Overlawyered » small business

“Why France Has So Many 49-Employee Companies”

Walter Olson — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:14:21 +0000

Travails of French employers under the Code du Travail — though it’s not as if America doesn’t have plenty of firms that follow the same strategy of keeping head counts below a certain regulatory-trigger threshold. [Business Week]

Tags: France, small business, workplace

“Why France Has So Many 49-Employee Companies” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Which states are most friendly/hostile toward small business?

Walter Olson — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:53:27 +0000

I’ve got some comments on an interesting new survey from the Kauffman Foundation/Thumbtack.com. [Cato at Liberty; & welcome Neal Boortz readers]

Related: “When Julia tried to start a small business” [Coyote]

Tags: business climates, California, Maryland, small business

Which states are most friendly/hostile toward small business? is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Regulating taxi competition out of existence

Walter Olson — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:44:26 +0000

I’m quoted by Scott Reeder on the regulatory obstacles a Bloomington, Ill. woman faces in trying to start a taxi business. [Reason]

Tags: Illinois, small business, transit

Regulating taxi competition out of existence is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Regulated if you do, sued if you don’t

Walter Olson — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:25:08 +0000

The Lookout News of Santa Monica, Calif. reports on obstacles to the revitalization of the Pico Boulevard commercial district:

“Businesses on Pico have been very frustrated by code compliance regulations for years,” [Pico Improvement Organization chairman Robert] Kronovet said. “You have a business that might have a sign in the wrong place or a door that isn’t right and the city fines them to the point that they don’t want to stay.

“These are small businesses. They don’t have the money to fight it.”…

Proprietor Elvira Garcia [of Caribbean restaurant Cha Cha Chicken] says business has been terrific, but that the success has been hard-won.

“We wanted to renovate our bathroom areas to make it more handicap-accessible and it took us almost three years to get all the permits,” Garcia said.

“We kept giving all the paperwork they need, but it took forever. We needed the Pico Improvement Organization to plead our case.”

California has the nation’s most active entrepreneurial corps of ADA enforcers, roaming business districts to file mass complaints against small businesses over handicap accessibility which they then settle for cash.

Tags: ADA filing mills, Los Angeles, small business

Regulated if you do, sued if you don’t is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Annals of wage and hour law

Walter Olson — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:44:26 +0000

New York’s notoriously stringent Department of Labor has fined a pizza shop owner $5,535 for not giving his employees enough polo shirts to wear — at least five for those who work five days a week, even if they work only a few hours a day. Owner Christian King

was told that an appeal would take years due to the backlog and the fine would accrue with interest….

“What happened to him is not unusual,” agreed Richard De Groot, a Syracuse consultant who advises businesses — including King’s — on human resource issues. He represents employers across much of the Eastern Seaboard and says New York is unusually demanding.
“There is so much in the way of state rules and laws,” he said, adding that he would advise some businesses, such as manufacturers, to simply look to elsewhere.

[Albany TImes-Union via Stoll]

Tags: New York, restaurants, small business, wage and hour suits

Annals of wage and hour law is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

February 14 roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:08:05 +0000

“Brazil Sues Twitter in Bid to Ban Speed Trap and Roadblock Warnings” [ABA Journal]
Obama nominates Michigan trial lawyer Marietta Robinson to vacancy on Consumer Product Safety Commission, ensuring aggressively pro-regulatory majority [Bluey, Heritage]
“AMA reports show high cost of malpractice suits” [HCFN] “Average expense to defend against a medical liability claim in 2010 was $47,158″ [American Medical News, more] Survey of 1,200 orthopedic surgeons finds defensive medicine rife, at cost of billions, accounting for 7 percent of all hospital admissions [MedPageToday]
“Sue us only in Delaware” bylaws would kill off forum-shopping and what fun is that? [Bainbridge, Reuters]
Trial by media: Lefty “SourceWatch” posts, then deletes, docs from Madison County pesticide suit [Madison County Record]
Think you’ve beaten FCPA rap? Meet the obscure “Travel Act” [Mike Emmick, Reuters] Federal court expands “honest services fraud” in lobbying case [Paul Enzinna, Point of Law]
“On the horrors of getting approval for an ice-cream parlour in San Francisco” [NYT via Doctorow/BoingBoing]

Tags: Brazil, CPSC, defensive medicine, Delaware, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, forum shopping, Madison County, medical malpractice, San Francisco, small business, traffic laws, Twitter

February 14 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

January 5 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:57:22 +0000

Big business vs. free markets again: light bulb makers “fuming” over GOP effort to restore consumer choice [Sullum] Large grocery chains like DC’s bag tax [Tim Carney]
Eeeuw! Bystander can sue train fatality victim whose body part flew through air and hit her [Chicago Tribune]
“Recommended Cell-Phone Ban Comes as ‘Shocking,’ ‘Heavy-Handed’ To Some” [Josh Long, V2M]
“Exploding churros are newspaper’s fault, Chilean court rules” [AP]
In New Jersey and North Carolina, GOP friends of trial bar block legal reform bills [Armstrong Williams, Washington Times]
Kozinski vs. ill-prepared lawyer in case of Sheriff Arpaio vs. newspaper that covered him [The Recorder; Phoenix New Times case]
Federal judges block cuts to in-home personal care services in California, Washington [Disability Law, San Francisco Chronicle, KQED]

Tags: Alex Kozinski, cellphones, disabled rights, New Jersey, North Carolina, Phoenix, small business, wayward Republicans

January 5 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Food and agriculture roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:16:18 +0000

Steve Chapman on FDA salt reduction initiative [Tribune/syndicated] Canada: “Health minister takes sodium-reduction plan off the table” [Calgary Herald] Flashback: FDA holds first hearing on regulating salt content in food [2007, Medical News Today] Discussion of my piece last week [Adler/Volokh, Instapundit]
More on McDonald’s sidestepping of San Francisco would-be Happy Meal ban [Fair Warning, earlier; background here, here, here, here, etc.]
“Caveat Venditor: Cottage Food Laws Great in Theory, Often Less So in Practice” [Baylen Linnekin of pro-freedom Keep Food Legal, who guestblogged at Reason last week]
Rather than get government out of way, left’s farm bill (“Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act”) would cut small/local/organic growers in on more USDA programs [Obama Foodorama, Linnekin]
Good riddance to monopoly powers of the Canadian Wheat Board [CBC]
Texas now allows home bakers to sell their wares [Austin Chronicle via @pointoflaw]
Widespread opposition to new Department of Labor proposal to ban kids from much work on farms [Nebraska Outback]

Tags: agriculture and farming, Canada, McDonald's, salt, small business

Food and agriculture roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

November 2 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 05:08:25 +0000

A request for anti-SLAPP lawyers in Maine and Maryland [Popehat]
“Gallup: Government Regulation the Top Concern Among Small Business Owners” [NRO Corner] Almost as if in rebuttal to claims from Treasury economist [Business Roundtable]
Foreclosure law firm in upstate NY under fire after pics posted of its Halloween party [Nocera, Mystal]
“GAO Report Details Secrecy Of Asbestos Trusts” [Dan Fisher, Forbes] Crown Cork & Seal seeks successor-liability bill in Massachusetts [Eagle-Tribune]
Case against FMCSA’s rule change on truckers’ hours-of-service [Marc Scribner, CEI]
Richard Epstein on John Paul Stevens as justice and, now, author [Hoover]
Feds say lawyer who advised giant theft ring was partly paid in chic shoes and other designer gear [ABA Journal]

Tags: asbestos, don't, regulation and its reform, small business, Supreme Court

November 2 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

October 27 roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:41:10 +0000

“Table Saw without ‘saw stop’ technology defective: First Circuit” [George Conk, Ted Frank, earlier here, here]
Court OKs burned patron’s flaming-rum suit against Bacardi [Reuters]
Feds won’t pursue Title IX complaint against 60 Oregon school districts [Oregonian]
IRS putting the squeeze on small tax preparers [WaPo]
How the incinerator (and decades of bad decisions) bankrupted Harrisburg [Bond Girl]
“The most thoughtful, reasonable guy in the whole symposium” — aw [Greenfield on law licensing, earlier] P.S. And similarly from David Lat;
Adam Freedman and readers on Florida “wrongful birth” case [Ricochet, earlier]

Tags: alcohol, product liability, small business, taxes, Title IX, wrongful birth and wrongful life

October 27 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system