Last year the Indiana Court of Appeals decided a case that illustrates some of the hazards of operating a business as a general partnership. The case is Curves for Women of Angola vs. Flying Cat, LLC. In 2001, a married couple, Dan and Lori, purchased a fitness and health franchise…
A primary reason to organize a business as a corporation or a limited liability company (LLC) is to protect the owners from personal liability for the debts of the business. Sometimes, however, a court may “pierce the corporate veil” of a business to hold the owners of the business personally…
I just read a report by the Small Business Administation that includes a wealth of statistics and other information about small businesses in the United States. As useful as the report is, it contains a mistake that, although commonly made, one would not expect from the SBA. The last item…
Suppose that eight years ago, you hired a construction contractor to build an addition to your house in Indiana. Shortly after the construction was finished, you noticed that the roof shingles on the addition weren’t quite the same color as those on the rest of the house. You checked the…
The Internal Revenue Service’s application for an employer identification number (or EIN) requires the applicant to submit the name and tax identification number (usually a social security number) of the applicant’s “responsible party.” That is true whether the application, Form SS-4, is submitted on paper or online, and it is…
Consider these two relatively recent cases, one from Massachusetts and one from Indiana, both involving allegations of breach of contract through the use of social media: A vice president of a recruiting firm leaves her job and goes to work for another recruiting firm. She has a covenant not to…
Peter Orszag at Bloomberg wrote an interesting article about the growth of nonprofit organizations from 2008 onwards. One study cited was done by Nonprofit HR Solutions, entitled “Nonprofit Employment Trends Survey.” The article and the survey both painted an optimistic picture about nonprofit organizations post-millennium. They were viewed as a…
Indiana has a relatively little known statute, the Home Improvement Contracts statute located in Title 24, Article 25, Chapter 11 of the Indiana Code, that protects the customers of home improvement contractors by establishing certain minimum contract requirements. Home improvement contractors are well advised to ensure that their contracts comply…
In a previous post we discussed a few basic principles of confidentiality agreements (also known as non-disclosure agreements or NDAs). That post discussed the basic of these agreements and the important principles of restrictive covenants and trade secrets. Left unanswered was the critical question: How long can, or should, a…
Confidentiality agreements (also known as non-disclosure agreements or NDAs) are common in today’s business world. They are sometimes in the form of stand-alone agreements, often used when two businesses are discussing a potential deal and at least one of them needs to disclose to the other information that is not…