you have an employee, because of that control, you have certain obligations that you may not have as a non-employer and I think, even though people generally understand this, they may not understand the significance and how much they could become liable, especially in California, for things like these.
MATT: Yeah,
Nasir and Matt talk about Airbus's strategy to patent everything, including bicycle seats. They also answer, "Hi guys. I'm thinking of creating a university professor rating website just like RateMyProfessors.com but for my country (Lebanon). Can I do that? It's not gonna be an exact replica. Some things will be different. Do I need to take permission from RMP to do this? What about the universities? Now, I'm thinking about ways to keep it clean and moderated, but how legal is it for me to create a sort of medium to judge professors? Thanks."
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome! This is Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com but also we have a Twitter account now but I don’t know what it is. Actually, I do. You would think it’s, like, @legallysoundsmartbusiness, but I think it’s too long. So, I had to get @askbizlaw so you can tweet us there for questions as well.
MATT: @Askbizlaw, yeah. Looking at it right now.
NASIR: We have a total of three followers and they encompass myself and Matt and Pasha Law. Wow. Nice start of that.
MATT: It’s also following the same three people.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. That’s a good start.
MATT: It is brand new and you didn’t even tell me about it. I just saw it because it was following me.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: We haven’t really promoted it at all.
NASIR: This is the first time.
MATT: Yeah, we can’t even expect anyone to find it without us telling them beforehand.
NASIR: I didn’t even want to mention it in the podcast just in case it blew up. Twitter would kick us out for how many followers we would get. So, I was just kind of reluctant about that.
MATT: Yeah, it’s done that with other people.
NASIR: Yeah, don’t follow us right away – stream it out over the course of time if you would. Thanks.
MATT: All right, let’s get into the story that we have for today. This deals with Airbus and I’m not really that familiar with Airbus. I mean, I looked into it a little bit after reading the article but the story here is that they’re seeking a patent for bicycle seats in the cabins. People hate flying as is but, having these bicycle seats instead of normal seats, I can only guess would make flying worse. But, if you look into the article a little bit more, it’s not that simple. Basically, their strategy is this, they’re filing all these patents legitimately just in case the industry shifts over time and maybe all planes will eventually have these bicycle seats. They just want to have this locked down just in case that happens. I guess they do this with a lot of other patents. They just try to guess where the future’s going to go. If it goes that way, it’s good for them. But I can’t see planes shifting to these bicycle seats because no one’s going to want to fly on a plane with this.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, Airbus is basically the competitor of Boeing. Maybe people are more familiar with that. Boeing would be based in Washington, right? I think they’re moving or something. But, anyway, it looks like these seats are basically stacked like cattle. I think that’s the main component of this because, I don’t know if you’ve flown lately but it used to be that you used to have space on the plane, but now it’s like stacked up to the brim and I think they found a way to get more people on there.
MATT: It has to be the reason why they’re doing it the way they’re doing. “To increase the number of cabin seats, the space allotted to each passenger must be reduced.” I mean, like I said, no one’s going to want to take a flight where they’re sitting on a bicycle seat. I don’t like riding a bicycle because of the seat to begin with. I guess these can be nice, comfortable bicycle seats. But, even then, it’s still not very comfortable.
Nasir and Matt delve into the recently filed lawsuit by a sleeping fan against ESPN. The then answer the question, "Is it illegal for an employer to not pay an employee for training for a job? This is an hourly wage job, not contract. The location of the job is in California."
Transcript: NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub on a dead sprint right now. NASIR: Slow down, slow down. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallsoundsmartbusiness.com and also don’t forget to include your location because that gives us an idea of which law applies because every state has its own law. MATT: That’s true. It does make a big difference. NASIR: And sometimes city. MATT: We only know a couple of states. Hopefully only people are sending in the states that we know. NASIR: Yes, Alaska and Cuba. Wait, Cuba’s not a state. MATT: All right. NASIR: That’s only one state then. MATT: So, our Alaskan audience. I give credit to my wife for finding this story – even if she doesn’t listen to the podcast. She’s never going to hear the credit I’m giving her. T There’s always humorous lawsuits but this is a pretty funny one. This was pretty recently. I forget how long ago. In the last week or so, there was a Yankees-Red Sox game. For you, Nasir, and for other people that don’t watch baseball, baseball games are long but games between these two teams are known to be extremely long – like, four hours plus, every single game. NASIR: Oh, really? I didn’t know that. MATT: It’s a big rivalry and so there’s a lot of pitchers changing and all that stuff. But this was in the fourth inning so I don’t really know if he has an argument but basically this fan fell asleep in the stands on the top of the fourth inning and it was nationally televised on ESPN and the camera cut to him, sleeping, and then the two announcers who – you know, like I said – were the ESPN announcers just started making fun of this guy, cracking jokes with him. I listened to it, nothing too bad. But now this guy is suing ESPN for $10 million defamation lawsuit for the avalanche of disparaging words over his nap that he was taking in the stands. I don’t know. I think this is pretty hilarious. This just seems ridiculous that he would bring this lawsuit because he fell asleep and they were making a couple of cracks at him. NASIR: I’m trying to find the actual comments and the ones that I’m reading seem so benign, you know? Like, were they actual false statements? I mean, there are laws of privacy where putting someone in a false light and so forth but this is in a public place and disparagement is not a crime or illegal but defamation is and saying something that’s not true is, but that has to be a kind of a statement of fact and not an opinion and it seems they were, like you said, just kind of making cracks and jokes and making light of the fact that he’s falling asleep at a game which obviously baseball is one of the most interesting live action games in the world – of course, next to soccer which apparently you think is less interesting. MATT: Yeah, I did like how they tried to reach out to this guy. He wasn’t able to be reached – probably because he was sleeping – but his mom was able to be reached and her response was, “You should send the message that idiots need to stay out of people’s business and not make fun of people who are harmless.” I’m glad she gets the whole point of this lawsuit. NASIR: Yeah. Well, there’s truth to that, too. I mean, on one hand, I do feel kind of bad because we do live in an age where people can be put into like this public light. You know, all of a sudden, there’s videos on YouTube and it has tens of thousands of hits and now he’s known as the guy that fell asleep. It kind of reminds me of a Seinfeld episode when George was at a tennis game – probably a Wimbledon match or someth...
The guys talk about Yelp's complaints that Google is altering search results. They also answer, "In the Belford example and those working in "boiler rooms" they are convicted of using unfair selling tactics but what does that mean? Do salesmen not use unfair sales tactics when they psychoanalyze the client and use that to their advantage?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to Episode 68 where we cover business legal news and answer some of your business legal questions that you can send in as a listener to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. This is our jogging episode of the week.
MATT: Yeah, slowly picking up. 68 seems like a lot. I wouldn’t have guessed that. Probably I would guess, like, 38 maybe.
NASIR: I was going to guess, like, 67 or 69.
MATT: Good guess.
NASIR: About 68.
MATT: Ah, if you got 69, Price is Right rules, I still would have won. You’ve got to guess under. All right, what do we have on the jogging episode here?
NASIR: By the way, anyone that didn’t listen to Monday’s episode has no idea what a jogging episode is but that’s okay.
MATT: Yeah, they’ll figure it out.
NASIR: If you haven’t listened to Mondays’ episode, go back two days ago – Episode 67, I believe, if my math is correct.
MATT: This is, like, 24 and you need to start. You can’t just jump into the middle of it. If you’ve never listened to an episode, you’ve got to start at one and you’ve got to work your way up to 68. Everything connects.
NASIR: Everything connects.
MATT: Not true. If you enjoy this topic, then just listen to this one.
NASIR: And events occur in real time.
MATT: Very good, I like that. All right. So, we have a dispute between Yelp and Google.
NASIR: I choose Google.
MATT: So, no one’s going to feel sympathy for Yelp in this situation but, basically, what Yelp is claiming is Google is altering search results to put their Google sponsored content higher than Yelp’s stuff. I mean, I’m just thinking, when I Google something – like, the most common thing, a restaurant – probably what’s going to pop up is the restaurant’s website but, like, one of the first or second things that pop up is usually their Yelp page because that’s what people go to. I mean, a Yelp page is actually going to tell you more than a restaurant website ever will. Plus, you can get the link for the website on Yelp anyway. But Yelp is complaining that Google is unfairly altering the search results. I think you and I are probably on the same page here. I think we’re probably going to side with Google on this one.
NASIR: Yeah, just because we hate Yelp. By the way, the technical term is “SURP” which is the Search Engine Result Page rank.
MATT: Ah, gotcha! Interesting.
NASIR: Talk about SURPs and SEO. I guess that’s not interesting at all. But, anyway, what was interesting is that the only reason we know Yelp thinks this way is because documents of Yelp was released and TechCrunch published some of them. First of all, this may be an issue for Google, especially in the EU, they’re a little more strict when it comes to shutting down monopolies and I think they’ve declared Google as a monopoly when it comes to search engines so, if they unfairly put up their results that they like over others, then that might be construed in such a way and, you know, Yelp builds probably a good case. But, look, any business owner that talks about SEO and thinks about SEO and as far as their marketing plan has had trouble one day or the other with their rankings on Google. Frankly, Yelp, being a target for ex-employees and your competitors to leave bad reviews for you, I don’t really care if Yelp goes down on the list, frankly – at least for our clients’ sake, right?
MATT: Yeah, a lot of the stuff that’s on Yelp, I mean, people are going to find that stuff anyway. People want to see Yelp reviews so they’re just going to search out.
Nasir and Matt discuss one website's struggle with regulating user generated content, an issue they've discussed with Yelp in the past. They then answer the question, "I work for a firm doing a temporary assignment on a client's work site. The firm calls me an "exempt hourly contractor employee" and deducts tax contributions per my request, but says I am an independent contractor. Does that make sense? I work at a fixed hourly rate."
Nasir and Matt finish up social media week by talking about Tinder suspending its co-founder for a potential sexual harassment lawsuit. They then answer the question, "The general provisions at the end of contracts; how necessary are they and are there any that are musts to include?"
The guys talk about the Irish Pub that conducted a hiring search through the use of Snapchat. They then answer, "I am setting up a team for my startup company. Who are the essential people we need to have?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions and put in our legal twist to those business news topics that I just referenced beforehand.
MATT: It started out so strong.
NASIR: But, ah, welcome to our podcast anyway, nonetheless.
MATT: It seemed promising. Hopefully, the episode doesn’t go like that, too. I guess we’ll have to see.
NASIR: Well, I’m excited because this is Social Media Week, apparently.
MATT: Yeah. Yeah, not by plan, just by coincidence.
NASIR: Speak for yourself.
MATT: As teased in the last episode, today, we’re going to be talking about SnapChat and this is pretty intriguing – an Irish pub only accepting job applications through SnapChat. Now, if you’re not familiar with SnapChat – unless you’re under the age of 15, I guess you might not know – it’s basically a way to send pictures and I think videos as well to another person like a text message, but the thing is it disappears after ten seconds. I think you can it make anywhere from two to ten seconds – whatever it is. If I wanted to take a picture, let’s say I see something cool, I take a picture, I send it to you, you can see it for ten seconds, and then it disappears. That’s it. So, this Irish pub is using this technology to try to find new people for the positions they’re trying to fill. I guess I’m confused because I don’t know how this is really going to work. I mean, I get how we just want you to make a good first impression and do it in a condensed period of time. But, first of all, you can’t really even do that much in ten seconds. I mean, maybe you can – I don’t know – but I don’t really see how the follow-up is going to work. Is the person’s information on there and you just have to write it down really quick? It just seems too burdensome.
NASIR: Now, I know you use SnapChat – like, every day – but, when someone messages you, you know who to message back, right?
MATT: So, I do have the app and how it worked is I downloaded it and then it basically just pulled my contacts list and told me every person on my contacts list that was also using it and then I could add people based on that. I think there was maybe 30 of my contacts also had it. If I wanted to, I could add them and then they would be my SnapChat contacts and that was that. I don’t know how it’s going to work for this pub.
NASIR: But, if I’m not in your contacts and I message you – which I’m probably not in your contacts, I wouldn’t be surprised – if I message you and you see the image that I sent you for 20 seconds then it goes away, are you able to somehow respond to me?
MATT: Yeah, you can respond.
NASIR: Okay. So, I wonder his responses are. Is it like a picture? “Hey, I want to interview you,” and then it goes away for 20 seconds and then that’s it?
MATT: I guess, yeah. But, I mean, how do you send follow-up correspondence? Is it just a constant string of ten-second messages? It seems way too difficult.
NASIR: Yeah, not only do I not get SnapChat, anyone that actually uses it as some kind of useful utility seems just ridiculous to me. But what’s crazy is this bar or pub received over 2,000 applications – if you want to call it that – or 2,000 SnapChats. Out of those, he’s already interviewed about 15 and hired 6. He’s going to hire about 20 total which is a lot of hiring for a pub but maybe they’re just starting out but, you know, interesting.
MATT: I wonder if the interviews are conducted over this as well. He asks a question and you have ten seconds to answer.
NASIR: Oh, that’s great. It doesn’t make sense to me but, hey, you know,
Nasir and Matt kick off social media week by discussingthe waitress who got fired for going on a Facebook rant after poor tipping. They also answer, "Our company has really taken off but we now need some tech work done. Should we just buy some software or bring in someone in-house?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and also put in our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Are you just going to not talk about the fact that, apparently, some of the guys – actually, I guess, the whole US men’s soccer team listened to the podcast on Monday hearing that you said that you thought they were going to lose. I guess that deflated them for the match on Tuesday. You’re basically to blame. The whole country is blaming you right now.
NASIR: Well, I had a lot of money running on that game. Luckily, I won. No, just joking. Ah, yeah, well, it’s a sad affair. It was a well-fought game though.
MATT: A tough one.
NASIR: Very. By the way, we’re referring to the Wimbledon match, right?
MATT: Yeah. Well, I watch that as well but I guess we turned to Costa Rica? I don’t know who to root for. There’s eight teams left. I guess you root for the team that’s in your own section or qualifying division – unless you have some sort of ties, like your family is from somewhere.
NASIR: I’ve always enjoyed watching Germany play. They also came out the same group as US so Germany and Costa Rica are my teams. Costa Rica is more of a Cinderella hope and Germany is more likely to win.
MATT: Right. I guess we’ll see what happens. We’ll keep the audience updated for those who don’t watch.
NASIR: Yeah, basically, you could get all your scores updates from this podcast – like, a week later.
MATT: I don’t know when the final is.
NASIR: Final is I think a week from Sunday.
MATT: We’ll probably be recording when we have the final two teams or just about the final two.
NASIR: Yes, exactly.
MATT: We’ll make our predictions then.
NASIR: Well, we should get to this podcast that we’re doing.
MATT: What do we have for today? All right, this is a pretty interesting story and I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has happened. It’s the most recent time this has happened at least. So, a waitress in Ohio just got terminated but not for maybe a reason you would think – because she went home and complained on Facebook about getting poor tips for the night. Apparently, she was Facebook friends with someone who had been a customer that night and saw it, printed it out a screenshot of the complaint from this girl’s profile, brought it into the restaurant and then they fired her which is kind of humorous. I mean, it’s kind of stupid on the waitress’ part if she knew – unless she had a million friends on Facebook. I think I would know any time a friend of mine on Facebook was someone I was waiting on but, I don’t know, that’s just me. This is pretty interesting because, with new technology, there’s new ways to get fired from a job.
NASIR: Yeah, I think Facebook status comments and private messages are probably the best way to terminate your employee, in my opinion. Maybe even have an exit interview just through some Facebook messaging. That would be interesting. Have a third-party witness somehow in there.
MATT: Mark Zuckerberg.
NASIR: Yeah, he’s spying on you anyway. I was trying to think, you know, this is pretty interesting. Why is this news in the first place? Is she complaining that she was fired? Did she feel that she was wrongfully terminated?
MATT: That would have to be the case, right? I don’t see why this would get picked up otherwise other than her reaching out to someone and here’s what I’m guessing happened – she gets fired, she goes and talks to an attorney who is like, “Oh,
Nasir and Matt celebrate America's birthday by discussing the newest decision in the hotdog in the eye at a baseball game case and the legal side of the 4th of July. They then answer, "I gave my employees the option to take the 4th of July off. Everyone except one employee decided to take the day off. I was planning on not going to the office but now do I have to show up for this one person? All my employees are hourly."
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is a very patriotic Matt Staub.
NASIR: Oh, nice. Our patriotic episode of our business legal podcast where we cover business news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallsoundsmartbusiness.com and dot-USA, but not really. Don’t send it there.
MATT: Dot-USA? That’s…
NASIR: No, it’s dot-US.
MATT: Oh, dot-US, okay.
NASIR: I don’t think they have a dot-US.
MATT: Yeah, which you actually will see. I’ve actually seen those. Those exist already.
NASIR: Yeah, I don’t know if dot-USA exists though. Will it exist? Someday.
MATT: It will after this episode, that’s for sure.
NASIR: Definitely.
MATT: It’s all going to be American themes. Sorry to our international listeners.
NASIR: We apologize, Nigeria!
MATT: What’s more American than hotdogs and baseball? This is a story we talked about. It’s been a while ago now.
NASIR: Episode 1.
MATT: I don’t know if it was Episode 1.
NASIR: Oh, Episode 2.
MATT: You’ll get it right eventually. I mean, I don’t remember which one it was but it was about the fan who was at a baseball game. I think it was a Royals game and he got hit in the eye with a hotdog by Slugger, their mascot, and a Missouri Supreme Court has just ruled – just now, I’m getting a live feed – that it is not an inherent risk of watching baseball – a flying hotdog flying towards you is not an inherent risk – which I think, in my opinion, you know, I’ve been to a lot of baseball games, I don’t know if I agree with this just because, when you go to a baseball game, you know that there is the risk. A ball could be flying at you, depending on where you’re sitting, it could be flying very fast at you and depending on where you’re sitting too, a bat could come into the stands. Hotdogs – I could knock a hotdog down if it’s flying towards me. If a baseball is flying at me as fast as it is off a bat, I can’t knock that down.
NASIR: But what if he was sitting at a place where sometimes, you know, it depends where you’re sitting as far as the amount of risk. And then, also, if you’re watching the game and paying attention, then you also have lesser risk because then you can possibly see a ball or a bat coming.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But a hotdog? This guy was damaged pretty bad. Like, his retina was detached or something like that. Had to get a new eyeball.
MATT: I agree. Obviously, there’s a lot of breaks in baseball between innings and between the top and the bottom of the individual inning. So, if baseball is not going on, that’s I’m assuming the time they’re throwing the hotdogs out so you’re not expecting anything to be happening at that time. I guess he does have an argument in that sense. Obviously, he has that argument because he ended up winning but…
NASIR: At the same time, why doesn’t Kansas City just pay for this? I mean, this guy got hit by a hotdog and his retina was detached. It’s like, just pay it. I mean, you have insurance to at least cover some of it.
MATT: This is why I’m here – because you don’t follow baseball. If you did, you would know the Royals have had a long period of bad… I think it’s been 25 years since they’ve been in the playoffs. It’s been a long time. So, I just think it’s one bad thing after the other. That’s probably the reason they didn’t do it. This is something they should have just taken care of.
NASIR: It’s probably the insurance companies that are fighting the claim anyway so it may not even be in th...
The guys welcome franchise owner Michael Davis to discuss his Cartridge World franchise and his experience as a franchise owner. They also answer the question, "How worried should I be about the arbitration clause in my employee agreement and does this force me to only arbitration?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And thank you for joining us. This is our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can submit to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Here we go! Mid-week, I wonder is US won their game yesterday. I predict not, unfortunately.
MATT: Wow. What a terrible way to start off the episode.
NASIR: I know, it’s a downer. Well, hopefully, I’m just proven wrong.
MATT: Yeah, I hope so. Our audience is going to stop listening too, unless we have a lot of audience listeners in Belgium.
NASIR: Yeah, they’ll be depressed and won’t want to listen to our show.
MATT: That’s fine.
NASIR: I think our show is uplifting. Anyway, I think we have a good topic today because we have franchise owners as clients and we cover franchises all the time on our podcast. We get questions like this but today we actually brought in a franchise owner, Michael Davis. He’s the owner of a Cartridge World franchise in Atlanta, Georgia. Michael, welcome to the program. MICHAEL: Thank you, gentlemen. Glad to be here!
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ve talked about in the past how other franchise owners can have an effect on the franchise itself. It comes with the good and the bad, right? I mean, there was this one case we covered in New York where there was a Domino’s franchisee who stupidly fired all his employees for an illegal reason and, of course, had to bring them back and so forth. But those kind of things can have a negative effect but, at the same time, your successes also have a positive effect as well. Michael, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the franchise world in general and this little kind of secret family that I think a lot of people aren’t aware of? MICHAEL: Sure! Again, my name’s Michael Davis and I’m the owner of Cartridge World. We’re the world’s largest remanufacturer of ink cartridges – up to 30 percent less than the national big buck stores. There’s 1,400 of us globally. We’ve been around for six or seven years. Now, the beauty of franchises, much like you said, is you’ve got a known brand entity which you don’t have to build over time. It’s already there. You already have a support system from corporate in terms of marketing, operational, and other experience sets. The other parts you also have which you alluded to a few moments ago were business partners rather than franchisers who are going through the exact same experience you are that perhaps have different experience set that you. Really, you’re business partners. So, if you’ve got a situation like the pizza franchise you talked about, that’s a business partner of yours even if they’re across town because they’re damaging your brand. One wrong customer experience, they’ll tell ten people. One great customer experience, they might tell one person. You really can’t put a cost on that because, in the franchise business, the cost of new customer acquisition is huge but a damage control that you have to do from a bad experience from a franchise partner across town is priceless in a negative way. I’m a big advocate of franchisers because you have much of it already done. What you have to do as a franchise or within that structure, you have all that support and experience to figure out what is your unique brand going to be in your community. How are you going to differentiate yourselves in your ten miles of your graphic area? Are you going to partner with schools? Are you going to partner with non-profits and churches and do fundraising?
Nasir and Matt attempt to do a World Cup themed episode, as they discuss the recent Supreme Court case about patents and answer, "If I sell items online, can I have them agree to the contract by checking a box that no one reads?" Transcript: NASIR: Goal! Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Welcome to our World Cup themed episode. Everything we’re talking about is World Cup. We’re not even going to talk about the law. It’s become a sports podcast only for today and only the World Cup. MATT: I don’t know if you saw and I don’t want to get too off tangent but, well, I guess, from what you said, this isn’t off tangent. We’re recording this the day after the US lost in the group stage but ended up advancing. I don’t know if you saw Denny’s when they posted something on their Twitter – how they were really sad that the US lost because they thought they were eliminated but they ended up advancing because they didn’t understand how the rules worked. NASIR: It may have just been like an automatic thing. Like, if they lose, just automatically tweet this or something. But that’s kind of embarrassing. I wonder how they corrected that. MATT: Yeah, only in soccer could you lose and the team that’s possibly take your spot could win and you still advance somehow. NASIR: That’s not true. MATT: I understand how it works. NASIR: That is not true. No, no, no. First of all, the NBA playoffs are the same way, by the way, because you can lose a game. MATT: What I’m saying is you can’t lose your last game in a certain round and advance in any other sport. NASIR: Okay. Yeah, I can see that. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: That’s true. It is a point system but anyway what’s our first World Cup story for the day? MATT: Well, I don’t know if this is World Cup. NASIR: I promised everyone World Cup theme so we’ll have to tie it in somehow. MATT: I’ll see if I can. This comes from the Supreme Court in the United States who has made the World Cup Final 16s. NASIR: That’s right. MATT: That’s the tie-in. But it’s more patent stuff. It’s a topic we frequently talk about on the podcast because, you know, I think I can speak for both of us. We’re both anti-patent trolls and I think a lot of people are other than the few attorneys that are holding on to these patents and trying to make money off of it. NASIR: Just to specify, I am anti-patent trolls but not anti-troll. MATT: Okay, good to know. Good clarification. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 – a shut-out in soccer terms – basically saying that you actually have to make something in order for the patent to be legit. It can’t just be an idea. We’ll post the link and people can read the specifics but, I think, overall, obviously, this is going to be a really good thing moving forward. We’ll see what kind of effect it has but this is a good step in the right direction. NASIR: Yeah, I think it is, but I started actually reading it and seeing some of the commentary, it just seems like this was a bad example because, if you look at the actual patent, it was just very general and it had to do with some financial trading systems and this is actually a ten-year-old case in the sense that this has been developing for a while with multiple lawsuits. But, just to break it down in simple terms, the original patent was to patent an idea of how they do a certain financial analysis and let’s just do this financial analysis using a computer. I know that sounds very generic but, from what I’m reading, it wasn’t more specific than that and the Supreme Court just made it very simple that that’s not patentable. I think the criticism for this particular decision – or at least as far as the reaction to it – is that, in reality,
Nasir and Matt again talk about Yelp, this time with its new chat feature. They then answer the question, "What's the most important thing to include in a noncompete agreement?"
Nasir's note: here is the link to the site he deemed much better than Yelp:http://talkto.com/.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our business podcast where we cover business news and also add our legal twist to the business news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener who are businesses that can send at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: You said the word “business” quite often in that intro.
NASIR: I just want to emphasize that we’re focusing on businesses.
MATT: This has been the week of intros where I’ve critiqued. I’ve never listened prior to this week.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I’m finally listening so every episode’s been a critique of your intro. I think, eventually, we’ll get a pretty good one.
NASIR: Usually, it’s me just saying how perfect the intro is and then we just get started. This time, it’s like you saying the opposite which hurts my feelings.
MATT: Yeah. So, speaking of critiques we have, we need to keep track of how many times we talk about these different companies because we’re going to talk about Yelp again.
NASIR: Our nemesis.
MATT: I don’t know how I feel about this. I think, as a business owner, I wouldn’t want it. So, now, customers can direct message you on Yelp as a business owner. A customer can go to Yelp, type in blah blah blah restaurant o what-have-you, and instead of just posting a review or looking through, they can now just I guess essentially chat with you on Yelp. Of course, this is an optional thing so businesses can disable it and not even deal with it. But I feel like this is just going to be… I guess I don’t see the value in this. It seems like this is going to be such a hassle for business and what if a bunch of your competitors are doing it? Then you’re going to feel obligated as a business owner to also do it because they might think that you’re not there and, also, at the same time, it’s going to tell you how long people have been waiting to get a response. I feel like the businesses are going to have to hire someone just to handle this.
NASIR: Yeah, I guess it depends. I don’t know how they actually receive it – whether the business owner gets a text message or an email or whatever – but one thing that I don’t like is it’s just another way for Yelp to kind of dig in their claws in the dependence of these businesses, you know, in the sense that, more and more now, it’s not getting any better for these small and medium-sized businesses that get these wacko reviews from the competitors or from previous employees or what-have-you and there’s very little that they can do about it on the Yelp side, especially if they’re put up on a dummy account or whatever and we’ve talked about this in the past. But, now, it’s another reason why these businesses are going to be dependent upon Yelp which I just wish there was a better competitor… I guess there is competitors to Yelp – I guess Google Places and I don’t know what else but I’m sure there’s other directors. But the problem is just Yelp is just so prominent. Otherwise, a lead is a lead, right? If it’s convenient to the customer and they contact the business that they may not have otherwise because of that then I guess that’s good for business. But, long-term-wise and big picture, I’m not necessarily too cool about it.
MATT: Yeah, I guess I’m wondering too. I just can’t think of a situation where I would want to ask the business a question. The only question I really ever have for a business is, you know, “How late are you open?” And so, you could find that on the Yelp page. It doesn’t really matter. But, like, what is someone going to chat with a business about?
The guys welcome the CEO of Klean Kanteen, Jim Osgood, to discuss why his company decided to become B Corp certified and the positive effects the certification has had. Jim also provides his perspective on the question, "One of our employees does great work and isn't breaking any office rules, but we have noticed he is posting very questionable content on his social media. Can we fire him for this since he lists us as his employer on his profiles?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast. This is where we cover business news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. As I’ve said before, soon to be dot-pizza. I’ve looked it up and it is definitely coming – just not yet – TBD.
MATT: I’m glad you took my advice from the last episode and varied your intro. It did sound a little bit different so I do appreciate that.
NASIR: Okay, that’s good. What do we have to the start of the show here today, Ji—Matt? I called you Jim which, of course, is the name of our guest.
MATT: Well, now you ruined the surprise.
NASIR: I know. I messed up.
MATT: So, in the last – I was going to say “couple of months” but, really, all of this year and some of the last year, there’s been a lot of people that I know have approached me or contacted us and asked about wanting to start a company but wanting some social good behind it, too. I think a lot of people do some preliminary searching and stumble across this B Corp idea. They might not know a lot about it but that’s typically a lot of the phone calls or contacts that I get is people saying, “Hey, I want to start this company, I want to do something good, not just be all about making money. How about this B Corp idea?” It is a cool idea and not every state currently allows it but it is out there for a good chunk of states. I think almost half of them now. In California, it’s still relatively new as well.
NASIR: Yeah, I think California has been around for probably four or five years, I want to say, but I’m lind of guessing there. I know it’s been a little bit of time and I know Delaware now has it, too. So, some of the more important states for these corporations are there. But let me just break down here. Benefit Corporations – or I should say “B Corps” – is a legal status. It kind of depends. Colloquially, they’re used kind of synonymously but it can mean different things. But, basically, that kind of legal status, basically, it’s a for-profit corporation but the difference is that the shareholders can hold the company accountable differently in a sense that, in a for-profit corporation, the board of directors and their officers have to take the best interest of the company by making as much profit as possible. But, whereas, in a benefit corporation, they could also choose to add on a public benefit as a standard of their success, so to speak. And so, they’re not held to the same kind of fiduciary duty as they would other companies to their shareholders. But then, on top of that, there’s this whole benefit corporation certification that a third-party, I think there’s at least one, I think there might be another main out there that goes through this process. And so, to kind of get a better idea of how this works, we brought in Jim Osgood, he’s from Klean Kanteen. Welcome to the program! JIM: Great to be here, guys. Thanks for inviting us!
NASIR: Absolutely. Klean Kanteen is a B Corporation, certified by B Labs, correct? JIM: That is correct. We were certified in October of 2012 and we are also, since that time, a registered benefit corporation of California.
NASIR: Very cool. So, just to define that, your legal status as a benefit corporation in California but then you’ve been certified by B Labs, is that correct? JIM: That is correct.
Nasir and Matt kick things off by discussing the U.S.Patent and Trademark Office canceling the Washington Redskins' trademark registration. They then answer the following for a dentist from Napa, California, "We have a handfull of clients who owe us money. Some are a couple days late and some are months outstanding. At what point should we sue, or at least threaten suit?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business news and put in our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. No other comment.
MATT: It sounds like you recorded this at a different time and we just throw this in every time because it always sounds the same. I need some variation for future episodes.
NASIR: Yeah, I know. I like to comment on the intro as well but I was trying not to this time but you brought it up.
MATT: Fair enough. We’re going to get into a topic that I know you love and that’s sports. I guess it deals with sports. So, this will be coming out on Monday. I’m sure people have heard this story by now. It’s not like it’s a new story because it’s been going on for years and years. but the Washington Redskins – professional football team, for your purposes, just to let you know – obviously, it’s the Redskins and that’s a term that a lot of people find offensive, especially nowadays, maybe not back in the 1930’s when they started, but they’ve taken a lot of heat over the last couple of decades and, you know, as of this past week, the US Patent Office cancelled all the Redskins trademark registrations saying the name is disparaging. Basically, what this means is anyone’s free to use “Redskins” in terms of memorabilia, what-have-you. But I think there’s greater ramifications than just that.
NASIR: Yeah, and this doesn’t apply to the logo itself – just the name. So, you could name your football team Redskins now. But they may appeal it, too. So, we’ll see. What’s interesting about this, and this is more on the legal side of things to make it fun for us lawyers to look at, this was challenged back in 1999 or 1992 or something like that, and that was appealed. So, the USPTO, they rejected the trademark but it was appealed by the Redskins. The reason the Redskins won at that time was there was this legal theory called latches which basically just means you delayed your appeal. They’ve been using this for years. Therefore, you can no longer try to move to reject this trademark because it’s disparaging. But then, what happened is the latest iteration of this legal action involves an 18-year-old petitioner who wasn’t of age at the time so could not have brought an action in the first place. So, this whole latches theory no longer stands. It’s a very clever legal trick to get this going but, obviously, it worked so far. Even though the title of all these news agencies say the USPTO cancelled Redskins’ trademark, that’s true, but it was not on their own accord. It was something that was moved by a third party.
MATT: Yeah. So, pretty crazy loophole. It’s kind of surprising nothing too series has happened between now and then. If you pay attention to sports at all, you should have seen, this has been going on for years. They just take heat constantly from people, especially the Native American community, that are just criticizing the use of Redskins because they find it offensive and there’s been other sports teams – maybe more collegiate and NCAA teams – that have ended up changing their names because it was offensive to certain people.
NASIR: I think people might be surprised to know that basically any trademark can be challenged because it’s disparaging. That definition of disparaging obviously can change over time as it has now – maybe, as you mentioned, before it may not have been an issue but, obviously, now,
Nasir and Matt get World Cup fever as they delve into insurance coverage for the big event. The guys also answer the question, "I own a restaurant. Can I help get to the new minimum wage by giving them a $1 food credit each hour?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. This is our Friday episode – my favorite.
MATT: Yeah, I think it’s what is it? Follow Fridays on Twitter so this is a good opportunity – if you’re listening to this on a Friday morning – I guess you can’t follow us because we don’t have a Twitter for the podcast but what’s the closest thing? You could subscribe on iTunes.
NASIR: Just follow us around where we go, you know, and that’s fine, too. Just stalk us.
MATT: Yeah, I take my gigantic mic with me everywhere I go, just in case I need to record something. So, it’ll be easier to spot me on the streets.
NASIR: And your computer, too, of course, it has to be connected somewhere. So, just follow us around and you can listen in to our live recordings.
MATT: Always ready to record.
NASIR: All right, what have we got here? World Cup is well on its way by now even though we’re recording this early. I hope we’re covering the world Cup again, right?
MATT: Yeah, this is actually very pertinent to right now as we’re recording because there’s a match going on where it’s raining pretty heavily. What we’re going to talk about today is insurance involved with the World Cup and one of the things is the weather – if there’s any sort of delay – you know, if they’re going to play in rain – but, if there’s lightning, for example, they can’t play, obviously. But what this gets to is they talk to the main insurance underwriter for the World Cup and, as you can imagine, this is a pretty big deal to be in this position. The World Cup happens once every four years and internationally is just a massively followed event. So, there’s obviously a lot of types of things that can go wrong and there’s a lot of insurance that’s going to be put into place in order to combat those issues that might arise. I mentioned weather but, you know, soccer, the fans can get a little bit rowdy so there’s destruction concerns as well but there’s lots of other things.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, coupled with the fact that it’s in Brazil and I think everyone’s been listening about some of the issues surrounding the games there. You know, it’s a developing country. There’s a lot of poverty there and you have all these games being built up. I remember, even when I went there, they were actually moving some of the shanty towns and basically the shanty towns that were next to the main streets, they were actually putting in nicer housing there. But then, behind, just leaving it just as is. Basically, when you drive through it, it looks better, but it’s just almost a façade. There’s that going on. Then, of course, some of these stadiums aren’t even completely built yet. There’s a game tomorrow which is the England game which I’ll be watching. This is tomorrow, Saturday. That’ll be fun. I heard that stadium is not up to standard yet but hopefully nothing happens.
MATT: Well, I did see that some of the fields there, there was just videos of people using green spray paint to spray paint the fields because it was just dead in areas. Kind of funny. I mean, it’s not like it’s the end of the world if there’s some dead spots. I mean, I guess it looks prettier on TV.
NASIR: That’s not as bad as if it’s like any kind of structural integrity issues which that’s what I thought they were implying. I mean, that’s fine. All they need is a field. They don’t need grass necessarily everywhere either. It is Brazil.
MATT: Yeah, and another thing too is this is one reason why th...
Nasir and Matt talk about the recent lawsuits filed against companies in Manila about spam texting. They then answer, "We have a PTO system in place that allows employees to take days off, but many of my employees are requesting the same days off because of the World Cup. Can I prevent some from doing this?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: We both remembered our names. Great! This is our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can submit to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Yeah, if they can get through typing in the name, sometimes, the questions are shorter than the actual email address they type in to.
NASIR: That’s true. Well, that’s the biggest obstacle – getting the email right. If you get that right, then you’re more likely to get the question answered.
MATT: That’s true.
NASIR: More likely.
MATT: That’s definitely the case, I would hope.
NASIR: So, what have we got today?
MATT: We’re going to go international with our story for today.
NASIR: Nice.
MATT: Based out of Manila here but it’s two companies that are facing a lawsuit for what’s text spam. Obviously, people know what spamming is and what texting is so I think they can piece together that, you know, what happened in this situation that people were just getting text spam messages. I’m sure it’s happened to everyone. I know I get them from time to time. Sometimes, it’s just gibberish. Sometimes, it’s a link. Sometimes, it’s whatever they have planned. Now, at least in Manila in the Philippines, it’s coming back to haunt them.
NASIR: Yeah, spam is an interesting thing because, obviously, people do it because it works. I mean, they may have to send to 10,000 or 20,000 or even much more than that to actually get any kind of response. I mean, I assume the response rate is low. But there’s a reason why people still do it – because spam works. Now, I don’t know about text spam though because – you’re right – the stuff that I get on the phone is most of the time gibberish or obviously spam. But, at the end of the day, text spam is very hard to comply with because you have to get consent from them and it can’t be misleading and things like that whereas email spam is a little bit more flexible – at least in most states – in the sense that it can be unsolicited so long as it complies with the can spam act and that requires an unsubscribe list and things like that. Obviously, getting consent of the actual recipient is much better and it’s going to be much more effective.
MATT: Right. It looks like this is a situation where basically the company had gathered all these people’s names and phone numbers. I’m guessing they sold them to this third party who then is one of the two involved in the lawsuit for spamming them. They have to think that it’s going to come back to haunt them at some point. I don’t get the thought behind it.
NASIR: I think it works to a certain extent. You know, the problem is, if you’re a legitimate company – meaning you’re not selling something silly like these guys probably – and you’re trying to do a service, you know, text spamming is probably not the way to go. I know there’s a lot of text marketing out there that you can go through some opt-in processes, but it’s very difficult to do it legally and effectively at the same time. Email is the same for that matter. Keep in mind, too, it’s state by state. And so, California, for example, is a little bit more restrictive than the federal law. Also, there’s restrictions on how you get the email address. A lot of them get them from scraping these websites and so forth. That’s actually improper as well. Even when you do comply with everything else, how you got those lists is also important.
MATT: Yeah, all very true, and that’s why you see people from time to time, when they write their email address out,
The guys discuss Tesla's decision to go open source with its patents and answer the question, "Our sales people get company cell phones that are for work use only. One of our recently fired employees wants the pictures on their phone. Do I have to give it to them?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt.
NASIR: Welcome to… Oh, I forgot, Matt Staub is here.
MATT: Yeah, Matt Staub is also here. It’s apparently a one-person show this week.
NASIR: So, welcome to Episode 55 where we cover business in the news and also put in our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, sends to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Apparently, we allow the co-host to talk at times, but not always.
NASIR: Well, I just wanted to try it out to see if it was just Legally Sound Smart Business with Nasir Pasha and then that’s it. I just wanted to see. It has nothing to do with you. I just, you know, I was experimenting.
MATT: All right, fair enough, fair enough. Well, tying in some more equality issues, I guess, this is pretty big news that out’s there. Elon Musk – I think that’s how you pronounce his name – the guy who’s involved with PayPal before and now of Tesla amongst other companies, he’s come out and said, “You know what? We’ve got hundreds of patents of Tesla but we’re just going to not go after anyone that wants to infringe on our patents. We’re opening up everything. If someone wants to copy what we do, we do it at such a great efficient rate that it doesn’t matter and that’s that.” You know, this is pretty much the exact opposite of what we’ve seen in the last decade with patent trolls and all that.
NASIR: Well, he’s definitely somebody that just tries to do things differently – to his advantage, of course. I mean, people could say that this is a move against the whole patent system in itself but I think the key here, from what I’m reading, is that this may be a move to get his technology on a wider scale. He’s talking to BMW right now to get them to share the cost in developing these charging stations, right? What I found interesting is that it wasn’t specified – at least in any of the media released – how he’s going to actually allow people to do this because there are ways to basically cede your rights to patents through the patent office. They have some kind of procedure for that but I don’t know if he’s going to do that because that’s kind of permanent. Or is he going to kind of make this an open source deal where you have specific licenses? There’s a lot of numbers of ways you can do this. It just depends upon how he wants to control it.
MATT: Yeah, I thought about that as well and what he kind of said was Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who in good faith wants to use our technology. So, I don’t know if people are going to be taking his word for it because it’s a little bit risky if that’s the case.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. You’d want something in writing because what if he changes his mind? Is that something you can rely upon legally? I think that’s a little uncertain. But my assumption is that this is recent news and, as time goes along, we’ll figure out exactly what his intentions are and how he wants to release this technology.
MATT: Yeah, and I think you’re right as well. Tesla’s doing all right but it has a very small percent of the market so maybe this is going to open things up and make things even better for Tesla even though it’s kind of helping out all your competitors. I mean, it is helping out your competitors, in theory.
NASIR: Yeah, I think there’s a reason why you have all these car dealerships on the same road in many different cities, right? It’s because, even if it’s competition, it helps in their sales because, all right, everyone, let’s go to that location and shop around for cars. It actually helps themselves. So, I think it’s kind of the same area.
The guys discuss Kickstarter's decision to lower the barrier for project acceptance and answer the question, "Can I hire some summer interns and not pay them?"
Nasir and Matt welcome author Meg Hirshberg to discuss her recent article about firing your spouse. They address, "I run a business that hinges on customer service. My son is home from college and can't find a job. Is it worth me taking the risk of hiring him knowing he probably won't be good for the business?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news and also put on our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, sends in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Very good.
MATT: Good intro, too.
NASIR: I’m talking about myself – my intro.
MATT: Yeah, good intro today. Good job.
NASIR: Great. We are going to cover a nice little topic about families and businesses and spouses. I was thinking about this. I probably have at least I can think of four or five different clients that literally it’s a husband and wife operation as far as ownership goes. I always wondered how the dynamics filled that line. Today, we have a guest, her name is Meg Cadoux Hirshberg. She is the author of For Better or For Work and we found her. She actually got an article picked up on Inc.com which I thought was great. It’s called “I Love You but You’re Fired.” I thought it was a funny title. Well, of course, the link is on our show notes. Meg, how are you doing? MEG: Fine, thanks for having me today!
NASIR: Absolutely. Matt, I’ve been thinking about this, we talk about how partnerships are like a marriage but what happens when the actual partnership is a husband and wife? That can really change the dynamics.
MATT: You’re exactly right. A partnership, you have to view it as a marriage. If your partner in business is also your partner in your personal life, I could see lots of issues of where do you draw the line if you spend all day together at work. Do you go home and talk about work all day? There’s just a lot of things that go into that. So, I do really enjoy this article. It has a couple of stories and, from what I understand, Meg, you once worked with your spouse as well, correct? MEG: Yes, I did. My husband, Gary, founded Stonyfield Yogurt almost thirty years ago. When I met him and we moved up, we decided to get married and I moved up to the farm, we were actually on a farm in New Hampshire at that time – no longer – but when I moved up to the farm, I started working in the business right away and we worked together for a couple of years at which point we decided this was not the best thing for our relationship. So, I backed away from the business and haven’t worked for it since.
NASIR: Very good. I think one of the biggest issues – despite whether it’s a marriage or not – finding who the decision-maker is in a business is sometimes difficult. We have a lot of people that come up with their partners, 50-50 partners, but I always tell them, “Look, even though you make decisions together, there has to be one person that breaks the tie, so to speak.” It reminds me, of course, we have to bring in the show The Office, when Jim and Michael were co-managers of the office and just how that just did not work and it doesn’t work in any other business. There’s always at least one person making those decisions. Would you find the same, Meg? MEG: Right. Well, that brings up one of the key issues that kind of rise when couples work together which is that it’s hard to transition from a situation at work in which usually one person is in-charge, i.e. the entrepreneur, often the spouse. Most businesses that are run by couples are not started by the couple together. Most are started by one person, the entrepreneur, who has a dream, has a vision, and then, “I want to help out.” That’s usually the way couples wind up working together. The relationship in the business setting is not equal. Usually, there is one person in-charge. Transitioning from that back home to a relationshi...
Nasir and Matt talk about the effects of Seattle raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and discuss whether cities like San Diego will follow suit. They then answer, "In late November 2013 I bought some things for a local business and was given a check for the exact amount a few days later. I had forgotten about the check for 2 months and when I went to the bank to cash the check, it bounced due to a closed account. I called the business owner and they said someone had stolen their checkbook awhile back and they had to close the account, and not to worry as they would write another. It's been 4 months now of me texting them each week asking about the check she was supposed to leave at the business and they always just come up with some excuse."
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: For our loyal listeners, they heard a slightly different intro. This is our alternative intro. As you said, “this is” instead of “welcome” and that’s all right.
NASIR: I thought I usually say “this is” but do I say “welcome” first? I don’t remember.
MATT: Well, I think it’s still fine. It doesn’t have to be the same every time.
NASIR: Well, big news in the northwest, huh?
MATT: Yes, we talked about this at the beginning of the year. I didn’t really want to talk about it again – a repeat – but this is just too big of a story to pass up. For those of you that don’t know, Seattle just approved what’s going to be the highest minimum wage in the country. It’s eventually going to crawl up to $15.00 an hour. I think the state minimum wage is the highest right now at $9.32 so this is a pretty significant increase. Also, San Francisco had the highest minimum wage and that was $10.74 an hour. This is just a huge jump up from what it’s been. Obviously, we can look at the numbers and see, if you have minimum wage employees, you’re going to be paying them X amount of dollars more. It gets into non-exempt employee issues as well but this is just huge. I think this is going to have a rippling effect – not just for Seattle but for other cities in the country as a whole.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s definitely huge news. I think that $15.00 mark, even though that’s going to be years from now, it’s still just so apparent that that’s going to be a big deal for businesses for all. I read an article of Forbes, I thought it was great. They basically say it’s not difficult to outline the effect of the new $15.00 an hour minimum wage. They claim that basically, if the minimum wage is of a certain percentage away from the median average income, then it has little to no effect. But, once it goes beyond a certain percentage, then that’s when you get some significant employment effects. I think we get around 45 to 50 percent of the median wage, that’s when you really start to see those effects. That’s from a kind of financial economic point of view. I’m sure there are going to be people that disagree with that but it’s definitely interesting to note.
MATT: Yeah, and I think it’s going to stick, too. There’s obviously going to be and there already are groups – and I think franchise owners are the ones the ones that are kind of leading it – planning to sue and stop this. I mean, this still is a significant jump. It is gradual; it’s not like it’s going to go up to $15.00 tomorrow. It is slowly going to climb. I’m in San Diego and there’s been talks about it jumping up in San Diego as well. I think there’s kind of a push to get it up to roughly $13.00 an hour, slowly throughout time. But I can see other cities doing this as well, especially some of those bigger cities where the cost of living is kind of high.
NASIR: Yeah, we already have San Francisco is classically already at $10.74 and, of course,
The guys end the week by talking about the waivers signed by participants in extreme sports like Tough Mudder. They address the question, "I'm an independent contractor and was presented with an agreement that basically makes me liable for any mistake I make and not the company. Is this fair, or even common practice?"
Nasir and Matt welcome Steve Rothschild to discuss the film tax credit bill recently passed in California, as well as the importance of transferrable tax credits to businesses. They also answer, "I received a demand letter from an attorney that is asking for way more money that I would ever be responsible for. What should I do about this?"
Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: This is our business podcast where we cover business legal news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We are at the mid-week point, Episode 50. That’s a lot of episodes.
MATT: Yeah, pretty crazy. It’s a semi-milestone.
NASIR: I thought 48 episodes was a lot but 50 is just… I think we should just stop. It’s too much.
MATT: Yeah, we’ll see how this one goes. If it’s the best one, we’ll stop at 50.
NASIR: That’s a lot of pressure.
MATT: Well, let’s get into the story that we have for today. The story here is the one that was in California. Senate passes film tax credit bill which basically is trying to keep filming and production in the state or give incentive for the filming and production to stay in California. Obviously, in California, we have Los Angeles, Hollywood, there’s lot of companies, lots of actors here. There’s no reason to let them leave but a lot of them are leaving for these tax credits that are in different states. I know there’s a few states in the country that a lot of places film but California is just trying to keep this in in order to generate more money, help the economy. It’s obviously struggling in California but I think this is a good thing for a lot of people, especially for California.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s going to cost quite a bit to California off the bat because of the hikes but they also have additional incentive for production companies that are actually moving into California. This started me thinking about tax credits in general. I don’t think businesses realize how many different tax credits for all these little things are there and I wanted to bring in Steve from State Tax Credit Exchange. He’s a tax credit clearing house. Steve, welcome to the program. STEVE: Thank you. Good to be hear.
NASIR: Obviously, there’s always going to be legislation in different states that gives different tax incentives to businesses. You’re an expert on tax credits. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about tax credits in general and also how you’ve been dealing with it in your business as well? STEVE: Tax credits are obviously incentives by typically the states such as the state tax credits – typically by the states – to foster growth in certain industries. The feds have also tax credits to foster growth in particular industries as well. Some of them are for more social reasons such as affordable housing. Others are for more business development – call it jobs which would be the film and entertainment tax credit. Certainly, California is trying to keep the flood of folks from leaving the state of California to other states as film production and technology has been a little easier to do on an international basis for that matter. It’s not as essential to film in the state of California. Other talent is now national and international as well. Some actors and actresses as well are not living necessarily in the state of California. That has been an issue where California has struggled to keep these folks and there’s now infrastructure being generated – or should I say built – in places all over the world. Our company as an exchange or clearing house, we basically take the tax credits that have been generated by these companies and we sell them or transfer them to other taxpayers – they could be individuals or businesses that have tax liability. These incentives that we only work with are ones that are transferrable by law.
Nasir and Matt kick off the week discussing Apple's acquisition of Beats and whether it was a smart purchase. They then answer the question, "Should I give some of my employees a corporate credit card?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is our podcast where we cover business in the news with our business legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you can send at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and dot-pizza when that comes.
MATT: I think we’ve said that enough now, I don’t know. The joke might be…
NASIR: No, it’s not a joke. I just want to get used to saying it when we do get it.
MATT: At some point, I guess one of us is actually going to have to look up if that’s even going to become a thing.
NASIR: No, it is. I think you thought I was joking these past few episodes but I’ve been looking it up. I don’t know the exact date that it’s coming out. Like you said, you can pre-register them right now but dot-pizza is coming and it’s coming to a podcast near you.
MATT: I’m just skeptical and this is actually a very nice tie-in to our story here because it’s about something that you never think will happen but you just keep hearing about it and the hype is all there. Of course, I’m talking about Dr. Dre’s most recent album that was supposed to come out every day for the last ten years and hasn’t. You see the tie-in there? This is nice because we’re talking about Beats by Dre, how they just got bought. It’s official now. The story came out a couple of weeks ago but Apple just purchased Beats by Dre, Beats Electronics I think is the actual name – Beats, whatever you want to call it – Beats Audio Hardware, Beats Music. Three-billion-dollar purchase; 2.6 billion in cash, 400 million in stock. The price tag is one thing that’s really interesting but Apple is really not known for buying well-known companies – at least well-known to the general public. So, this seems like a different type of acquisition for them as opposed to their normal “We’re just going to buy up technology companies that are doing really well, something we really like” especially because, from what I can tell, Apple has a lot of these things already in place. It’s a different type of acquisition, I think.
NASIR: It is interesting because their headphones are pretty iconic. In fact, I would say some people would argue that the Apple headphones beats Beats. How’d you like that? I just kept thinking about that episode of The Office where I think Jim’s making fun of Dwight saying, “Beats beats Battlestar Galactica or something like that.
MATT: Different type of Beats.
NASIR: Different type of beats. Nonetheless, I think people are confused by the acquisition as well because it’s not normal. But I started looking more into this story. What’s interesting is that, in the inception of this Beats concept where this guy named Lamar – I think that’s his last name – he actually came up with the concept, “Okay, let’s design headphones that are backed by some kind of celebrity,” and got up and started talking with Dr. Dre and so forth and went to this designer that the owner or partner was actually a former designer of Apple. Because of that, very early – this was back in 2006 even – there was some contact between the Apple Retail VP and this company and there were some lawsuits regarding that with this design company later on that’s kind of irrelevant to that but what’s interesting is that, back in 2006, Apple was in contact with this company and here we are a number of years later where Apple is buying them for three billion dollars.
MATT: Yeah, and I mentioned the price. A lot of people have been talking about that. They think it’s outrageous. I looked a little bit more into the numbers. The cash reserves of Beats is 150 billion. Keep in mind the purchase price was three billion and then the estimated annual sales of Beats last yea...
Nasir and Matt break down the new laws involving Uber and Lyft in Colorado and answer the question, "Now that it's almost summertime, I want to implement casual Fridays. Is there something I should restrict from a legal standpoint?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast, Episode #48. This is where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and soon to be dot-pizza, when I get it.
MATT: Almost have it, yeah.
NASIR: Don’t send it yet. I’ll tell you when.
MATT: It’s a pipedream but it’s all right.
NASIR: Very good. Well, today’s a good topic. It’s a recurring topic, right? I don’t know how many times we’ve covered Uber and Lyft and other sharing economy issues. I think this is our fiftieth. Even though we’ve only had 48 episodes, we’ve covered it 50 times, I think.
MATT: Yeah, we do seem to talk about it a lot, but it’s kind of an important thing, especially now. In Colorado, what just happened is rules for Uber and Lyft and all these other driving businesses like this, if there are other ones, has become a law in Colorado which I’m sure taxicab drivers hate and limousine services and other things like that. But this is a good thing for the general public. I guess, basically, the big thing here with it becoming a law in Colorado is it was a whole issue of when, of course, the companies had insurance policies out on the drivers but, when did those policies go into effect? You know, obviously, if they’re driving a passenger, then yes, but what if they’re sitting there, waiting for a ride or waiting for someone to request a ride, is it active then? I guess what Colorado did is make it from the moment the person requests the ride, the policy will go into effect and now the drivers have to have personal policies in place for all those other off times.
NASIR: Which makes sense because, basically, all of a sudden, you’re under the control of Uber or Lyft as soon as you accept an invitation to go. Other times, you may be on personal business and so forth. But this whole thing, I think they’re all supposed to get licenses and background check, right? To obtain permits in Colorado.
MATT: That sounds right. I didn’t fact-check that.
NASIR: Okay. Well, someone, fact-check that for me, but I think I’m right because, to obtain permits, the companies must have drivers pass criminal background and driving history checks. The drivers’ cars must pass vehicle inspections and be clearly marked as TNC cars which are some kind of taxi and limo network is how they’re classifying it. What’s interesting is – I don’t want to freak everyone out – if these guys aren’t going through criminal background checks and we know exactly who their identity is, it kind of reminds me of all these serial murder movies. It’s always a taxi driver, isn’t it? That’s the culprit. Now, there’s so much regulation with taxi drivers, with these Lyft and Uber drivers, it’s kind of scary, if you think about it.
MATT: Yeah, Lyft and UberX, that could be anyone.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at.
MATT: It’s not cab drivers. It’s literally just any person who can drive can do it. This is an easy movie to do. I’m sure it’s probably already out and it’s going to be on Lifetime here in the next couple of months. This is an easy movie to make.
NASIR: Yeah, I wonder what the title will be like – “Uber Killer.”
MATT: Yeah, it’ll be like…
NASIR: That’s the worst title ever.
MATT: Man, I’ve got to think of something now.
NASIR: Yeah, think of something. But the main issue here is also insurance, right? They’re saying they haven’t solved every issue. To me, frankly, this is an issue of the insurance company of how they write the policies because they’re the ones that are going to determine what’s covered and what’s not.
The guys discuss the most recent lawsuit involving Paris Hilton's breach of contract and answer, "Is it legal to record audio of employees in the workplace without their consent?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, sends in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. I almost forget the dot-com there.
MATT: That’s all right.
NASIR: I nailed it.
MATT: We bought all of them – all the domain extensions
NASIR: That’s right. Actually, I looked into dot-pizza. Apparently, dot-pizza is not out yet. I was going to buy just the waiting list one but I wasn’t sure how that works. As soon as it comes out though.
MATT: I find it hard to believe that stuff is going to catch on, but who knows?
NASIR: Yeah, we’ll start it, for sure. Well, I’m excited for this episode. I think it’s going to be our best episode ever because we’re covering your favorite celebrity.
MATT: Yeah, and I didn’t even know Paris Hilton was relevant. I don’t understand why she was even relevant in the first place it’s a lawsuit that involves Paris Hilton and I’m sure this isn’t the first lawsuit she’s been a part of but it basically deals with a breach of contract claim. They’re saying that she breached her licensing agreement. I guess she had a sponsorship deal with a shoe company, Antebi Footwear Group. She had some deal with them and basically got in trouble for promoting one of their big competitors on her social media which to me is not a surprise because she never came off as intelligent so I’m not really shocked by this.
NASIR: Yeah, some rival product called Parisian Parc Footwear. We are so out of touch. I have no idea what these two companies are and what they do. Well, I guess they sell footwear. One of the reasons we’re bringing this up is they are saying that she breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Now, this is an interesting concept because this covenant of good faith and fair dealing sometimes is just put in as a clause in the actual agreement but, a lot of times, this is just an implied term in every agreement. The point is that Paris Hilton may not have a term that says you can’t promote a competitor’s product on Twitter in a term and saying, “Okay, well, now I guess I can do that.” But this implied faith and good dealing covenant is actually considered a term in there and it could be a cause for breach.
MATT: Yeah, and the reason it’s in there is for examples just like this and so it’s not really surprising. I always think it’s interesting. You’ll see this in sports. An athlete will be contracted with one shoe company like Nike and then they’ll play for a team that’s sponsored by another company like Adidas and there’s always issues of conflict. “Well, I’ve got to wear my shoes – the company that I have a deal – but I’m playing for the US National team that has a deal with this other company. what am I supposed to do?” There’s probably outs in that situation but not for this where Paris Hilton just appears to be not the smartest.
NASIR: If you read between the lines, this is what happened it looks like this company sued Paris only in response because Paris Hilton filed a lawsuit saying that they having been paying royalties for about a million dollars or so. And so, what it looks like is she may have tweeted this or promoted this competing product and this other company stopped paying her. And so, she made the first move. I’m just wondering if she sued first before she even promoted the competing product. It would definitely change the facts there if that’s the case.
MATT: That’s a good point, too. I’m kind of stuck on the fact that one of the few things I do know about Paris Hilton is she hates how big her feet are. I remember seeing that. This is true!
Nasir and Matt talk about fast food restaurants replacing employees with robots and answer the question, "I'm trying to raise some capital from investors. When they ask how I am going to use their investment, what should I say?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, sends in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We really appreciate those questions. Those of you who have not sent any questions, you guys can stop listening because we don’t care about you guys.
MATT: The people that don’t send in questions don’t have problems so maybe that’s a consideration as well.
NASIR: I guess that’s true. Well, you can still listen.
MATT: We don’t want to alienate people that don’t have questions that need to be answered – or at least I don’t; maybe you do.
NASIR: I guess that’s fine.
MATT: All right. Well, let’s get to what we have for this Monday episode.
NASIR: Actually, this episode is coming on Tuesday, I think, because of the Memorial Day. Just a procedural clarification, for those listening.
MATT: For people that have hacked into my computer and listened to the audio a day in advance. But, for those that haven’t, happy Tuesday! We kind of talked about this before, I think, with fast food workers and the protesting but I didn’t even know this was still going on but more fast food workers are protesting, want higher wages, blah blah blah. But this is getting to robots that are supposedly going to replace fast food workers. I thought this was pretty interesting. I don’t think there can ever be a situation where it’s going to be 100 percent replaced. I don’t even know if you can get to 25 percent. But it gets to an interesting point of efficiency in the workplace. If these robots can do things more efficiently than actual people, great for none of the problems. But it also gets to what jobs should people be doing for a fast food restaurant – task allocation. If someone can do these three things, can they do that? Great. If not, maybe we should have some sort of robot in place.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s not a new issue because we’ve talked about how, in GM, when they started automating everything – or everything from the assembly line to now robots are building cars that are building self-driving cars which is robots building robots – and so, this is stuff that’s been going on for a while, but I think it’s different now that it’s in the fast food industry. But I’m just wondering if the argument to start replacing these guys with robots, are they going to have faces? Am I going to Panera Bread – by the way, Panera Bread is going to start doing this very soon with some kind of automated service – am I going to walk in and some robot with eyes and a mouth is going to talk to me and ask for my order? That’s going to be kind of weird.
MATT: Well, you’re thinking of it from the perspective of actual robot people.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s as if it’s Back to the Future made another movie and they would do this. It would look like that – some robot with someone asking for your order like they did in Back to the Future Part II.
MATT: Well, keep in mind that a lot of tasks – well, not a lot but there’s a good amount of tasks – that still go on at restaurants today or a lot of different industries that are done by robots but more so like machines and equipment so I don’t think you’re necessarily going to walk in and have a robot person there. “Can I take your order?”
NASIR: Taken from the employer’s perspective, it’s kind of hard to do it because you kind of have to take your heart out of the whole concept because these are actually real people that they’re replacing. But I suppose, if a robot can do the exact same thing, it’s cheaper. It’s just like before,
The guys talk about all you can eat buffets implementing surcharges for unclean plates. They then address, "I have an minor working for me who said they would work for half of what the minimum wage is. Can I legally do this?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Smart Sound Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to the podcast where we cover business stories with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: It is the Friday episode so I’d like to give a shout-out to a select listener. I got some compliments this week from – I’ll give the first name only – Ericka. She was giving compliments out. Every introduction is a little bit different and she liked that.
NASIR: She liked that?
MATT: Yeah, thanks for listening. We appreciate it. I’m sure she’s one of the people too that have given us a good review on iTunes.
NASIR: She’d better have. Otherwise, I’ll be upset. Otherwise, we should take back that compliment or that thank-you that you gave.
MATT: We can always edit it out so that’s not a problem.
NASIR: That’s true. We’ll check it afterwards. We’ll have our fact-checkers do that.
MATT: All right. Let’s get into the story we have for today. This is something near and dear to my heart.
NASIR: Very good.
MATT: The premise of this story is a restaurant has added – and I think this is in Switzerland, I’m trying to remember – yeah, it’s a Swiss restaurant that’s adding a surcharge for all-you-can-eat customers who don’t actually clear their plate. And so, I have a couple of problems with this. (1) I’ve never even had this issue ever so I don’t even understand the plate that’s not clean. That’s a little bit confusing to me. (2) It’s not all you can eat if you’re charging someone. I get their idea because, at buffets, people don’t do it right and they’ll just go up there and grab a ton of stuff and eat half of it and move onto the next plate. You’re paying for that service. Adding a surcharge to it, I don’t like that.
NASIR: Really? One reason I hate these all-you-can-eat places is because, if you just look to your right, look to your left, you just have people that just go overboard, fill their plates up, and then they’re like small little thin people. How are they going to finish that plate? And then, you look over twenty minutes later, it’s pretty much still full. That’s a little frustrating, no? I mean, it’s just so wasteful. I don’t have the same problem but I think, at the same time though, I guess I was just raised to clear my plate. I control the size of my eyes compared to the food or my stomach or whatever the stupid saying is.
MATT: Yeah. As always, not good with the reference. You do raise a good point. You definitely see that a bunch but, to me, that’s why you’re paying for it. It’s that opportunity and it is very wasteful but you’re paying for the opportunity to be wasteful if you want.
NASIR: No, you’re paying to be able to eat all you want. That doesn’t mean that you should take things that you’re not going to eat, right?
MATT: Yeah, but it’s all you can eat. I don’t know. I don’t necessarily agree with this.
NASIR: But, if you can’t eat it, you shouldn’t take it.
MATT: I agree with that but I don’t like the surcharge and they have some pretty funny ones that happen in the US, too. I think it was they sued a sushi restaurant because they cut him off because he wasn’t eating the rice in the sushi. He was just eating the fish.
NASIR: Yeah, I saw that.
MATT: Which is kind of funny. If you go anywhere, that’s why they give you as much rice as possible because they try to fill you up. This is a nice tactic if you don’t want to fill up, just don’t eat the rice. I’m giving advice now from an eating perspective.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s a little different. That’s true.
MATT: This one’s really funny. A man in Wisconsin called the police to complain afte...
Nasir and Matt welcome security guru Daniel Libby to discuss the issues involved with the secrecy of whistleblower apps, and answer the question, "We had an issue with some customer info that was compromised. Should we tell our customers, and if so, how?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. That was a pretty good intro.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: That was nice and clean.
MATT: Yeah, not too bad.
NASIR: If I may say so myself.
MATT: Yeah, it was good until you brought up the fact that it was nice and clean and good.
NASIR: I know. I can’t not comment on the intro. It sticks with me.
MATT: That’s fine.
NASIR: So, what do we have up today?
MATT: Well, this is a pretty interesting story. I was unaware of this before coming across this story but there’s a few apps out there – and the ones they mention are Whisper and Secret so you can probably figure out what these are – but it’s a way to communicate anonymously. I’ve checked them out and I still don’t fully understand the purpose of them but it’s basically a way to say what you have to say and do it was anonymity. The only problem is, you know, these apps have their own privacy policies in place. It basically allows them to take the information that’s communicated over these apps and give them to necessary people. It says, you know, law enforcement, subpoena for a civil lawsuit, or simply any accusation of wrongdoing on the service.
NASIR: That’s general.
MATT: Yeah, we touched on this last week with the Snapchat thing with information not disappearing. It’s another app that defeats its own purpose.
NASIR: Except Snapchat was violating their policy, right?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: It was a little bit different with them. They actually had a privacy policy that protected it. This is like the complete opposite. But, you’re right, I don’t really get the point of it all either. But I thought we would bring Daniel Libby from Digital Forensics on. He’s what I call an IT technology security guru who also does some digital forensics. Daniel, welcome to the program. DANIEL: Good morning, gentlemen! I appreciate it very much. Thank you.
NASIR: Absolutely. I’m curious whether you’ve even heard about these apps or not. I just wonder, the fact that you may have employees that are using this to whistleblow or to share company secrets is a little scary. I don’t know. DANIEL: It really is and I think it’s a group of folks that are building some apps that basically take advantage of a current trend as so many do. I was surprised by the amount of venture capital that was put into an app like this because there are several others that do basically the same thing. I would like to comment just real quick on your issue of Snapchat. The funny thing in the computer forensics world is we knew that Snapchat didn’t delete those photos and everything else right from the outset. It took the rest of the country maybe 18 or 24 months to figure it out, but we knew it right from the outset – that it didn’t do what it reported to do.
MATT: That’s good.
NASIR: Well, I think you can speak very well to even things that are deleted aren’t exactly deleted, right? DANIEL: You can take it exactly out of that, depending on the operating system. Apple does a better job – and I don’t know how much time I have but a really quick way that I explain it to a jury is you walk into a library and a file system on a Windows computer is basically a library. It gives you an address on where the book is on a shelf. You can go there, check out the book, not a problem. If you don’t want someone else to have the book, all you do is remove that reference from the card catalog. Now, the book is still on the shelf but no one else knows it’s there.
Nasir and Matt talk about the trademark filing surrounding Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M. They also answer the question, "Can I put anything in my contracts that prevents my customers from leaving a negative Yelp review?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is our podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to our podcast at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. We always have to slow that down for everyone. I feel like, if I say it too fast, no one’s going to get it.
MATT: You know, you always bring up the part where we introduce ourselves at the beginning and you always say it’s kind of redundant. I never even really thought about it but I was listening to an episode this morning.
NASIR: Is that the first episode you listened to?
MATT: It was and it was literally just back to back, but I think it’s a good way to distinguish our voices so you know who is who, if you’re talking. I guess that’s the benefit of it.
NASIR: That’s true. I don’t want people thinking I’m Nasir. That would confuse people.
MATT: Now it’s a big mystery. We could do a video podcast and make it easier. All right, well, let’s jump into it. This is still a very relevant topic. The NFL draft happened a couple of weeks ago. One of the big stories behind that was Johnny Manziel. So, for Nasir’s sake, he was a college football player at Texas A&M, became really popular, won the Heisman as a freshman a couple of years ago and got drafted. Now, he’s going to be in the NFL – in your home state, actually – playing for Cleveland.
NASIR: Nice.
MATT: But the underlying story here with him is between his sort of presence and Texas A&M – or more accurately their stadium. I guess he and his long-time friend who is always in the news with him had tried to trademark “The House That Johnny Built” in order to have that affiliated with the university and I guess initially it’s been denied. I’m sure they’re still going to try to do something with that but it brings up an interesting thing because he’s wanting to trademark this and he’s wanting it to be affiliated with the university but it’s just his name but it would be tied directly into the university so it’s a couple of interlocking pieces but I can see why the registration was refused. The direct language was “consists of or includes a matter which may falsely suggest a connection with Johnny Manziel.” It’s kind of what I was hitting to. I don’t know if you had seen this at all.
NASIR: Well, I first had to do a bunch of research to figure out who Johnny Manziel was and I’m still not sure, really. He’s won some kind of trophy. But it seems as though there’s the likelihood of confusion and that’s kind of interesting because, even though he’s not connected to any goods or service, he’s just a football player that they denied it which is not unusual just because they say Johnny Manziel is so famous that consumers would presume a connection. I think that statement is kind of funny because I didn’t even know who he was so I guess he wasn’t that famous to people but I suppose football consumers would recognize him.
MATT: This is coming from someone who lives in Texas, by the way. I don’t know how you haven’t heard of him. I think a lot of people kind of dislike him now maybe but he is very widely discussed in any sports talk shows, all that stuff.
NASIR: So, the Johnny Manziel family is not the one that tried to file this trademark. It was this Nate Fitch. Who is that?
MATT: I’m just trying to go off from memory here. I believe it’s like a childhood friend, someone he’s always been in communication with and all these guys always link up with these people that try to make money off of them. If you have a childhood friend that becomes successful, you’ll see it with pretty much every professional athlete so I t...
The guys discuss Snapchat's seemingly minor punishment for misrepresentations about its privacy policy and answer, "How do I decide what salary to pay myself?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Like the NBA – Matthew Staub. Welcome to our podcast. This is where we cover business in the news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can submit to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Episode #42.
MATT: It is #42, yeah, the Jackie Robinson episode.
NASIR: I didn’t see that movie yet.
MATT: I relate all numbers to the players that wore the number for sports so we’re getting up to the numbers now. We’re running out of basketball so it’s maybe a little bit of baseball then we’ll cut into some football. Then, once we hit triple digits, it’s pretty much over.
NASIR: Yeah, there’s no sports that go up that high that I can think of. Maybe golf? Actually, marathons – they have three-digit numbers a lot of times.
MATT: Well, if anyone knows any marathon numbers…
NASIR: Send them in.
MATT: Yeah, send them to us and we’ll start using them but I don’t know any marathon runners. Well, there’s one guy from San Diego who just won the Boston marathon.
NASIR: I doubt if he got the same number every time.
MATT: You don’t.
NASIR: Yeah. If I ever run a marathon – which hopefully I won’t someday – I’m going to request my number and be really dramatic about it. “No, I’m this number every time! I have to have this!”
MATT: Lucky number, yeah.
NASIR: Lucky number 101.
MATT: Let’s get to the story we have for today. I can’t remember, have we talked about Snapchat before?
NASIR: We may have but I think most people have heard about it at least. If you’re in the age of 13 to 15, you definitely have.
MATT: I actually use Snapchat.
NASIR: You’re like 16, right? you just came out of that phase.
MATT: I’d have heard about it for a while and then a couple of my friends talked me into doing it. I still kind of find it pretty pointless.
NASIR: Me, too.
MATT: I’ll get into the reasoning why but, for those of you who haven’t heard the most recent story, let me step back a second and explain what Snapchat is if you haven’t heard of it. This is the way I see it. You take a picture – or I guess video now as well – and you send it to one of your friends and it’s basically just a picture text message but there’s a time limit on it – one to ten seconds – and then it disappears. Same with video. But the problem is I guess that these photos and these videos weren’t disappearing as they said – the whole point of Snapchat – and this wasn’t happening. And so, they were also doing something with using customer information too which is a whole other issue. They basically said they were doing one thing. Their main premise, they weren’t living up to it and the FTC came in, they got a pretty light ban here – twenty-year internal audit. That was what was handed down.
NASIR: And no fines! I’m so surprised that they didn’t have any fines which the FTC, they have the power to do so. I don’t know why they went so light on this because I would be upset, right? I mean, you have the whole idea of Snapchat is that it’s private. Usually, if you’re sending – this is my assumption – if you’re sending an image or information that is only supposed to last a certain amount of time, I assume it’s not something you’d want to be shared but I don’t know. What else is the purpose? I’d be upset, for sure.
MATT: That what I was getting to. It’s defeating the purpose of the app to begin with.
NASIR: Exactly, yeah.
MATT: I’m pretty surprised there’s no fine. I think the twenty-year independent privacy audit – I think I said internal audit, I meant independent audit – that’s a little bit funny because, what are the odds that Snapchat’s going to be around in twenty years? Pretty slim, right?
NASIR: Yeah, I would agree with that,
Nasir and Matt welcome Jesse Lindsleyto talk about people are ripping off successful mobile games and answer the question, "My partners and I have been developing an online software and a mobile app, but we are wondering if we should split the mobile aspect of our business into a separate LLC since not everyone is developing that and the app could stand on its own. Is that advisable?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and we’re ready to go.
MATT: Yeah, I hope we make this a good one. The Wednesday episode seemed to be the most popular one.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s the hump of the week and the top of the week, I think, for us.
MATT: Don’t screw up, Nasir.
NASIR: I know. It’s a lot of pressure now. Great.
MATT: Let’s get into the story we have for today. It has to deal with this game, 2048, which I’ve heard of but I never play. I actually downloaded it yesterday.
NASIR: Really? Okay.
MATT: Just to see what it was and played it a couple of times. I get the gist of it and I can get how it would be addicting. I try not to do any of these games just because I don’t want to get sucked in.
NASIR: I agree. I’ve played it and I admit that I actually have played it quite a bit but I’m not much of a mobile app gamer, I would consider myself, but for whatever reason, I heard other people playing it so I took a look and I like puzzle games. I got sucked in, I suppose.
MATT: I’m surprised you’ve played because anyone that listens to this podcast knows that your math skills aren’t always 100 percent.
NASIR: Oh, wow, that’s a low-blow. That is a low-blow. I was a computer science major. Math was important at that time. But, anyway, my AP Calc teacher is going to be upset at that comment from high school. I was just joking.
MATT: So, what we’re dealing with here, the underlying story is the intellectual property behind these games and, more importantly, I guess the infringement thereof. But when we’re dealing with mobile games and I think they talked about board games as well, not everything you think would be able to be protected is protected. They mentioned how the protection is of the expression of an idea but you can’t protect the idea itself.
NASIR: Yeah, and if you notice these 2048 games are everywhere and apparently it’s some kind of version of some game called Threes and I think everyone knows that, well, I never played but that game Flappy Bird which became really popular but then went off the market and then everyone put clones up, the reason is basically there was no patent on that idea and there’s maybe copyright as far as the graphics go and so forth but there’s limitations on that. But I wanted to get Jesse from Thrust. They have a pretty cool mobile app development company and kind of want to get their perspective. I’m sure this issue has been brought up in their development as well. Jesse, how are you doing? JESSE: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
NASIR: Very good. So, you kind of heard about what’s going on with 2048. You’ve seen all these clones and it’s weird. I use an Android. If you go to the top ten mobile apps that are free downloads or whatever, I think three of them are 2048 variations. I don’t know if you’ve ever had any experience with these kinds of issues dealing with your development. JESSE: Yeah, we come across this kind of stuff all the time. As developers, we get frustrated when people copy our ideas. I’ve been involved in these kinds of discussions from the gaming gambling days, early 2000 to the Facebook launching of games and a lot of the games were launched by Zynga and others were pure copycats of other games. So, it’s pretty standard and there’s court cases where sometimes the little gu...
Nasir and Matt discuss the trend of employers providing loans to employees and answer the questions, "I know I need to pay some of my employees more to prevent them from leaving but I won't have the revenue for another 6 months, what else can I do to keep them in the mean time?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, submits to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. I wanted to slow it down there for the listeners writing it down.
MATT: It sounds too candid at this point. I feel like you sounded like a robot. I mean, your voice isn’t robotic but it sounds like a recording almost.
NASIR: I do. I just play a recording at the beginning of every episode. I don’t even record it live.
MATT: Yeah, those five seconds that you spend, it’s really taxing. You want to save your voice for the actual substance of the episodes.
NASIR: Exactly. You understand me.
MATT: So, speaking of the substance of the episodes, I do want to get into the story for today because I think we might have some differing views. I don’t know why I think this but, reading through it, I just thought we did for some reason. We’re talking about workplace loans. This primarily deals with employees that are living paycheck to paycheck. What it is is more or less what they can be labeled as a short-term, high-fee loan. You know, an employee needs some money and the employer is lending them this money. The only problem being for the employee is these extremely high interest rates in the fees that are being involved. I think in one study they said the effective annual percentage rate attached to the loan is 100 percent to 165 percent. In my opinion, this is just digging them into a bigger hole. I mean, I understand that they need the – well, it’s not an advance – the loan but, at the same time, I feel like you almost get situations where employees are taking these loans out to pay their previous loans or maybe they went through some third party in the past and they’re paying for that.
NASIR: Yeah, and I think we talked about how most people seem to live paycheck to paycheck, whether they’re low-wage workers or not. But let’s compare this to wage advances and I think we answered a question regarding that a while back. I think this is a little bit different because, in a wage advance, the employer is basically giving the loan themselves and there are all these rules regarding that – like, for example, in New York, you have to have it in writing, especially if you’re going to be withdrawing any money from their weekly paycheck or biweekly paycheck. In California, there’s restrictions – like, if it’s the last paycheck, then you can’t withdraw any money from that and you can’t terminate an employee – and I think this is both in New York and California as well – you can’t terminate an employee because they don’t pay back the loan, for example, if it’s not deducted from their paychecks. Those are some issues with that. But this is different because we have third-party payday lenders that are working with employers and, now, I hear you. Of course, these payday concepts, they have high interest rate and, frankly, what other loan are you aware that automatically all of a sudden they can garnish your wages? For example, if you default on another loan, then they have to get a judgment and then take that judgment into your workplace and actually attach it. that requires some kind of effort. This is a little bit different. All of a sudden, your paycheck could be garnished from the get-go.
MATT: Yeah, to me that’s a problem. I just don’t know what the solution really is for these people that need that. I guess the problem I have is with the employer. They’re the ones paying the employees, obviously. And then,
Nasir and Matt talk about how a businesses based on a fad can succeed and answer, "I don't have money to pay for certain services. Can I trade my products for other company's services?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And my name is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is the business podcast where we cover business in the news and give our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you submit, the listener, to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. You know, I think I said “business” in that last thirty seconds about 50,000 times.
MATT: It’d be some sort of record, probably.
NASIR: I’m pretty sure. Call Guiness.
MATT: All right. Well, let’s see, we have a story here.
NASIR: We do? Let’s listen! What do we have?
MATT: I don’t know, you’re going to have to help me out with this one because I don’t eat sweets. I don’t eat desserts.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: It’s a cupcake-based story. There’s this company, Crumbs is what it’s called, but it speaks more to fads. And so, this company, Crumbs Bakeshop, they actually went public back in 2011 because I guess they, you know, it was during the cupcake craze apparently and their stock I think started in the mid-teens and now it’s below 50 cents.
NASIR: Oh.
MATT: And I say “cupcake craze” because that’s kind of what it was. I’m sure you’ve seen this in a bunch of cities. There’s cupcake shops that pop up and have become pretty popular or at least they were popular and who knows whether they’re popular now. Juicing is really popular right now. There’s a lot of juice places popping up. We have talked about this before – like, the food trucks, that was a big craze. That was a fad. But this is what I’m getting to. If your business is a fad, what do you do when it’s not a fad anymore?
NASIR: You have to recognize whether it is a fad or not. If it is, then I’d exit as quick as possible.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: I wonder if these founders of Crumbs – is it Crumbs or Crumb? I haven’t even heard of them, by the way. I’ve been to a number of cupcake places in my time. It’s not necessarily my cup of tea but I have been there once in a while with family and so forth.
MATT: Doesn’t your Twitter handle say Cupcake Connoisseur on it?
NASIR: Well, that’s true. I do test taste for a number of cupcake companies but, like I said, I got tired of it. I just wonder if Crumbs, after their IPO which just boggles my mind that it actually found a firm that was willing to back such an IPO but anyway, I wonder if these founders actually were able to just exit out of it. Did they lose money? I bet you they got a piece of it and had a successful business and I think it’s time for them to get out because fads are okay. If you’re in business and your product becomes really popular and you think it may go out later, that’s not a big deal. But, if your product is easily to be copied and done by anyone else, then that’s a problem in itself. I mean, a lot of these cupcake guys, I mean, how many did we know – and, unfortunately, I knew a lot – that were all of a sudden selling cupcakes out of the house and selling them to their neighbors and so forth? And then, they wanted to open up a shop and, you know, I’m sure that all the cupcakes are good but, frankly, the difference between the greatest cupcake and a good cupcake is just not there.
MATT: Like I said, this is a tough topic for me because I don’t even eat cupcakes so I don’t know if there’s a big difference.
NASIR: It’s the same thing with those yogurt shops. You mentioned those yogurt shops, right?
MATT: Well, don’t say that in front of my wife because she will strongly disagree with you.
NASIR: Ah.
MATT: There is a big difference between them.
NASIR: No, there’s not. In fact, I’ve had friends that have actually invested and gotten into the industry. I made my opinions very clear about it but, first of all, yogurt shops were a huge thing.
The guys discuss how companies use the data they collect and answer, "How can I make sure my employees don't steal my proprietary info after they leave?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business. My name is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: My name is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Wait. I know. You don’t have to say my name. I said my name and then you can just say, “This is…”
MATT: I guess there’s never been an episode intro… well, there was one when you missed, but every single episode starts off with you and me. So, at this point, it’s not like it’s a rotating group of podcast hosts.
NASIR: Yeah, and we’ve talked about this before, even in our standard intro, it uses our names. So, when we introduce ourselves, it’s kind of redundant but that’s how we do it!
MATT: Name repetition is how it’s done.
NASIR: All right, let’s get into our creepy story of the week.
MATT: It talks about creepy. I guess it kind of is but it’s more about a lot of businesses collect data from their customers and it’s talking about what these businesses do with the data and this is how it gets into the creepy part is when people think this is creepy. I’m sure a lot of people know that businesses sometimes collect data, they sometimes sell it to third parties for whatever reason. This is all stuff they need to inform. So, if you go to a website and click down on the privacy policy or the terms of use, this is where you find all that stuff. I’m sure 98 percent of people do read these.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: I know, before, every website I go to, I make sure to read all this just to make sure that everything is covered. It’s actually funny how many websites you’ll click on that because I actually click on them just to see.
NASIR: Sure. I do, too. Yeah.
MATT: It’s kind of surprising how many are nonexistent. It’s just there, but it links to nothing.
NASIR: Exactly.
MATT: Or they’ll have some kind of boiler plate that doesn’t even make sense. Like, there’s other companies’ names in it and it doesn’t even apply. I’ve seen that many, many times. When you launch a website, it’s sometimes the last thing you think of.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: But, you know what, I really do think that, if people really knew how much they could track – and I think people that are tech-savvy already know but I think some of the common users would be a little creeped out by it because what’s hard to understand too is that there’s a lot of companies that, when they buy into ad networks on their site, that they can track you from one site to another. It’s not just on the same site, too. For example, Facebook is a good example. When people put in their Facebook plug-ins into their sites and so forth – I don’t know if they still do this, I know they used to – even if you go to a blog that’s totally unrelated to Facebook, they can tell that you’ve been to that. I even read a story this week where it seems a little goofy to me but someone that’s basically turned themselves off against Google and I think she’s some kind of journalist and she was trying to prevent anyone on the internet – meaning Google or Facebook – knowing that she was pregnant. And so, she had to tell all her friends and so forth and she tells her experience of how difficult it was to make sure that no one would mention that she was having a baby because, you know – I think we’ve been through this, too – when I was getting engaged, I saw ads for rings for the longest time – like, months afterwards, right? You had the same experience.
MATT: Yeah, we were talking about that.
NASIR: That’s creepy, right?
MATT: Yeah. I mean, a quick tangent on that, I got an email – this was a year and a half after I’d been married, let alone about the engagement ring – I got something about deals on engagement rings. I’m like, “What do you assume – I’ve already gotten divorced and found another person I want to marry?” It’s just kind of weird how that stuff works out.
NASIR: Yeah,
Nasir and Matt discuss the legalities behind the NBA banning Donald Sterling and answer the question, "One of my employees is very annoying. He does great work but I can tell he is not liked by most coworkers. I also know he will sue if I fire him. How can I handle this best?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: This is Legally Sound Smart Business and this is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: This is where we cover business news with our legal twist and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: All right. Well, let’s just dive in here. I’m a big NBA fan and it’s been a great playoffs so far but, unfortunately, there’s this underlying issue that’s kind of taken the headlines. Even if you’re not a sports fan, you’ve probably heard about this. Donald Sterling, he’s the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. I believe he’s the longest-standing owner in the NBA. I think he bought it in 1981. He’s been involved in a lot of lawsuits throughout his life – a lot of which are based on racial discrimination, other forms of discrimination – just all sorts of terrible things. But, finally, I think it looks like it caught up to him. There was a bunch of legal things with this but let me get the story first. He was recorded – a private conversation – without his knowledge or consent was recorded of his where he’s just saying terrible things to – I don’t know exactly what the relationship is because I believe he’s still married. Maybe he’s not married. I don’t know. Basically, this young woman recorded this conversation where Donald Sterling said all these pretty bad things from a racial standpoint and then it got leaked. The NBA finally said, “Enough is enough.” There’s a new commissioner in the NBA who just took over in February so this is his first big task here. He came out and banned him from the NBA – showing up to games, being part of anything with the organization. Now, he still gets payouts. He still owns the team but they just banned him. That’s another legal issue there – whether he could do that. But what it comes down to also is, if they get three-fourths of the remaining owners to vote that they want to kick him out of the league, they can – which is kind of crazy, but that’s what the NBA constitution I think is what it’s called says. I don’t know what you want to talk about this because there’s so many legal issues going on but I assume you at least heard about it.
NASIR: Yeah, there are a ton of legal issues here but one legal issue that I think is missing that I think people are talking about but is just not there – is it legal to be a racist? The thing is you can. Everyone’s talking about, oh, like, some kind of labor law, discrimination or anything like that. First of all, understand that there’s no allegations that he took action or some kind of discriminatory act. It’s just these comments are, of course, reprehensible in itself. But the point is that there’s no labor law violation. There’s no statute that he’s broken. The reason it’s a legal issue is because there’s some contractual obligations that he has to abide by under what Matt described as this NBA constitution which the name in itself is kind of funny to me but oh well… And so, that’s really the issue here. Did he violate the constitution? If he did, what can they do about it and can the rest of the owners – was it three-fourths or two-thirds’ vote?
MATT: Three-fourths, yeah.
NASIR: Three-fourths – can they basically kick him out of the league by forcing him a sale. I think there is some kind of provision but I’m not sure how clear it is – whether his actions or his comments here warrant such an action under the constitution – the NBA constitution that is.
MATT: I’m glad you brought that first point up because it really isn’t being talked about. Obviously, all the things he’s done are terrible and he shouldn’t be involved in the league.
Nasir and Matt discuss the story of a woman's claim of sexual harassment at the software company Github. They then answer the question, "Is it a good idea to get a patent before I start my company or wait down the road?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Matthew Staub, and this is our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you can send, the listener, to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: Exactly. Use my full name.
NASIR: Matthew Staub. Now, everyone’s going to look you up on the phonebooks.
MATT: Yeah, it was a big mystery before. Everyone didn’t know what my full first name was but you let everyone in on the secret.
NASIR: I forgot you were using a pseudonym, you know, for that. Well, what do we got? We’ve covering GitHub but my first question is, do you know what GitHub is? I’m just curious.
MATT: Uh, you know what, I don’t know what GitHub is.
NASIR: It’s a trick question because, I think, only geeky programmers even have heard of the company because it’s a pretty neat innovative tool. It’s basically a great way to basically create a repository and post your code online for others to add onto it. But I think the best feature is also being able to create some kind of version control over the code because, you know, when you have multiple people working on it, it allows you to kind of go forward and back and test it and so forth – not that I’m very intimately familiar with it but I think I’ve participated in one GitHub project and that’s pretty much it – just to kind of learn how it works. I think it’s fascinating and I’m sure there’s others out there but they’re pretty much the guys to go to when it comes to version control when it comes to your programming.
MATT: Okay. So, that’s why I haven’t heard of it.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. It was a trick question.
MATT: I thought you were setting me up so it sounds like I’m ignorant of everything. Okay, I’m fine with not knowing what that is until right now.
NASIR: Yeah, I figured that.
MATT: But the underlying story that involves GitHub – or the GitHub scandal, I suppose – involves a sexual harassment issue - male coworker and a female coworker. Of course, as all these are the facts are in dispute so we don’t really know. You’re going to get a he-said, she-said, like you will in pretty much every situation. But this woman, Julie Ann Horvath, is claiming she was harassed by leadership for two years – two years of harassment she put up with, one of which being the cofounder – pretty high up exec there – Tom Preston-Werner – he gave her verbal harassment. His wife got involved at some point, too. She said it’s not fully privy to all the facts. And then, there is another issue, too. I don’t know if this is the same person.
NASIR: I think it’s a different person.
MATT: I think so, too. I just wasn’t sure. It was ambiguous. Another male person basically, one of her coworkers, a male coworker approached her, wanting to date her, and she declined. And then, according to her, that led to him undermining her work and a whole slew of problems even though, if you hear from the other end, that’s not the story. This basically gets to harassment in the workplace. We joke about it at times through The Office, but this is a pretty serious issue, especially if what she’s alleging is true.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. GitHub is in the tech startup industry. Even though they’ve been around for a while, I think they would still be considered a startup company. I think what’s important to know is that, in Silicon Valley and the like and these companies, women are hugely underrepresented. You know, think about the stereotypical programmer and so forth – they tend to be men and those are the ones that are being hired right now. And so, even the women programmers out there and the women in the...
Nasir and Matt welcome business guru Roy Daya. They talk about why a business might fail after an acquisition and answer the question, "I have put in many years to get my business profitable and just reached that goal this past year. We have a sound business model in place and secured investments so we have enough cash. What sort of challenges should I expect to face in scaling my business from here?"
Transcript:
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news with a legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions where you, the listener, can submit to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. Today, we have a fun guest today. We have a nice startup guru for some of your high-tech startups listening out there. His name is Roy Daya. I call him a startup guru because pretty much every successful startup has one of these consultants in their arsenal – one of these guys that can get them through the process that has been through these serial entrepreneurial cycles before. Roy, welcome to the program! ROY: Hi! Thank you for having me! NASIR: Absolutely. Matt, what store are we covering today? MATT: On this show, we talk a lot about startups and we talk about a lot of big public companies, too. Typically, the problems or the mistakes they make. But we don’t spend a lot of time necessarily in the middle. We’re past the point where they’re a startup and we’re getting to the point where the company might be acquiring something else or they might be on the other end and they might be acquired by a bigger company. It could be in a variety of ways – revenue, maybe a product line, maybe the actual people of another company, or maybe the intellectual property. From what I understand, Roy, you deal a lot in working with these companies on either end. I don’t know if you’ve had any experiences from your perspective in the acquisition phase for these companies. ROY: Yeah, I have experienced both with companies getting bought or acquired and with a lot of companies that wanted to get acquired and for some reason or it didn’t happen or they’re still waiting. I know a lot of startups are obsessed with getting bought out by large enterprises and, you know, I can understand them. NASIR: The thing with these acquisitions though, we’ve seen a lot of these big corporations acquire companies. I know Yahoo! acquired Tumblr a while back and that hasn’t done much. A lot of times, I’ve read statistics with these mergers and acquisitions where, a lot of times, these startups and acquisitions don’t meet their marks. I’ve read up to 60-some percent or even 83 percent in recent years where these acquisitions are just not meeting these goals. You know, I wonder, with the Googles of the world and even Facebook, they’re just acquiring like crazy. They’re just betting on some of these are going to hit the marks and some of them aren’t. ROY: I think, on one side, it is kind of a bet. Sometimes, you know, you buy something to make sure nobody else buys it. Sometimes, you buy a company to reduce future risks. For example, if you need that other company in your operations and you rely on them, you buy from them, you want to make sure that nobody else buys them and triples the prices, for example, and it’s kind of an operational cost reduction, risk reduction. There are different reasons – not always long-term. Sometimes, it’s short-term. You’ll have a problem with your stock and the risk operation and you want to show that you’re innovative and you’re moving forward. There’s a lot of different reasons and I think not always the marks that are checked to be successful or not are the reasons why it was done in the first place. I think there’s so much information we just don’t know about. It’s very exciting. NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. I think, from my personal experience, I’ve been less representing clients that have been ac...
Nasir and Matt discuss the Walmartthat claimed itsemployees were home on Easter but were really working in the store. They also answer the question, "I gave a small ownership interest to a friend. Now he refuses to do any voting in which a shareholder vote is required. I have the majority so do I need to worry about him?"
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is our podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the audience and listener, can submit to our podcast and we can answer. By the way, are listeners audiences, too? Or does an audience have to be in a studio?
MATT: I would think audience is anyone who’s any of the five senses – listening, visually, smelling.
NASIR: So, if they can just smell us, they could be an audience?
MATT: Yeah, audience is the umbrella and you have everything underneath.
NASIR: According to Meriam Webster, a group of people who gather together to listen to something.
MATT: Ah!
NASIR: Well, I’m sure a lot of people have podcast parties where they gather together and listen to our podcast. I guess that counts.
MATT: Yeah, that’s pretty popular with ours, I know that I get those comments all the time.
NASIR: Yeah. Well, to all the audience out there, submit your business legal questions to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com and that’s our show!
MATT: We look up the definition of one word every week and we tell people what it is and that’s it.
NASIR: Word of the day – audience. Repeat after me – audience.
MATT: Well, let’s get into the story that we have for today. This one deals with Walmart. By the time this episode comes out, it will be a week past, but it has to do with the Easter Sunday on this Walmart in Maine. This Walmart in Auburn, Maine, was closed on Easter Sunday. Apparently, once you get to a certain size, the laws in Maine are that you have to be closed. But the thing is, they posted a sign on their store saying that they’re going to be closed so their employees could enjoy the Easter Sunday with their families. They were closed, yes, but the problem is that some of the employees were working. Now, there was a question of whether these people came in voluntarily or whether they were required to come in or kind of maybe in the middle – they weren’t required to come in. It’s kind of like when your wife tells you to do something; you might not necessarily be required to do it but, you know, if you don’t, then it’s going to be pretty difficult for you down the road. Maybe it was a situation like that.
NASIR: Well, I think it’s weird that they said that they let them off to be with their families but, if the reason they did that was because it’s a state law, I mean, I don’t think they did that in any other state – well, at least in the other state that doesn’t require it to be closed.
MATT: Right, and I didn’t even know that that was the case. You know, in California, that’s not how the laws are but I guess, in Maine, that’s the case. I’ve actually been to Maine before. I don’t know if I’ve been to Auburn, Maine. I can’t remember, actually, any of the cities I’ve been to. It was a long time ago but it’s pretty spread out in terms of the cities and the population. So, maybe that’s the case on why this is. But getting back into the actual story here, I kind of see a problem with putting something on your store, saying, “Our employees are enjoying their time with their families on Easter Sunday,” but also having people inside, employees, inside working – whether they want to be there voluntarily or not.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s true. It’s even more ironic that, on one hand, they’re saying they did this because of the families yet they’re required. At the same time, there are people working in there. But I can see people wanting to work. I think they only got regular pay though. But, every holiday,
Nasir and Matt talk about Amazon'soffer to employees to take cash to quit and answer a question on hiring employees to work remotely.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is the podcast where we cover business legal news – well, actually, business news and we put in our legal twist. What else do we do? Oh, yeah, we answer legal questions that you submit, the listener, to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com.
MATT: It’s like you wrote that for yourself beforehand because you asked a question and then instantly answered it, but that’s all right.
NASIR: It’s showmanship.
MATT: Things get a little bit crazier on the Friday episodes.
NASIR: That’s true. We’ve got to take it down a notch and get a little relaxed, right? Get ready for the weekend.
MATT: We’ve got a good episode here and I like this story that we have.
NASIR: Wait, wait, wait, wait. How do you know it’s a good episode already?
MATT: Well, I think it’s going to be a good episode.
NASIR: Well, let’s wait until the end and then we’ll comment on it.
MATT: Okay. Well, I know it’s going to be good – well, I’m pretty sure – because the story we’re going to talk about, the first thing you see is it looks like a picture from your place because it’s a cat and an Amazon box which anyone who listens to the podcast knows that you love ordering things from Amazon and you love cats.
NASIR: That’s true. Well, I don’t know if I love cats. I really love my cat but it’s my cat.
MATT: Let me get in the actual details here. This is something that Amazon, I think, they’re going to do. They haven’t done it yet but they’re going to offer their warehouse employees money.
NASIR: They’ve been doing this for a while, I think.
MATT: Oh, they have been doing it for a while.
NASIR: I think so because I read somewhere… Go ahead, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll be quiet.
MATT: Anyway, they’re offering warehouse employees a cash incentive in order to quit. They call it the “pay to quit” program but it’s funny. They don’t want them to quit. They basically want people that are invested in Amazon in the long-term so that, even when they get this offer, it even says, “Please don’t take this offer.” It starts at $2,000 the first time and it increases by $1,000 each year until you hit $5,000. I really like this idea. It’s a really interesting concept. I mean, you know some people are going to take this and they’re going to take their $2,000 and run.
NASIR: In fact, I looked this up on another website but it says fewer than ten percent of the employees who got the offer took it and left the company. That’s still ten percent. That’s still a portion of your business there.
MATT: Yeah, and I imagine they probably have a lot of people that work for them. There’s a lot of Amazon packages going out and this is just warehouse employees so I’m sure there’s a lot of people. I mean, I know in Indianapolis, this past holiday season, they made a huge seasonal push and hired a ton of people. So, it’s probably for more long-term.
NASIR: Yeah. In fact, I’m looking here, it looks like they’ve been doing this for a while but only for a portion of their employees. But, recently, in January, they rolled it out to 40,000 warehouse employees in January. What do you think about the concept? It’s pretty novel but, when you have that organization, you’re looking for long-term employees and people that are really bought into your industry. It seems like a pretty positive thing and something that has a lot of potential.
MATT: You said 40,000 people were offered?
NASIR: I think there were more people than that but the new people that were offered is 40,000 warehouse employees back in January.
MATT: If we assume ten percent, that’s still $8 million which, to Amazon, that’s pretty much nothing. They probably do that in five seconds. But $8 million is $8 million.
NASIR: Wait, how did you get to $8 million?
The guys discuss the effect of the Heartbleed virus on small businesses and then provide guidance on exempt employees.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener and business owner, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness – did we get the dot-com for that?
MATT: Yeah, I think we got everyone – dot-com, dot-net, dot-org, dot-pizza.
NASIR: Have those come out yet? I don’t know if those subdomains or those domains have come out yet but we’re definitely getting legallysoundsmartbusiness.pizza when it comes out – unless one of our listeners takes it from us and extorts us.
MATT: It’s most likely already taken because that would be really popular name that people want to have.
NASIR: Especially for a pizza joint, it’d be perfect for them.
MATT: When the internet was kind of up and coming, everyone was on the internet at this point but people still didn’t understand, there was a very old – not very old but like ten to fifteen years maybe, ten to fifteen years, somewhere in that range – SNL commercial. I’m not going to say what the website they say on the show. You can go look it up because it’s probably not appropriate but it’s pretty funny. It’s basically making fun of the fact that every URL is taken already and this was at least ten years ago so it’s pretty interesting.
NASIR: It’s true. Pretty much every dictionary word is done for dot-coms. Pretty much every dictionary word with another dictionary word seems to be taken. It’s slim pickings now. But that’s why they came up with these other domains. I mean, we have clients that have alternative domain names and we have a lot of startup companies that use alternative domain names – whether it’s dot-co or dot-whatever, you know. And so, it’s becoming more popular and understandable.
MATT: Yeah. Well, enough of that, let’s get into the story we have for today. I assume that everyone had heard of this but I was just talking with people yesterday and not everyone was aware.
NASIR: How could they not? I’ve gotten five or six emails about this Heartbleed vulnerability and I’m surprised people haven’t heard about it yet.
MATT: For those that, I guess, haven’t, there’s this new security flaw that came out. When was this? Last week? At least that’s when we got the emails, I think.
NASIR: Yeah, what’s weird is that I think the internet community found out about it one day and then it just started populating after that and then we also found out that the US government knew about it before it was published or released and so forth. This security flaw is huge. It’s basically that encrypted connection that you have with these websites, yeah, all that information that’s passing by, in theory, I guess, some of these people can get that information – including passwords, credit card information, whatever – and with that goes onto the next level.
MATT: We’re going to kind of approach it from the small business perspective but, essentially, it did infiltrate all these big websites and a lot of private information so it’s all the personal data that might have been stored by these – they mentioned some of the ones that were effected like Dropbox, for example, that’s a pretty big company. I think there was a lot of precautionary things that people were taking. I’m trying to remember which sites sent me emails. Google, they keep saying change your Google password.
NASIR: I didn’t get anything from Google but I got two types of emails – one email was saying change your password and then another email saying, “You don’t have to do anything. We’re not affected.” Because I think everyone was kind of scared about all this so they were just being precautionary.
MATT: Yeah, it sounds like it is more precautionary stuff but we want to talk about how this does...
Nasir and Matt discuss a lawsuit involving Gordon Ramsay and his business partner. They then address the question of whether an attorney or a CPA should take priority.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is our podcast where we cover business in the news with our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you’ve been gracious enough to send in to us at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. By the way, that’s probably the best intro I’ve done this far.
MATT: I was going to say, you got the email address correct. It’s like, 50-50 on that.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s true. I didn’t mention the episode number. I didn’t want to take a chance of getting that wrong.
MATT: Yeah. Well, we usually leave that for the end, anyways.
NASIR: That’s true. We are ready to go, right? I’m interested in this first story because I just watched Hell’s Kitchen which is a show that’s terrible now but I just kept watching it and now I just seem to watch it every season. It’s kind of a guilty pleasure of mine.
MATT: I got reeled in one season. I watched it. It’s all right. There’s nothing really of substance there but it’s interesting at times.
NASIR: No, there’s not. It’s probably one of the worst cooking shows, too. If you’re into cooking and so forth, it’s like terrible cooks that don’t really know what they’re doing and kind of just putting it together as the season goes along.
MATT: We’ll get into the actual story we have here. It’s hard to tell from the TV show because he comes off as a pretty… I mean, it’s Hell’s Kitchen. He comes off as this pretty mean guy.
NASIR: Yeah, but if you watch his British version, he seems completely different. It seems like the American shows, the producers make it so that it’s geared towards an American audience – a little over the top and kind of aggressive and so forth.
MATT: Yeah, exactly. We don’t know what his real personality is but maybe this story has a little bit of a reveal here. Basically, it was Gordon Ramsay and he had a business partner. We are talking about this story so there’s obviously a lawsuit involved and it’s basically his business partner is now suing him for 10 million, essentially saying Ramsay kind of conned his way around their original deal through a couple of tricks that he did – one being with the intellectual property, one being with I guess that’s more of the name situation but I don’t know if you had heard about this or you’ve read about it at all – some pretty interesting things that it looks like he’s being accused of at least.
NASIR: They started this Rowen Seibel and Gordon Ramsey started this restaurant together called The Fat Cow, this LA eatery, and the problem was The Fat Cow was a restaurant named in Florida. Therefore, this Florida restaurant was, of course, upset about the name and so they filed a trademark infringement suit and this Rowen Seibel basically is saying that Ramsay mishandled this lawsuit. He even quoted him saying that he’s the trademark queen which I don’t know why he would say queen instead of king but that’s another issue. But the point is they ended up closing down the restaurant and Seibel says that Ramsay used this trademark excuse to close the restaurant and create a new one without him. Of course, it’s hard to know exactly what went on because Ramsay’s team says that Seibel is the one that managed the restaurant. But, at the same time, how do you create a restaurant name like The Fat Cow without first doing a trademark search. I mean, you know that, especially in this case where you have a restaurant that‘s going to have automatic national publicity; you may want to expand it into other locations; and you want to be able to use the name. And so, the first thing you do before you actually solidify a name is make sure you do that trademark search and it seems like that wasn’t done here.
MATT: You’re exactly right,
Nasir and Matt discuss UPS laying off 250 employees over the decision by one worker. They also answer a question on the best techniques to keeping employees long-term.
Update: Those 250 employees have been rehired.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: This is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we’re ready to go on Episode 30. Talking about UPS.
MATT: Yeah, we have a good UPS story here that happened and this was in New York. Basically, because of the actions of one of the employees – and, for some reason, I thought that UPS drivers weren’t necessarily all employees but some of them were independent contractors, but I know you’re not going to get into that because I know you hate the distinction between the two.
NASIR: Please, no.
MATT: There was a 90-minute protest by one of the UPS drivers and it happened and people kind of went along with it. As a result, they have already dismissed 20 of the workers and they’re planning on terminating another 230. So, 250 potential employees are going to be let go because of one person’s 90-minute protest. I think he was a union activist. Of course, it was over an hour’s dispute, too. I’m sure it’s something that’s probably legitimate. I don’t know if you heard about this story at all but it seems like UPS might not be making the best call in this situation.
NASIR: Well, it’s not easy. I think it’s tough. Basically, I think these drivers are in a union and, for whatever reason, when you have employees in a union, all the rules tend to change when it comes to employment law issues. There’s a lot of provisions in there but, basically, what UPS is saying is that, yeah, you have a right to do certain things and a lot of unions have a right to strike and so forth, but this particular action of this particular protest is against the labor contract that we have. Therefore, it’s blatant in subordination and it’s an illegal conduct. Therefore, we have every right to terminate the employee for this. I don’t know if it’s the case that the employee was doing the 90-minute protest and the other employees joined him but I thought that the protest was because that one particular employee was terminated for misconduct and then these other 250 employees did a 90-minute protest. Either way, the point is still the same.
MATT: Yeah, it was kind of unclear. It makes a lot more sense than how I described it previously. Here we are. A group of 250 employees walked out for 90 minutes. That’s what it was.
NASIR: We have a long history in our country of striking and protesting. Without getting into the details and politics of unions in itself, I think the most important thing to get from this is that (1) UPS is not going to terminate and also hold to that termination – they haven’t backed up on this – without a pretty solid standing ground in doing this. Keep in mind, too, I also read that some of these cities – including New York – are not necessarily too happy about UPS’s actions and are threatening to terminate the contracts that they may have with UPS as well.
MATT: UPS took a pretty no-nonsense approach to this. I kind of respect it, assuming they did it in the most legally appropriate way possible of just saying, “Hey, we have people that are walking out or protesting. We’re not going to put up with that. If that’s what you’re going to do, we’re just going to get rid of you.” 250 is a lot of people, don’t get me wrong, but the distribution center has 1,400 workers. I guess they can find people to replace them.
NASIR: For an hour and a half, I mean, they claim that, because of that hour and a half, things get delayed and, if things get delayed, then they incur penalties from it. That’s probably true and so forth and there’s no doubt that they probably incurred some expense from this, but I think the point is they wanted to make a point so this wouldn’t happen again or they won’t be manipulated through these protests.
Nasir and Matt address the problem surrounding employees not taking vacation. The two also talk about overtime pay in the question of the day.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Episode 29. Are we ready to go?
MATT: I am ready. Let’s get to.
NASIR: First, we have to talk about SNL. It’s recorded live and it’s broadcasted live on the East Coast but then, with a little bit of a delay.
MATT: Yeah, live on the East Coast. I hear that, on the West Coast, it’s on at the same time – the 11:30 p.m. but it’s obviously not the same as it is on the East Coast. I think it even says that on the thing. It says “recorded live from a previous…” or “taped” or whatever it says. But it is live on the East Coast.
NASIR: I guess we can’t call our podcast “live” because we’re not broadcasting live on the East Coast. We’ll work on it later on.
MATT: Let’s get to the story we have for today. I like this one. It deals with employees and vacation. There’s a lot of interesting things in here about what your employees are really doing when they’re on vacation. Vacation is supposed to be a time when you’re not working. I know, Nasir, when you go on vacations, you never work at all.
NASIR: That is not true. I just came from a vacation to Costa Rica. I think that was the first time I had really unplugged – I don’t know – for four years. I think all my vacations have been working vacations. That’s different though. I think I’m in a different – well, apparently, to this article, I’m not different – than anyone else, apparently.
MATT: Yeah, and this also talks about it’s more focused on the employees of companies and dealing with supervisors but there’s a lot of interesting numbers in here. Let me rewind a little bit here. It’s basically saying, when employees go on vacation, they’re still working – and we’ll get to the numbers in that, no big surprise. One of the first things it discusses is Americans only used 51 percent of their available vacation time in the last twelve months.
NASIR: Meaning they won’t use all their time.
MATT: Yeah, your vacation days accrue but they’re not even using the actual vacation days. I guess that’s not that surprising either.
NASIR: Hold on, though. I just found a loophole in that statistic because there are some states which, once your vacation accrues, you can’t lose it. Even if you do end up not using the actual vacation days, you still are maybe entitled to vacation pay. Therefore, perhaps some employers just pay them out as a bonus at the end of the year which I know some of our clients do.
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: Technically, the employees almost have an incentive not to take vacation days.
MATT: Yeah, because you’re still getting paid the money but you’re not getting the break which would be nice. I think everyone needs some sort of break at some point – no matter who you are, in my opinion. Let me get into more of the numbers in here. I’ll just get to the one I thought was the craziest, if I can find it. 20 percent of employees when they’re on vacation said they were contacted by their boss. This seems like a problem.
NASIR: Yeah, that’s a problem because, basically, if you’re under the control of your employer, then you are considered to be in work time. Therefore, working. Therefore, not really on vacation. And so, probably a labor law violation in pretty much every state that I can think of. I think it’s also a federal law violation.
MATT: Yeah, exactly, that’s what I was getting to – that’s the big issue there. But some of them say it was welcomed. You know, there’s a lot of different numbers always thrown around in this but the bottom-line is people are on vacation, in a sense, but not really taking vacation. Sometimes, it’s just helpful – I’ll talk from an employer’s perspective – if your employees go on vacation, let them go on vacation. Don’t contact them. That’s obvious advice.
NASIR: No doubt.
Nasir and Matt talk about Google's new class of stock that has no voting rights, as well as how to bring on investors without losing equity in the company.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And welcome to Episode 28.
MATT: Yeah, we’re really getting up there in the numbers. This is impressive now.
NASIR: Very good. I’m really excited for this episode today. We’re talking about classes of stock with Google.
MATT: Yeah, I’m just going to get right into this. So, this is with Google Stock and it’s kind of interesting. You can have classes of stock as a corporation – at least as Google has it here. This is their new C class that just got issued. But the thing here is the shareholders for this class of stock are going to have zero voting rights at the annual shareholders’ meetings.
NASIR: Yeah, I mean, pretty much no rights. I assume maybe they get dividends at the least, right? But they really strip down any kind of benefit of actually owning the stock other than just the speculation of the ownership of the company and buying and selling the actual stock.
MATT: You know, the dividends is a good point. I don’t know if it even mentions that in here but, yeah, I would think they’d have to get dividends at least or else…
NASIR: I don’t know if Google issues dividends or not.
MATT: Yeah, that’s true as well. But, anyway, this class is not voting and, you know, thinking about it more macro, if the people that had Class A shares, for example, or B, I mean, their votes really don’t matter in the whole scheme of things, especially when the main people have I think here 55.7 percent. So, they have the majority. They can still do whatever they want to do. But I guess I get the point of having these as non-voting just because they don’t want to dilute that 55.7 percent anymore but as long as they kept the majority, I don’t see what the big deal is.
NASIR: From what I was reading, the reason is that the Class A stock which is a voting stock – well, both Class A and B are voting stock – Class B is really the one that matters because each share is worth ten votes and you can do that. You can have different classes where you want to retain control. And so, even if you don’t own a majority of the company – even though, in this case, they do – your vote is the one that matters. Class A stock must be used by Google to issue to basically their employees for a stock option and things like that. You know, it makes sense. If they want to keep doing that, eventually, they’re going to be diluted to a point where they don’t have control. I guess, in theory, that’s the perspective that they’re coming with so that they don’t have to worry about this kind of issue. But I think it’s an important lesson for other companies because different classes of stock is not only in corporations. You can have different voting rights and different levels of interest and other entities as well – whether it’s a limited partnership or LLC. To me, it’s a main point of how to retain control and to give different rights to maybe investors or non-investors or founding partners versus later employees.
MATT: The question of the week here that’s coming up actually kind of deals with this as well but I did want to touch on a couple more things. I thought it was funny how the shareholders tried to stop this or object to it and they voted. They got 180 million votes in favor of a resolution that was going to call for equal voting rights which is by far the most they’re had – is it triple the amount of any other measure that was voted on? But they said the majority has 551 million votes so not even close to reaching that.
NASIR: And that was just between two people – Larry Page and I forgot the other responder’s name.
MATT: That was pretty funny but, basically, the point I was making earlier was that, at the end of the day, an individual’s vote doesn’t really matter that muc...
Nasir and Matt discuss the commercials featuring Ronald McDonalds approving of Taco Bell's breakfast. They also attack the independent contractor misclassification issue from the employee perspective in the question of the day.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: All right, Episode 27 and that’s 2.7 percent of a thousand episodes.
MATT: Yeah, for people listening a couple of episodes ago, I’m glad we got this straight.
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we are starting off the day with a nice little Taco Bell and McDonald’s story.
MATT: Yeah. So, hopefully, you’re having breakfast right now because, even though this is involving Taco Bell and McDonald’s, of course – this is a breakfast story now. Some of you may have already seen the commercial. I know I’ve seen it a couple of times. Basically, I’ll back up a little. Everyone knew McDonald’s has breakfast. It’s well-known that it ends at 10:30 because people make jokes about it all the time. So, Taco Bell saw this and said, “Hey! Why don’t we get into this market? We’re Mexican fast food. It only makes sense for us to get into breakfast.” So, they’re running these commercials and I’ll give them credit – these commercials are pretty good. It’s pretty funny. They have all these people that they found around the country named Ronald McDonald to eat the breakfast food that they have and comment on how much they like it. Now, I guess they did pay these people to be in the commercial but they claim all the responses are real – which I find hard to believe because, if you look at some of items that Taco Bell’s breakfast are, they don’t even look appetizing in the pictures so I can’t imagine what it really looks like in real life.
NASIR: I have not tasted it myself though Taco Bell is probably the only fast food restaurant that I tend to eat once in a while – maybe once every couple of months or so – but I thought the commercial was hilarious. It kind of caught me off-guard because I didn’t even know it was a Taco Bell commercial until later.
MATT: It is pretty interesting. A waffle taco? An A.M. Crunchwrap? An A.M. Grilled Taco Breakfast Burrito? That’s pretty standard. Cinnamon Delights? The main thing in this is, when people watch, they might think, “Is Taco Bell allowed to do this?” because they’re basically taking the name Ronald McDonald which is associated exactly with McDonald’s – the big red-haired clown or whatever he is. They’re using that name – not his likeness but the name – to try this Taco Bell food and approve of it.
NASIR: Yeah. So, we’ve talked about in the past how character names and likenesses of a mascot or a logo or what-have-you or a particular company is protected by trademark and copyright law. But Taco Bell was smart, of course. They deliberately chose to advertise its product featuring real men named Ronald McDonald and also put it in disclaimer – I don’t know if you caught it at the end and I even rewound it on my DVR just to read it again – it said something like, “These Ronald McDonalds are not affiliated with McDonald’s Corporation and were individually selected as paid endorsers of Taco Bell, et cetera.” And so, we’ve talked about fair use, right? But, when an advertiser uses a competitor’s trademarks within their commercial, for example, it usually falls in the nominative fair use doctrine. However, there’s a few factors. The courts review whether the company had a need to use a trademark in order to identify the competing product, whether they went beyond the use necessary in order to make that identification. Classically, it reminds me of I think it was either Verizon or AT&T – I think it was Verizon that would take AT&T’s coverage map next to theirs and use their AT&T logo. The question is, well, how can they use their logo and the brand, well, to identify the differentiation. It’s not like Taco Bell had these guys dressed up in a clown uniform either.
Nasir and Matt talk about the lawsuit over items of flair from Office Space and answer a question on options in purchasing a business.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Episode 26 of Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we’re ready to go. We’re going to talk about Office Space today – the movie. We tried to get it – at least The Office or Office Space or an episode of what else? Seinfeld and pizza.
MATT: Yeah. Well, I was trying to think. I don’t know if we’ve discussed… Office Space is a pretty classic office-themed TV show or movie. I don’t think we’ve discussed it before, have we? Do you recall discussing it?
NASIR: I think, tangentially, we have. I mean, I think the show, The Office, is based upon a lot of the happenings in the Office Space.
MATT: I guess, for me, I’ve never really worked in an office environment like that. I did a little bit in college when I worked in this one place but, yeah, I guess I did for one summer. I had a cubicle-type setup, but it was a much different situation. I was much younger than everyone else that was working there and my boss was not like any of the bosses in this movie.
NASIR: I think you and I have been pretty lucky in our past job experience, but I know very well – through family members and so forth – that these kinds of places do exist, unfortunately – or fortunately, depending upon your sense of humor.
MATT: Let me get to the actual substance of this lawsuit here and it was a lawsuit and it’s Todd Duffee. Maybe some of you might remember him as the flair guy at Chotchkie’s – I think that’s it is, right? Yeah, Chotchkie’s.
NASIR: Yeah, Chotchkie’s.
MATT: So, there is a lawsuit. He’s suing 20th Century Fox or he did sue 20th Century Fox because I guess they came out with this game or something you could buy – some sort of product that had all these, basically, if you’d seen the movie – and, if you haven’t, go watch it because it is a good movie – he’s working at Chotchkie’s and they have all these items of flair so it’s all these buttons that they have to wear on their uniform. I guess 20th Century Fox has put out all these similar buttons. Basically, the buttons like they wear in the movie that you can wear. It’s your own personal items of flair. Now, I don’t know why it took them fifteen years for them to put this out because the movie was in 1999. Were they just circling back around and it just dawned on them to do this? But, anyway, the actor who played the waiter at Chotchkie’s was suing 20th Century Fox because, you know, he was basically saying that they were improperly using his image for this product that they’re now selling.
NASIR: Well, I think it’s funny that he’s even suing at all – as if this product is making billions of dollars or something. I think it’s cool. I think it’s funny. But who actually buys this stuff? And what are you going to do – wear it maybe for Halloween or for a day and then that’s it pretty much? One-time use?
MATT: For an update, he did lose and I’m not sure at what stage he lost but he did lose. I don’t even know what grounds he really had to stand on in terms of why he even brought this lawsuit in the first place.
NASIR: Well, the assumption is use of likeness. But I think what Matt is saying is that, well, look, you sign up for a movie and they’re promoting the movie through these products. So, why wouldn’t they be allowed to? They had his provision in the contract agreement to be able to use his image for commercial purpose. When we ran film contracts through our firm, we basically have it so that the producers can use the likeness of the actors – pretty much any way they want – in connection to the actual project. And so, this would also apply – even though it’s some kind of board game – not a board game. It’s basically a box of buttons with his picture on it, you know?
MATT: Yeah.
NASIR: And it says “Office Space” on it and it says “A Box of Flair” and that’s pretty much ...
Nasir and Matt discuss the potential benefit of PiinPoint, the digital location finder, will have on small businesses. They also answer a question on whether you should make the first draft a contract.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we are starting our new format at Episode 25 – a quarter of the way through to a hundred. I think that’s 1… 2.5 percent of a thousand.
MATT: Great math lessons we’re giving here.
NASIR: Is that right? I don’t even know. I’m probably off.
MATT: Yeah, 0.25 percent is correct. As long as you put the percent after it.
NASIR: Perfect, yes. Or 0.025 which is a decimal.
MATT: It would be 0.0025 or, no, you’re right.
NASIR: No, 0.025.
MATT: Sorry, I screwed up at the beginning.
NASIR: All right. Well, so long as we got our math correct. Good thing we’re not mathematicians and we’re attorneys.
MATT: Right. Well, let me talk about this new company – I guess it’s not a new company. It’s new to me. PiinPoint – I don’t know if you’ve heard about this but it’s a pretty unique thing that they’re doing. It’s this digital platform and it basically allows companies to, first of all, you have to pay for the service, of course. Once you’re in, it allows companies that want to add a new location – or maybe add a first location, I suppose – to use their information, their data to find the most ideal location for your business.
NASIR: Yeah.
MATT: They just got about $250,000 in funding but it’s still relatively new-ish. I don’t know if they even have a model that’s even fully functioning yet but this would be pretty cool for businesses looking for a new spot.
NASIR: Yeah, it seems like they really take data and analyze it. They do everything from monitoring locations, your locations, exploring new locations, reviewing your competitions’ locations and things like that. I don’t know what kind of data they’re actually collecting and how they’re accessing it but I think the most important thing to get from this transaction is for startup companies, I think they said – as far as what they disclosed, they started in July – right now, they have only around ten customers but they were able to raise $250,000. Understand the concept here is we’ve hear a lot about this minimum viable product is get out to market in the fastest way possible and see if it’s viable. This company was able to show that they were able to attract ten customers and it seems like they’re actually pretty sizeable customers as well and raised $250,000 overnight with angel investors.
MATT: I just went to the website. Right now, you can only sign up for the pilot program. But I’m really interested to see how they do this because we still don’t really know. I’m sure they obviously have some sort of algorithms that they use. But is it based on people checking in at locations? I don’t know what access to data they even have. I think it can be a good thing, especially for startups. Location is pretty key. They say that’s one of the most important things you have is location.
NASIR: Yeah, especially if you need a retail environment. I had a friend back in high school and his family owned a Long John Silver franchise. I remember distinctly that one of the reasons why it went out of business is because it was at a corner which was very difficult to get at in the sense that the driver would miss the line and so forth. Just because of that alone, it wasn’t producing the amount of customers that it needed. So, location is obviously important. But getting the information and data, getting this information that probably these bigger companies have ready access to through their market research but being able to aggregate it in a way that’s reachable to the smaller guy I think is pretty huge.
MATT: Yeah, just like the frozen drink bar that has been open up in Downtown San Diego. San Diego is one of the biggest beach towns – it has the most beaches in t...
Nasir and Matt discuss the IRS deciding that Bitcoin is property and not currency, the recent ruling that college football players may unionize, a lawsuit filed over an asset purchase gone wrong, and why one early investor is not excited about the Candy Crush IPO. They also answer questions about putting the "LLC" designation after your business name, finding the right domain name, and when you can use the trademark symbol.
Also, as mentioned, Nasir's prediction of 2 perfect brackets didn't even make it to the second week of the tournament.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Episode 24 of Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Nice formal introduction that time but we’re ready to go.
MATT: Things feel right again. It was thrown off the last couple of episodes.
NASIR: Well, that was the purpose.
MATT: It’s good to be back. All right, let’s get into this first story for this week and this was a really big one. It’s something we’ve been waiting on.
NASIR: Huge news.
MATT: Maybe not necessarily we but a lot of people have been waiting for the IRS to come down to decide what they’re going to do – not only with Bitcoin, that gets a lot of the press, but just virtual currency in general. I think it turned out as what a lot of people that are familiar with Bitcoin thought was going to happen. They ruled that – well, first things first – they ruled that it’s not currency; it’s property. Any gains on it are actually going to be capital gains. Like I said, this is what people thought was going to happen but it’s still kind of weird. There’s a lot of little things in here that might shy people away from it but there’s also some positives as well.
NASIR: Well, I’d like to hear the positive because my first reaction was annoyance because the requirements to actually track this stuff is going to be kind of difficult. Our firm has dealt with Bitcoin in the past and we’re dealing with it now. But, to me, these new IRS rules are just going to be a lot harder to report. Because it’s property, we have to track at the time that we receive the Bitcoin how much it’s worth. And then, if we use it again to let’s say buy a TV, then we have to track that new price that the Bitcoin is currently worth and then calculate capital gains and capital loss at that transaction. I don’t know. It seems like a huge burden upon reporting.
MATT: Yeah, and I definitely agree with that and there’s no doubt that it is going to be more burdensome. There’s an example where you get Bitcoin and you use it to go buy a sandwich. Technically, you have to calculate the potential capital gains or capital loss on that transaction. I guess, in that sense, it’s overly burdensome. But, on the pro side, I was thinking it’s not taxed at ordinary income so that’s definitely a plus – I guess more so for investors.
NASIR: That’s true.
MATT: Or maybe, if an employee gets paid with Bitcoin, I would think that they wouldn’t be taxed at capital gains rates like they’re saying and not ordinary income.
NASIR: The capital gains rate is obviously lower than ordinary income. But then, also, I think the proponents of Bitcoin are maybe upset about this because it’s not considered a currency and because it’s considered almost an investment, people are going to see it that way and not going to be able to use it in the same way that a currency is supposed to be used and it kind of goes against the entire purpose of the Bitcoin itself.
MATT: Overall, I’m definitely siding with it’s more of a negative than a positive. I’m just trying to point out the one or two positives that are there. But we’ll see. The people I’ve spoken to that are in the Bitcoin world, I think they maybe are a little bit upset about it. But, at the same time, they say that it’s all the more reason to get in Bitcoin because, the more you get into it, the stronger everyone becomes. It’s a positive outlook, I guess. But, underneath, people might be upset.
Nasir and Matt start things off by discussing PayPal's decision to stop freezing accounts for crowdfunding, as well as Starbucks licensing its mobile payment system, a company having to advance legal fees for a manager, and which NCAA tournament bracket contests are legal. They also answer questions about what to discuss at board meetings, corporate credit cards, and firing an employee for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day.
Update: No perfect brackets remained after the first week of the tournament.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: What do we have first up today?
MATT: The first story we have today deals with another company we’ve discussed a couple of times and another issue we’ve discussed a couple of times. Basically, PayPal is coming on and saying they will no longer freeze accounts for crowdfunding. I’m assuming people know what crowdfunding is because we’ve talked about it on the podcast before. But someone does some crowdfunding idea, they get this example here, $700,000 all sent to their PayPal account and PayPal has been freezing these accounts because they’ve been worried about chargebacks. This is kind of a problem because, in this example, he’s saying, you know, “I need to pay my employees. I need this money and it’s all tied up.” I guess I understand PayPal’s concern in the past because just the nature of crowdfunding, people give money, they don’t get anything out of it per se – at least not at the beginning – and they might say, “Hey! Well, I don’t like this idea, I’m just going to request a refund,” essentially. This is good because it’s allowing people that are raising this money to actually use the money that they raised.
NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. This reminds me of these credit limits that businesses – including ourselves, when we run credit cards or even ACH bank transfers and so forth – these guys always put limits on how much you can do per day and per week and per month, et cetera. Especially for a new business, it can be tough because, even if you have substantial growth, these companies are going to put limits on you and you’re going to be like, “Well, these guys want to pay me. It’s good for them. Why don’t they just let me exceed those limits?” The thing is PayPal gets a lot of slack and the reason is because they’re one of the biggest credit card processors in the world – second to Authorize.net and so forth. But, as far as what people use and have a good name to. They always put these limitations on because they’re worried about these chargebacks and these limitations. Crowdsourcing – I think we were going to cover it. Just last week, there was this guy that raised $300,000 or $400,000 on Kickstarter to write a book. Instead, he burned all the books or something weird. We were going to cover it, right?
MATT: Yeah. Well, that was a really weird story. I didn’t understand it. He said the pressure got to him and he just couldn’t produce all the book. I guess it’s probably because people paid money to help him write this book or get it published or whatever it was and they were requesting the books and he just couldn’t. But it’s all money that they gave him for free. That’s what I don’t understand. It’s like there’s not really that much pressure because people are just giving you free. It’s essentially just donations.
NASIR: Yeah, he couldn’t keep up with the shipping. You’re right.
MATT: Have you ever done any of this? Have you ever contributed money?
NASIR: Not online yet. I had one. I was going to do it online but then I just ended up giving on the side because I knew the person. We’ll still see what happens with that. I don’t know. I’m not surprised that this stuff happens, if not more, because these ventures are frankly always high-risk in the first place. But it is kind of strange for PayPal to get in the middle of that. But, if they are paid by credit card and so forth,
In this week's episode, Nasir and Matt welcome attorney Mark Wisnosky to discuss the ongoing legal battle involving patents on podcasts and legal crowdfunding. They also talk about a class action lawsuit against McDonald's, the proposed new rules for overtime pay, and Uber's smart move to increase its insurance policies. Nasir and Matt also answer questions dealing with manager managed LLC's, employees wanting access to their personal files, and what questions you can legally ask in an interview.
Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: We’re back with another episode of Legally Sound Smart Business! I’m very excited for this one. We have a packed content theme, I think. A lot of employment law issues and some patent law. What do you think, Matt? Are you ready for this?
MATT: Yeah, there are a lot of good stories and questions this week, probably enough that it could be split into two separate episodes. We’ll see how long it runs and just see what happens, I guess, but there is a lot of action going on this week.
NASIR: Action-packed. All right, let’s get started!
MATT: This is a pretty interesting story and I guess it’s been going on for longer. I just heard about it this week but it’s been going on for a little bit longer. Obviously, anyone that listens to this know what a podcast is and is familiar with podcasts and listens to them.
NASIR: By the way, that’s a weird assumption. That’s not necessarily.
MATT: We’ve hit on this in episodes in the past but it’s essentially these patent troll issues. I heard about this from listening to Adam Carolla. He’s saying there’s these companies – mostly attorneys or law firms – just buying up these patents but there are these people saying that they own the technology behind podcasting. I’m not sure exactly what they’re saying they own but, apparently, it’s getting in this whole law suit that they own all the technology for podcasting and people that do podcasts have to pay them some sort of licensing. This is step one in the story. There are some other things going on, too. To fight this, Adam Carolla who is one of the most popular podcasts and Marc Maron who has another very popular podcast and some other big names, they’re all coming together. I think Adam Carolla is the one who’s running this page but he’s doing a thing on Fund Anything. This is like a Kickstarter – a crowdfunding idea – and he’s going on there and trying to pay the legal fees for the lawsuit through people that listen to podcasts, essentially. We have these patent trolls coming in on this podcast technology. We have licensing fees getting thrown around. We also have a lawsuit – litigation paid for by an audience, essentially. A lot of different pieces going on with this.
NASIR: Absolutely. I actually read a little bit more about this guy. Apparently, the idea is some invention that he had in 1996. The process was based upon cassettes and somehow that translated to digital and his later patents that he filed and something to that effect. But all I know is that he has been successful once which is crazy. He actually won a lawsuit against Apple. It was appealed by Apple and then it settled and went away assumingly that Apple paid him off with less than the amount that it was awarded and it was like a 6-million-dollar original judgment. I assume that’s the money that he’s using to fight these lawsuits but I just cannot imagine that he’s going to be here for the long haul. We’re not patent attorneys but we have one in our firm that I wanted to give a call to so I think this is a great opportunity to get his perspective on this. I know we’ve talked about patent trolls in the past but I think this is a little bit more sophisticated. Let’s get him on the line. His name is Mark Wisnosky. Hey, Mark! Thanks for joining the show! We went over some of the details with this podcast fight with this patent troll. We’ve covered patent trolls in the past and I just cannot believe this guy is actually trying to claim this.
This week's episode examines who owns the selfie taken at the Oscars, why one food truck is facing criminal charges, how Getty Images is making some of its photos free, and a teen's Facebook post that may cost her dad $80,000. Nasir and Matt also field questions about who owns work created by an employer's staff, what to look for in a commercial lease, and whether to go to small claims court for your customer/client's unpaid bill. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: And I realized that we always introduce ourselves but we already have an intro. So, I don’t even know why we even do that. It’s like Andy Richter introduces Conan O’Brien and he walks in and says, “I’m Conan O’Brien and this is the…” whatever the show is called.
MATT: It’s because, last week, it was just me. So, sometimes, it is different.
NASIR: Oh, that’s true, that’s true. Well, let’s start our show. What do we have, Matt?
MATT: Welcome back, first of all. It’s good to have you back after last week it was just me. We’ll see if our chemistry is still here after taking a couple of weeks off.
NASIR: I know. I definitely missed the podcast. But I think last week’s episode – and I’m not even being funny about it – it was I think our best episode. Obviously, it was a compilation of our best moments but it was truly a really nice review of the last twenty episodes.
MATT: It was actually pretty fun going back and listening to them again too because there’s a lot of stuff that I forgot that we even talked about. It was a nice little stroll down memory lane.
NASIR: We’re not that old yet!
MATT: Well, for the podcast, yeah. All right, enough of that. We’ll get into the first story we have for this week. This has gotten a lot of publicity. I’m sure anyone that’s been breathing, I guess, in this last week has heard about this selfie that was taken at the Oscars. I actually didn’t see the Oscars. Well, I take that back. I saw the end of it but I didn’t see this part.
NASIR: Well, it’s funny. I probably watched five minutes and this is the only part that I saw. So, I’m ready.
MATT: Good. Well, Ellen was the host and I guess she did this thing where she did a lot of crowd work and she went into the crowd and she had a phone and – I guess you can correct me if I’m wrong on exactly how this happened – she handed to Bradley Cooper and they took a selfie of a bunch of people. It looks like ten of them and a bunch of high-profile celebrities. This picture, she put it up on Twitter and, the last time I checked, it had over 3.3 million retweets which is just shattering whatever the previous record was. I think the previous record was Obama’s tweet when he said, “Four more years.” I could be wrong on that.
NASIR: I didn’t even realize that it gained so much popularity. In fact, when I saw it, it was almost awkward because Ellen’s holding one of those huge Samsung phones so it was basically a Samsung ad placement. And then, she’s taking pictures and then having people get together. The picture turned out nice but, for me, it was just a very awkward moment when, like, celebrities didn’t know what was going on.
MATT: It doesn’t look like they were on it either because their expression looked pretty natural. But they’re saying, “Who owns this photo?” The story that’s coming out this week is Bradley Cooper, since he was the photographer, he owns the photo, according to copyright law.
NASIR: Yeah, and if you think about it, Ellen is the one that is the owner of the phone – well, supposedly; it may not even be hers. And then, she hands it to Mr. Bradley Cooper who is apparently an actor. He’s the one who actually takes the photo. And so, this is equivalent to a photographer that – I don’t know – rents a camera or borrows a camera and goes out for a photoshoot. Who owns the photo? Is it the participants? Is it the photographer? Is it the owner of the camera? Very classic situation but we already know the answer.
MATT: According to the law, it’s Bradley Cooper.
This week's episode features the best moments through the first 20 podcasts. Topics include the popular sauce vs. crust debate, having your employees work on Thanksgiving, the interview with Jerry Sanders, legalities of running a fake promotion, Texas A&M licensing the 12th man to Seattle, and the first and last employee vs. independent contractor discussion. Thanks again to everyone who has made this podcast a success through the first 20 episodes. Full Podcast Transcript
MATT: Hey everybody! Matt here! We have something a little bit different for you guys this week as Nasir and I weren’t able to synch up our schedules. Seeing as this is our 20th episode, we figured we could do a “best of the first twenty.” We selected some of our favorite stories and questions as well as some audience favorites and we hope you guys enjoy it and continue to support the podcast. But, before we get started here, I did want to give a little thanks to some people that have gotten us this far. Our producer extraordinaire, Chris, for all he does – he’s the jack of all trades of this podcast; our assistant, Jennifer, for helping us schedule and line up the guests; our guests themselves for making the show more interesting than two attorneys just talking to each other; and to our listeners who, if it wasn’t for our listeners, we wouldn’t even be here. So, sit back and enjoy this “best of the first twenty” and, as always, keep it sound and keep it smart. [MUSIC]
NASIR: Our first article here today. What have we got, Matt?
MATT: This is pretty interesting. It’s kind of confusing, too. It’s two companies that are disputing – Torchy’s Tacos and Texas Taco Company – but the dispute is over pizza. So, right off the bat, they chose awful names. It’s not surprising they’re now in a lawsuit against each other. But it essentially comes down to the trade secrets. Obviously, you know, in restaurants, we’re talking about the food that’s made or possibly even a certain recipe that is put together with some of the ingredients.
NASIR: Matt, you realize this is the second pizza article we’ve covered? I know you like pizza but we can’t keep doing this. Maybe down the line we can do a pizza-themed episode but this will be the last one for a while, I promise.
MATT: Yeah, I usually just scan articles and, when I see the word “pizza,” I just select it just because I enjoy talking about it. It’s been such a big part of my life – working for years in a pizza place.
NASIR: Well, hopefully, your experience can come into play in this. This is dispute on the ingredients, the training manuals, and so forth. Frankly, what kind of ingredients go to a pizza? It’s pretty basic.
MATT: Well, yes and no, it depends if people make their own sauce. Places are typically going to make their own dough. Some of the bigger chains have frozen dough but I guess that too is also a recipe that’s brought down from corporate. The dough is big, the sauce can be big; other than that, the toppings are the toppings. You’re not going to get a bunch of variation there. I’m guessing it’s probably over the dough. We’re already getting into my pizza love now. In my opinion, the dough is the most important part of the pizza – the crust.
NASIR: Really? I think it’s the sauce. I mean, dough is important but, to me, if it’s a good sauce, it makes a big impact.
MATT: That’s one person’s opinion.
NASIR: Yeah, it’s the opinion.
MATT: There are some pictures on here, too. It looks like it’s some sort of stuffed pizza or pizza that’s got the crust on top as well. The two pictures look very similar – down to the plating, the cut, the plating style. They do look identical. This is pretty interesting because, if you look down later in the article, there is some sort of investigator involved, too.
NASIR: I think they hired a PI, right? They sent a PI in to investigate and they saw that they were using the exact same plating techniques and the exact same recipe. In fact, I’m reading here,
Nasir and Matt start the show off discussing Facebook's newest acquisition (WhatsApp), how Capital One's credit card policy allows entry into consumer's homes, the importance of new top level domains to small businesses, and how to not respond to a (fake)employee quitting. They also answer questions concerning about hiring a minor, what expense you can deduct before incorporating, and the legal implications of using a customer's logo without its consent. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: This is Nasir Pasha. Welcome to Legally Sound.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: I know, I threw you off. I usually say, “This is Legally Sound,” and then, “My name’s Nasir Pasha.”
MATT: You switched the order and you didn’t even say the full name of the podcast.
NASIR: Oh, yeah, that’s true. This is Legally Sound Smart Business – also known, in short, Legally Sound.
MATT: Glad you clarified there.
NASIR: I thought you were going to finish the other half. I’m the Legally Sound part, you’re the Smart Business.
MATT: We don’t need to get to the point where we finish each other’s sentences like that.
NASIR: Sentences.
MATT: All right. Let’s jump into it. This was a pretty big story this week. There’s a lot of news about it. Facebook is buying this thing called WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars and I think a huge chunk of that is cash and there’s some stock. I mean, I wasn’t familiar with WhatsApp until you actually introduced me to it. We use it pretty much every day. It’s pretty good technology. I mean, this is just really interesting for a few reasons. One, this is a lot of money. This is a pretty small company in terms of size. I think it had 15 employees.
NASIR: It’s small and it’s new. It’s only a few years old, right?
MATT: Yeah, it’s still relatively new. It’s still really small. I don’t think they’re making a ton of money, if any, right now.
NASIR: They’re making money, but nowhere close to 16 billion dollars. I think it’s a dollar per year per user and I know their user base is in the millions. It’s definitely not 16 billion users because that would be more than what’s on the earth. Obviously, there’s a multiplier here. Honestly, when I first saw this, I’m a heavy user. I use it with my family. I use it for TFL. It’s just a good way to have groups and share whatever. I don’t know. I was a little put off that Facebook is now integrating themselves in there. I think they’ve said that they’re not necessarily going to change it too much or let it independently grow and operate and retain its brand. I don’t know. It put me off a little bit.
MATT: I forgot that I did pay a dollar for when I bought it. I completely forgot about that. That is how they make their money. This is pretty interesting because I don’t use Facebook Messenger, but I know it exists. I guess they just like what WhatsApp had in place a lot more than their own messaging service because I think they’re competitors in a sense. But another thing here, I guess, what was a reason they did this possibly, what people are saying was international usage. Apparently, primarily in Europe, there’s a very high usage rate of WhatsApp and it’s not the same in the US. Maybe there might be more. I don’t remember if there’s more Facebook messaging users or what it is, but it’s extremely high level of WhatsApp users in Europe and other countries outside of the US. That could be a play that they’re trying to do here.
NASIR: Yeah, exactly. I think the international messaging is definitely kind of lost in the Facebook world. I’m just looking it up here. It looks like they have around 450 million users. Assuming each of them pay a dollar per year – some of them may have gotten it for free for whatever reason in the beginning – it seems like a huge multiplier and there’s a lot of discussion about why it’s priced so high and it’s kind of confusing to me, but one thing that you should know here is that there’s a termination fee. If, for some reason,
In this week's episode Nasir and Matt discuss the Dumb Starbucksstore that surfaced in Los Angeles, an NFL player voiding his contract for more guaranteed money, and employees at Starbucks questioning a disabled veteran with a service dog. They also welcome special guest Reggie Lal to discuss Ponzi schemesin real estate investing. Nasir and Matt then answer questions concerning when to get a nondisclosure agreement signed, whether a closed business can be sued, and how to handle a competitor slashing prices.
Go buy some @dumbstarbucks before dumb lawyers get to it pic.twitter.com/67E2zq0myf
— Mark McCune (@MarkMcCune) February 8, 2014 Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business!
This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: Thanks for joining us this week again!
This is where we cover business legal news and answer some of your business legal questions.
What do we have first up today?
I think we have our coffee/Starbucks episode.
MATT: Yeah, this is heavily Starbucks episode. We’re going to book in today’s episode of Starbucks stories, but I’m sure many of you probably saw this first one and maybe some of you know the full story and some of you don’t.
For those that don’t, there’s a coffee shop in LA that opened up called Dumb Starbucks. It just mirrored a normal Starbucks but just had the word “dumb” in front of everything. The name, every single drink just had the word “dumb” in front of it. They even have the same Starbucks logo with just “dumb” in front of Starbucks. It was pretty much an exact mirror of a Starbucks.
For those of you that don’t know, basically, it was kind of a PR stunt done by this guy. Who was it? Nathan Fielder. He has a show on Comedy Central. Actually, he did some pretty funny stuff last year. I saw some of his show.
NASIR: I didn’t even know he was famous yet. I thought it was just he kind of just came out of nowhere.
MATT: Well, I hate to bring it up this early in the show, but the first episode I saw, he just does these crazy things. He went into a pizza place and he basically tries to do fake ways to generate more business and he offered a free pizza if you didn’t get your pizza within 30 minutes like the old Domino’s way. but the free pizza, he would actually deliver, these were like the size of a circle you would make with your hand – like, a very small circle.
NASIR: Yeah, because he didn’t specify what size.
MATT: Right, exactly. It’s stuff like that.
This story got a lot of press and people were asking about, “Is this legal?”
Dumb Starbucks came out – and, I guess, more so Nathan – he said, “It’s illegal because it’s a parody.” And so, there are use under the fair use that allow this to happen, but I don’t know if you know about the story or what your take is on this.
NASIR: When I first saw it, I assumed – and I think I’m correct on this – that whoever was behind this, they went through great trouble to first determine whether or not they were going to get away with it. I assume some attorney definitely advised him as to how to proceed, but I do see some loopholes.
Fair use under parody is a very difficult thing to do because you have to take each case specifically because – think about it this way – if you’re going to parody anything, you have to use the original mark. No matter what, you’re going to be actually using or infringing upon a trademark. And so, therefore, you have to make sure that not only does it serve its purpose – meaning it also has to be comedic, but also done in a way that is not commercial in nature. And so, the one concern I had with this is that, on Saturday and Sunday, apparently, he was giving out coffee – lines out the door, three-hour or four-hour wait – but he also had prices so it’s unclear whether he was actually selling the coffee as well because, if he’s selling the coffee, how can you argue it’s a parody because then you’re almost in the business of selling coffee which is the exact thing that t...
Nasir and Matt kick off this week's episode by discussingMicrosoft partnering with Foursquare. They also talk about Texas A&M licensing use of the "12th Man" to the Seattle Seahawks, the FTC going after a mega spammer, and the backlash by developers of King.com's "candy" trademark. Nasir and Matt answer questions about legal concerns of running a virtual business, whether to have an employee handbook, and starting an LLC with your spouse.
From Pasha: That website I was talking about that shows how you can mess with Nigerian scammers. Check out their trophy room with some interesting pictures of the scammers themselves. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Hi! Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And we’re ready for our next episode. We’re actually recording on a Thursday. That’s a little unusual. We’re usually on Fridays, thanks to our audio producer going on vacation for the week or something.
MATT: You know, he could just cut this out since he does all the audits. But, if he chooses to leave it in there, it should be known that he does a great job.
NASIR: Except, apparently, he has, like, vacation any time he wants.
MATT: That would be nice. Also, another thing, after listening to the last episode, I’m going to stop doing future predictions because, at the beginning of last episode, I said how great a Super Bowl it was, and then it turns out the Super Bowl was awful.
NASIR: It was way off, but I was right. My predictions were correct. The commercials were great. There was that one car commercial with the food and funny stuff. So, yeah, I was right on the ball on that one.
MATT: So, I’ll stop doing that – at least until it falls right before another big event that I’ll do the same thing again. Okay, let’s get into the first article here, and this is a pretty interesting one. It deals with a couple of pretty big companies. We have Foursquare and Microsoft.
NASIR: Yeah, Foursquare, I don’t use it anymore, but I know that it’s still something that a lot of retail and restaurants still use, and you get certain benefits of checking in and all that. But this is a big deal. Foursquare’s data is awesome. They are competitors to Yelp and Google Maps in the sense that they have all this information for a ton of businesses. The problem is I don’t think Foursquare is doing as well as they were doing not too long ago, but they licensed the data to Microsoft which is a big deal for about 15 million dollars.
MATT: I’m kind of surprised that one of these other bigger companies hadn’t already bought them before. I just assumed they’d already been bought up by a Google or Microsoft – something like that. It’s a little bit surprising to me. Maybe it’s just because I’ve tailed off a little bit.
NASIR: Yeah, I think I recall, they may have been offered some deals in the past, but really hasn’t gone anywhere. But I just wanted to point out the difference between purchasing and licensing. This may be an obvious thing but, when you license any kind of intellectual property – whether it is information or trademark which we’re going to talk about later in the show – you still retain the ownership. And so, you’re allowing some other party some rights to that data. So, in this case, Microsoft doesn’t own that data. They can use it under the terms of the deal. I definitely know it’s not permanent. I definitely know it’s restricted on how they could use it. And so, this is a big win for Foursquare in that sense and relative to being purchased or being bought out altogether probably.
MATT: It sounds like it’s better than just a straight up purchase anyway because at least now you can license it. What was the deal? 15 million, I think?
NASIR: Yeah, and it includes a database of more than 60 million entries and five billion check-ins. By the way, I assumed it was the restaurants and things like that, but it’s also our user data too as well. It looks like they’re a growing database of us...
In this week's episode, Nasir and Matt discuss some of Obama's planned executive actions for 2014, Ohio pizzerias breaking employment laws, the importance of forum selection causes in contracts, and the crazy story behind one man losing his Twitter handle. They also answer questions about changing business agreements, being an at-will employee, and running multiple businesses under one LLC. Full Podcast Transcript
NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha.
MATT: And this is Matt Staub.
NASIR: And this is where we cover business news and give our legal twist and also cover some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, sends in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. So, we have a pretty fun story here coming up. What have we got?
MATT: I was going to comment on what a great Super Bowl it was yesterday even though we’re taping this before. I mean, what a game! Hopefully it was a good game.
NASIR: The weather wasn’t too bad. Yeah, I enjoyed the food, watching the commercials. The commercials, you’ve got to admit, they were hilarious, right?
MATT: Yeah, definitely.
NASIR: Especially that one with that food commercial with the car. That was good.
MATT: All right. Well, that’s enough of that. Let’s get into the first thing here. This is an article that was written. It just details some of the executive actions that Obama is planning on this year, and we’re not going to touch on all of them, but there’s a few that were pretty interesting. The first one – this was pretty big news this week or this past week – was raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10. This is going to be pretty big news. I know we covered the California increase that’s going to go into effect in July, right? July 1st? I can’t remember – right in the middle of the year.
NASIR: Yeah, and it’s going to be stepping up after that as well.
MATT: This is a pretty big jump. I think it was at about a $3.00 increase on what it was before?
NASIR: Yeah, and I read about that it may not impact that many people as far as in the federal workforce and I’m not sure about all that, but the point of this, this just shows you where the country is going state by state and where the pressure is to raise minimum wage. I mean, that’s been the story for about the last six months when it comes to small businesses and big businesses as well. And so, states are starting to follow suit already and now we’re getting tremendous pressure on the federal level. I think we talked about how minimum wage is different from each state, but there’s also a federal minimum wage, but a lot of states have higher minimum wages than the federal standard such as California, New York, as well as some cities like San Francisco.
MATT: You’re right with what you said and it’s not going to affect as many people as you would think, or someone might think just by hearing this. I know the general public just sees, “Oh, our increasing federal minimum wage, $3.00. I don’t like that.” But it’s not affecting too many people. I just found it pretty interesting. That’s a pretty significant jump.
NASIR: What about this retirement savings account that President Obama announced by executive order that he’s going to be starting?
MATT: Yeah, that was the next thing I was going to get to. I don’t know what to think about this. He calls it a starter retirement savings account. It’s available through employers. I guess this is for people that are working for companies that don’t already have 401k stuff like that.
NASIR: And it seems to work just like a regular IRA except what you’re investing in is in savings bonds, so it’s a pretty conservative play which is fine. It’s a starter account. Also, note that, I guess, when the account hits $15,000 or after thirty years, you’re forced to roll it into a private IRA. So, it’s definitely a so-called starter.
MATT: Right.
NASIR: It’s interesting. I think this would be attractive to a lot of small business empl...