Articles Posted in Business Law

The Johnson Amendment, which has been in the news from time to time for the last couple of years, is sometimes described as prohibiting tax exempt churches from campaigning for candidates for elected office.  That is accurate, but it applies more broadly than to churches. No organization is eligible for tax exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code if it

participate[s] in, or intervene[s] in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.

Last year, the President signed Executive Order 13798 that directed the Secretary of the Treasury to:

Until recently, almost all trade secret law was furnished by state law, not federal law. Absent federal diversity jurisdiction, lawsuits for misappropriation of trade secrets had to be brought in state court. Even though the vast majority of states (including Indiana) have adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”), there are nonetheless variations in trade secret law from one state to another. However, in May 2016 President Obama signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act (or “DTSA”), creating at 18 U.S.C. § 1836 a new federal civil cause of action for misappropriation of trade secrets.  Even so, the federal statute does not pre-empt state law, and state causes of action under the UTSA remain viable.

Definitions of Trade Secret and Misappropriation

Two crucial components of trade secret law are the definitions of trade secret and misappropriation.  The DTSA definitions, found at 18 U.S.C. § 1839, are not identical to the familiar UTSA definitions, but there are no major surprises. At least for the most part, information that is a trade secret under the UTSA is also a trade secret under the DTSA, and vice versa.  Similarly, there are likely very few acts that qualify as misappropriation under one statute but not the other.

We previously discussed whether nonprofit organizations and for-profit businesses can use unpaid interns without violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (or FLSA).  We also discussed allegations of violations of the FLSA related to unpaid interns in the fashion industry.

Earlier this year, the Department of Labor revised its policy, known as Fact Sheet #71, for determining whether businesses may use unpaid interns. The old 2010 policy used a six-factor test, with the presence of all six factors required in order for businesses to use unpaid interns without violating the FLSA. The new 2018 policy considers the following seven factors to determine whether the business or the intern is the primary beneficiary of the internship.

1. The extent to which the intern and the employer clearly understand that there is no expectation of compensation. Any promise of compensation, express or implied, suggests that the intern is an employee—and vice versa.

This begins an occasional series of posts on basics of business contracts, principles that apply broadly to most types of business and commercial contracts, regardless of the subject — merger agreements, stock purchase agreements, asset purchase agreements, construction contracts, professional service contracts, generic independent contractor agreements, advertising agency agreements, software and other intellectual property licenses, publishing contracts, equipment leases, office and retail property leases, procurement contracts (both master agreements and single-purchase agreements), employment contracts, and others. Although there can be a subtle legal distinction between a “contract” and an “agreement,” I will use terms interchangeably.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the preamble clause, the first paragraph that appears after the title of most business and commercial contract. There is no universally recognized name for that part of a contract, but preamble is a good descriptive name. Here’s an example:

This Consulting Agreement (“Agreement”), dated March 22, 2018, is between John J. Doe, an individual with a place of business located at 3650 N Washington Blvd Indianapolis, IN 46205 (dba J.J. Doe Consulting) (“Consultant”) and Jane Roe & Associates, LLC, an Indiana limited liability company (“Client”).

We previously discussed the Business Entity Harmonization Bill (Senate Enrolled Act 443 or P.L. 118-2017) passed last year by the General Assembly in the following posts:

• Part I — an introduction.
• Part II — a discussion of IC 23‑0.5, the Uniform Business Organizations Code.

[March 3, 2018. The General Assembly amended some of the provisions created the Business Entity Harmonization Bill, as discussed in a Postscript to this series.]

This is the last in four-part series. The first three parts are here: here, here, and here.

This Part IV describes some flaws of Senate Enrolled Act 443 that we ran across while writing the first three parts.  We hope the General Assembly will address them, either in the 2018 session or another.

[March 3, 2018. The General Assembly amended some of the provisions created the Business Entity Harmonization Bill, as discussed in a Postscript to this series.]

This is the third of a four-part series discussing the Business Entity Harmonization Bill passed by the Indiana General Assembly in 2017. The first two parts are here and here.

Senate Enrolled Act 443 creates, effective as of January 1, 2018, a new Article 0.6, the Uniform Business Organization Transactions Code, in Title 23 of the Indiana Code. In previous versions of the statute, provisions dealing with mergers, conversions, and domestications of business corporations, limited liability companies (LLCs), limited partnerships (LPs), limited liability partnerships (LLPs), and nonprofit corporations were scattered across several articles of Title 23. The Uniform Business Organization Transactions Code gathers most of them into one article that, in general, applies at least as broadly as each corresponding provision of the former statute, and in some cases more broadly. In addition, the new article provides for the acquisition of ownership interest (i.e., stock in a corporation or interest in a partnership or LLC) by another entity.

[March 3, 2018. The General Assembly amended some of the provisions created the Business Entity Harmonization Bill, as discussed in a Postscript to this series.]

This is the second of a four-part series discussing the Business Entity Harmonization Bill passed by the Indiana General Assembly in 2017. An overview of the bill is provided in Part I.

Senate Enrolled Act 443 creates, effective as of January 1, 2018, a new Article 0.5 in Title 23 of the Indiana Code, the Uniform Business Organizations Code, that includes a number of provisions that apply to Indiana business corporations (including professional corporations and benefit corporations, but excluding insurance companies), limited liability companies (LLCs, including series LLCs), limited partnerships (LPs), limited liability partnerships (LLPs), and nonprofit corporations, eliminating a number of inconsistencies between similar provisions for different types of entities. The following discussion is a brief description of some of the more important provisions, drawing attention to new or substantially changed provisions.

[March 3, 2018. The General Assembly amended some of the provisions created the Business Entity Harmonization Bill, as discussed in a Postscript to this series.]

Indiana law provides for several types of business and nonprofit entities, each of which is governed by one or more articles of Title 23 of the Indiana Code, all of which require similar filings with the Indiana Secretary of State, and all of which are capable of undergoing transactions such as mergers and conversions into other types of entities. The types of entities and the governing portions of Title 23 are:

• Business Corporations,  Article 1

Part I of this two-part series addressed requirements for maintaining an Indiana limited liability company, including the preservation of the corporate veil, that are imposed by statute or that may be imposed through the LLC’s operating agreement.  Part II addresses recommended practices for maintaining Indiana LLCs that will help preserve the corporate veil (the liability shield that protects the assets of owners, or the assets of other related entities, from the LLC’s creditors) and are simply good business practices.  Although the failure to follow one or more of the following recommendations will not necessary subject your LLC to veil-piercing, the following characteristics and practices are common to most well operated and maintained LLCs.

• Do not use the LLC for fraudulent or other improper purposes. Courts have very little patience with the owners of LLCs, corporations, or other limited liability forms of businesses who use them to perpetuate a fraud or to improperly hide assets from creditors, for example by transferring assets from one company to another in an attempt to hide or protect the assets from creditors of the first company. That is not to say that LLCs cannot be properly used for asset protection purposes under the correct circumstances, but once an LLC has incurred liability, transferring assets to another company or to the owners, especially if the LLC does not receive fair market value in exchange for the assets, will likely result in the company’s veil being pierced to enable its creditors to reach at least the transferred assets and perhaps the other assets of the recipient.
• Keep the LLC’s assets separate from the owner’s assets or the assets of other entities. Open bank accounts for the LLC that are separate from the owners’ accounts or accounts of related businesses. Deposit all of the LLC’s income into those accounts (not directly into the owners’); pay all of the LLC’s obligations from its own accounts; and pay none of the owners’ obligations or obligations of a related company from the LLC’s accounts. Generally, the LLC’s assets should be used only for purposes of the LLC’s business and not for the personal use of the owners. Do not pay yourself by writing checks from the LLC bank account to pay your personal obligations; pay yourself by writing a check from the business account, deposit it in your personal account, and then pay your personal obligations from your personal account.