San Diego Estate Planning Lawyer Blog

In Otay Mesa, there are many companies which routinely need to verify social security numbers for employment. Our law firm of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP practices in estate planning and family law. Please feel free to e mail or call us if you have a legal question in these areas.

The Social Security Number Verification Service (SSNVS), set up by the Social Security Administration (SSA), allows employers to use the Internet to match their records of employee names and Social Security numbers with those of the Government’s before preparing and submitting W-2 forms. This is a faster and easier method to use than submitting requests to the SSA by other means, including the telephone verification option.

Verification of data is important for both the employer and its employees. Correct names and numbers are critical to successful processing of wage reports, and unmatched records can cause additional processing costs for the employer. From the employees’ standpoint, verified names and numbers allow the Government to properly credit employees’ earnings records. Any uncredited earnings can adversely affect future eligibility for Social Security’s retirement, disability, and survivors programs.

In Fallbrook, some of the residents have cancer as do many residents within San Diego City. Our law firm of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP practices in estate planning and family law. Please feel free to e mail or call us with any legal questions.

Now 15 years old, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects disabled persons from discrimination in employment settings. When you first think of individuals with disabilities, the millions of Americans who have some history of cancer may not immediately come to mind. But, as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) discusses in a recently published guide, a cancer victim may well be entitled to the protections afforded by the ADA.

Cancer is a “disability” within the meaning of the ADA when the cancer itself or its effects substantially limit one or more of a person’s major life activities. The limiting condition needs to be more than just temporary in nature. Just what constitutes a major life activity is difficult to succinctly describe, but an exhaustive list would be a long one. Interacting with others, sleeping, eating, and walking are but a few examples. As with other types of conditions, cancer will be treated as a disability if it does not, in fact, significantly affect a major life activity but an employer treats the individual as if it does. This reflects the ADA’s goal of attacking discriminatory stereotypes and assumptions when they motivate an employer’s decisionmaking.

During the time period before any offer of employment has been made, an employer may not ask an applicant if he or she has (or has had) cancer, or about cancer-related treatments. The employer is permitted to ask if an applicant can perform particular job requirements. If an applicant has volunteered the information that he or she has (or has had) cancer, the employer still may not question the applicant about the cancer or the applicant’s prognosis, but the employer may ask questions about whether the applicant will need an accommodation and, if so, what kind.

Once a job offer has been made, the employer may ask health-related questions and require a medical exam, as long as the employer treats all applicants for the same type of position in the same manner. The discovery that an applicant has (or has had) cancer cannot be used to withdraw a job offer if the applicant can perform safely all of a job’s fundamental duties, with or without reasonable accommodation. When an offer has been accepted, the employer can ask questions about the employee’s health or require a medical exam only when it has a legitimate reason to believe that the cancer may be affecting the employee’s ability to do the job, and to do it safely. With a few exceptions, an employer must keep confidential any medical information learned about an applicant or employee.
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East County of San Diego has many different cities however one of the main ones is El Cajon which also has a branch of the San Diego Superior Court for civil suits. The below case did not involve an East County of San Diego or El Cajon resident however the principles elaborated upon below can be analagous. The laws of every state are different. Our law firm of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP can offer you a legal consultation under the laws of the State of California. If you have a legal question regarding estate planning or family law, please feel free to call or e mail our firm.

In a nation of 50 different systems of state courts and a highly interconnected national economy, the issue of when one state’s courts can assert jurisdiction over a nonresident person or business has always been fertile ground for litigation. State legislatures have addressed the matter with laws that are the civil counterparts to the notion that criminals cannot escape the “long arm of the law.” But “long-arm statutes,” as they are known, do have their limits. Essentially, nonresidents can be sued in the courts of any state where they have had such contacts inside the state that it is reasonable to conclude that they have submitted themselves to the authority of the courts in that state. The principle is vague, but it has to be to cover the almost endless ways in which we conduct business.

In the business world, conventional arguments over the application of long-arm statutes have involved questions such as whether a party sought to be sued had an office or personal representative in the forum state, or whether a contract was signed by the parties in that state. Those issues still arise, but in the information age, courts increasingly have had to adapt the rules to business conducted over the Internet. Just because a company’s website is accessible by customers in a given jurisdiction does not necessarily mean that the company can be sued there. The emerging rule of law is that the more that a customer can have online interactions with a business based elsewhere, the more likely it is that if things go wrong the business can be forced to play an “away game” in court.

Examples make the point better than statements of rules of law. A Vermont furniture store used a trucking company to deliver furniture to a customer in North Carolina. When the buyer was injured during unloading, he tried to sue the furniture company in a North Carolina court. In this case, the “long arm” was not long enough to reach the Vermont company. The furniture had been bought and paid for in Vermont. The only respect in which the store had any connection to North Carolina was that its website could be accessed there, like anywhere else. But it was a passive site, giving information about products, but not allowing purchases through the site.

When an Oklahoma resident bought a laptop computer from a Georgia company, then returned it for repairs, never to see the laptop again, he was unable to sue the company in Oklahoma. The customer had learned about the computer from the Georgia company’s website, but he had ordered it by telephone and had not used the website to make the transaction.
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In North County are included Vista, Oceanside, Escondido, Carlsbad and other cities. The San Diego Superior Court is located in Vista. The below case did not invove a North County business. Our law firm of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP representes clients in estate planning and family law cases. Please feel free to e mail or call our firm with any legal inquiries.

A business hired architects for a renovation project involving a parking lot, a retaining wall, and a loading dock. The plans, as drawn up by the architects, did not call for a guardrail along the top of the retaining wall. A construction firm completed the project according to the architects’ plans. The contractor had not broken ground until a building permit was in hand, and when the work was done a building inspector gave it his blessing with a certificate of occupancy.

When a pedestrian fell from the retaining wall and injured his knee, he sued the contractor for negligently failing to put up a guardrail. The issue for the court was whether the contractor could defend against liability on the ground that it was “just following orders (or plans, in this case).” A state supreme court sided with the contractor. The court reasoned that builders and contractors are justified in counting on the experience and skill of architects and engineers. To subject contractors to liability under the circumstances of this case would be to unfairly require contractors to follow architectural plans at their own risk and, in effect, to ensure the correctness of specifications given to them, not just their own workmanship.

In National City, there are many companies which access the internet on a daily basis using Google, Yahoo, MSN and many others as their home page. The below company was not located in National City. Our law firm of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP practices in estate planning and family law. Please feel free to e mail our office for a complimentary and confidential consultation.

An Internet marketing company provided a free software application that keeps track of computer users’ activity on the web in order to deliver targeted advertising for its clients. The software uses an unpublished internal directory with thousands of website addresses and keywords for particular interests of consumers. When the computer user types in particular terms in a browser or search engine, a relevant “pop-up” ad is delivered to the computer.

A company in the contact lens business learned that its website was in the internal directory and that the software caused pop-up ads for competing contact lens retailers to appear on the screens of individuals who visited the company’s website. The contact lens company sued the marketing firm on the theory that the marketing firm had infringed upon a trademark in violation of federal law. From the plaintiff’s standpoint, the actions of the marketing firm were allowing competitors to take a free ride on the plaintiff’s website.

In Rancho Bernardo, in our law office of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP we receive many faxes which are soliciting services or products. We believe many other companies in Rancho Bernardo and throughout San Diego city and county also receive these. Below is some information for business owners like ourselves regarding this unwanted use of our paper in our fax machine and our toner. Our law firm practices in estate planning and family law. Please feel free to call or our e mail us with any questions or legal inquiries.

There may be some finality to the formerly unsettled picture on federal regulation of junk fax transmissions. Since the first federal legislation on the subject, in 1991, there has been an “established business relationship” exception allowing the sending of commercial advertising by fax under certain conditions. In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission issued a regulation that would have effectively removed the exception, requiring express written permission from the recipient for sending any commercial ads by fax. Opposition from business groups prompted the FCC to put off enforcement of that rule three times.

Before the restrictive FCC regulation ever became effective, new legislation has reinstated the established business relationship exemption. It is still illegal to send unsolicited fax advertisements to anyone who has requested that they not be sent. However, unsolicited faxes can be sent if the sender has an established business relationship with the recipient and the fax itself has a conspicuous notice on its first page informing the recipient that it can request not to be sent more such faxes. To combat the sale of fax lists to mass marketers, the law requires businesses to obtain fax numbers either directly from the recipient or from a published source, such as a directory, an advertisement, or a website.

In Carmel Mountain, there are many workers who are on salary and some who are paid hourly per week. The below case did not concern workers in Carmel Mountain however the analogy is the same. Our law firm of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP practices in estate planning. Please feel free to call or set up an appointment in person for a complimentary consultation. We also have e mail for your convenience.

Unless an employee falls within an exempt category of workers, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires the employer to pay the employee overtime at a rate of one and one-half times the regular rate of pay, for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week. To be exempt is to be ineligible for overtime. The exemption commonly called the “white collar” exemption is for professional employees.

Federal regulations in place since August 2004 have simplified the test for determining which employees come within the white collar exemption. An employee is a professional if each of the following elements is present:

In Bonita, there are many golf courses including the Bonita Golf Club and the Chula Vista Municipal Golf Course. In our law firm of Law Office of Scott C. Soady, A Professional Corporation, LLP we practice in estate planning. Please contact us by phone or e mail for a complimentary consultation. In the below example, neither golf club as listed above was a party that law suit.

Joyce had nothing against golf or golfers. In fact, she was a regular golfer herself and a member of two different golf clubs. But when her home in a subdivision adjoining a private golf course was continuously pelted with errant golf balls, she and a neighbor with the same predicament eventually took the matter to court and won.

The golf course began operating in the late 1980s, and Joyce moved into her home in the late 1990s. But the fact that she “came to the problem” did not prevent Joyce from winning an injunction to stop, or at least minimize, incoming golf balls and the golfers in search of them. No doubt the court was impressed by the evidence showing the extent of the problem, which went well beyond an occasional Titleist in the flower bed. Among other effects, there were five damaged window screens, one large broken window, dented siding, and a dimpled car hood (only the golf balls are supposed to have dimples). At least one wayward shot struck the house hard enough to trigger a burglar alarm. It got so bad that Joyce all but gave up on using her rear deck, and her young son was instructed to play only in the part of the yard that was shielded from the golf course by the house. The clincher piece of evidence may have been the 1,800 golf balls that Joyce had retrieved from her yard during the five years she had lived in her house.