Articles Posted in Business Law

On January 1, 2016, Indiana will join nearly 30 other states with statutes authorizing a relatively new form of for-profit corporations known as a benefit corporation.  The Indiana statute was created by House Enrolled Act 1015, which was authored by Rep. Casey Cox (R-Fort Wayne), and will be codified at Ind. Code 23‑1‑1.3.

Indiana’s benefit corporation statute, like most (maybe all) others, is based on a model statute developed by B Lab, a nonprofit organization that certifies businesses that meet certain standards for social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.  There are currently 1287 businesses certified by B Lab, including some companies that were well known for their social responsibility long before they were certified, such as Ben & Jerry’s.

Sorting out the terminology

The issuance or sale of securities is subject to regulation by the United States Securities Exchange Commission and by authorities in every state, including the Securities Division of the Office of the Indiana Secretary of State.   Depending on the situation, a member’s interest in a limited liability company may or may not be within the definition of a “security” and, therefore, may or may not be subject to federal and state securities laws.  If the securities laws apply, the consequences can be signficant because, as my friend and retired securities lawyer Steven Lund says, “There are three types of securities:  registered, exempt, and illegal.”

Contrary to what you may sometimes hear, there is no exemption for securities that are issued or sold to family members or close friends, and there is no sale of securities that is exempt solely because the value is less than a certain amount.  In addition, certain parts of the securities laws, such as those prohibiting securities fraud, apply to every securities transaction, even if it is exempt from registration requirements.  An illegal sale of securities can have serious ramifications, including civil lawsuits and potentially even criminal charges.  And there can be ramifications even if there is never a lawsuit or governmental enforcement action  For example, a debt incurred through a securities violation cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.  Owners of small businesses who set up new LLCs, or bring new members into existing LLCs, without obtaining the advice of a lawyer with experience in corporate and LLC law expose their businesses and themselves to signficant risk.

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Secretaries of nonprofit corporations have the sometimes unenviable and unrewarding responsibility of making sure that minutes of meetings of the board of directors are taken and maintained.  Here are some practical tips and suggestions for writing the minutes that I have accumulated over time and revised over time.  These are not hard-and-fast rules, and reasonable people may disagree with me about some or all of them.

1. Note whether the meeting is a regular meeting or a special meeting. A regular meeting is one that is scheduled by the board.  A special meeting is one called by an officer or one or more individual directors as authorized by the articles of incorporation, bylaws, or the state statute governing nonprofit corporations.  If it is a special meeting, note who called it and how.
2. Note the date, time, and place of the meeting to show consistency with the notice of the special meeting or with the board resolution scheduling the regular meeting.

I sometimes run across small business owners who have set up their business as a corporation, and I often ask why they chose a corporation rather than a limited liability company (or LLC).  Sometimes the answer is that the business was incorporated before LLCs existed, or when LLCs were new and the lawyer who advised the owner was not familiar with LLCs or was not comfortable with using them, and that makes sense.  Another relatively common answer is that the owner’s lawyer or, more often, accountant advised the owner that there were advantages to being taxed as a Subchapter S corporation rather than being taxed as an LLC, so the business was organized as a corporation rather than a limited liability company.  That doesn’t make as much sense, at least not since 1997.

Although the history of LLCs can be traced back to earlier statutes in Germany and other European countries, there were no LLCs in the United States until 1977 when Wyoming passed the first LLC statute in the country.  For several years after that, the use of LLCs was suppressed by uncertainty surrounding their status for income tax purposes.

The Internal Revenue Code did not (and still does not) include provisions specifically written for taxing LLCs.  The question was whether they would be taxed as partnerships or as corporations, and the answer was not clear.  In 1995, the IRS issued guidance identifying four specific attributes Continue Reading ›

This one of a series of six posts regarding mechanics’ liens:

Part 1. The basics of credit risk and subcontracting.

Part 2. Reallocating risk in construction projects.

Part 3. Acquiring a lien.

Part 4. Enforcing a lien.

Part 5. Personal liability notices.

Part 6. No-lien agreements.

The last post in our series on mechanics’ liens addresses a situation in which mechanics’ liens are not available. For certain types of projects, the Indiana Mechanic’s Lien Statute permits the owner and principal contactor to enter into an agreement or stipulation that prohibits liens that arise from a particular contract.

There are essentially two categories of projects that are eligible for no-lien agreements. The first category includes “class 2 structures” (as defined at Indiana Code section 22-12-1-5), which encompasses single- and double-unit residential structures and some related projects. The second encompasses construction owned by certain types of utilities, including public utilities, municipal utilities, and rural membership utilities. The details of the projects that are eligible for no-lien agreements can be found at Indiana Code 32-28-3-1(3).

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[Note: This one of a series of six posts regarding mechanics’ liens:

Part 1. The basics of credit risk and subcontracting.

Part 2. Reallocating risk in construction projects.

Part 3. Acquiring a lien.

Part 4. Enforcing a lien.

Part 5. Personal liability notices.

Part 6. No-lien agreements.]

We’ve been examining the role of mechanics’ liens in construction contacts, including the way they reallocate credit risk among contractors and the owner of a construction project. The Indiana Mechanics’ Lien Statute includes another remedy for subcontractors who do not get paid, entirely apart from a mechanic’s lien against the real property where the construction takes place. The statute does not give a name to the remedy, but it’s often called a personal liability notice or PLN.

To see how it works, let’s go back to the hypothetical example of our last article. Assume you are a subcontractor with a $15,000 claim against the general contractor, a claim the GC disputes. Now let’s assume that the deadline for filing a sworn statement and notice of intention to hold a mechanic’s lien has already slipped by. Are you out of luck?

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[Note: This one of a series of six posts regarding mechanics’ liens:

Part 1. The basics of credit risk and subcontracting.

Part 2. Reallocating risk in construction projects.

Part 3. Acquiring a lien.

Part 4. Enforcing a lien.

Part 5. Personal liability notices.

Part 6. No-lien agreements.]

So far we’ve looked at the basics of subcontracting and allocation of credit risk, how a mechanic’s lien changes things by reallocating credit risk, and how a contractor, subcontractor, supplier, or worker goes about acquiring a mechanic’s lien. Now we’ll discuss how to enforce a lien once you have it. Assume you are a subcontractor with a claim against the general contractor, or GC, for $15,000. The GC has withheld that amount from your fees, accusing you of not finishing your work on schedule. The general contractor says it incurred $15,000 in additional labor charges because its workers had to wait around with nothing else to do until your work was completed. You blame the general contractor for the delay and additional expense, and you have recorded a sworn statement and notice of intention to hold a mechanic’s lien in the amount of $15,000. A copy of it has been sent to the owner.

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[Note: This one of a series of six posts regarding mechanics’ liens:

Part 1. The basics of credit risk and subcontracting.

Part 2. Reallocating risk in construction projects.

Part 3. Acquiring a lien.

Part 4. Enforcing a lien.

Part 5. Personal liability notices.

Part 6. No-lien agreements.]

In the first article in this series, we discussed the basics of credit risks associated with subcontracting in an area other than construction. In the second, we examined how a mechanic’s lien reallocates those credit risks for construction contracts. In this one, we explain how a contractor or subcontactor goes about acquiring a mechanic’s lien. For a change of pace, we’ll do it in a question-and-answer format.

Some caveats: First, mechanic’s lien requirement vary significantly from state to state. Given that this is the Indiana Business Law Blog, we’ll answer the questions based on Indiana law. Also note that the Indiana Mechanic’s Lien Statute is filled with complicated, cumbersome, even archaic language that can be difficult for even lawyers to parse, so we’ll try to give answers that are more easily understood. However, that also means we may leave out some details, making the answers a bit imprecise in some circumstances. As always, this blog is not legal advice and you should not rely on it as a substitute for legal advice.

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[Note: This one of a series of six posts regarding mechanics’ liens:

Part 1. The basics of credit risk and subcontracting.

Part 2. Reallocating risk in construction projects.

Part 3. Acquiring a lien.

Part 4. Enforcing a lien.

Part 5. Personal liability notices.

Part 6. No-lien agreements.]

In part 1 of this series, we discussed a hypothetical situation with a company that hired an ad agency, with the ad agency subcontracting some work to a production company and purchasing advertising time on a television station. The production company bore the ad agency’s credit risk because its contract was with the ad agency, and when the ad agency went out of business the production company faced the possibility of not being paid. In contrast, the television station did not bear the ad agency’s credit risk because its contract with directly with the ad agency’s client. The ad agency’s client faced the possibility of having to pay for the television air time twice – once to the ad agency and a second time directly to the television station when the ad agency failed to pay for the air time on the client’s behalf.

Now let’s look at the credit risks associated with a construction project in which the owner of a construction project hires a general contractor to complete the entire project on a time-and-materials basis, which means that the price paid by the owner is equal to the amount the general contractor pays for the labor (i.e., the “time”) and materials required to do the construction, plus a markup to cover overhead and profit. The general contractor does some of the work with its own employees and subcontracts some of the work, including the installation of the electrical wiring, to another contractor.

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[Note: This one of a series of six posts regarding mechanics’ liens:

Part 1. The basics of credit risk and subcontracting.

Part 2. Reallocating risk in construction projects.

Part 3. Acquiring a lien.

Part 4. Enforcing a lien.

Part 5. Personal liability notices.

Part 6. No-lien agreements.]

This starts a short series of blog articles discussing mechanics’ liens and their cousins, notices of personal liability, concepts that arise in the context of construction contracts and similar agreements. To understand what’s special about construction contracts, you need to understand a bit about how contract law, subcontracting, and credit risk work in other settings. So let’s review the basics.

Imagine your company signs an advertising agency agreement, hiring the ad agency to create a television advertising campaign for your business. The ad agency comes up with the ideas for the commercials, hires a production company to produce them, and purchases advertising time on your behalf from local television stations. The contract to produce the commercial is between the ad agency and the production company, but the contract with the television station is between the television station and your company, signed by the ad agency as your company’s agent, as it is authorized to do by the ad agency agreement.

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