Why You Need a Business Lawyer Even for a Startup

Every business needs a strong legal foundation. If the legal fine print of the partnership agreement, shareholder matters and other issues are not defined properly, you could find yourself in a position where you're involved in ugly litigation, needing the services of an attorney. Unfortunately California business litigation lawyers often come across people who rush into startups or small businesses without bothering to have an attorney involved. A business lawyer can help you get it right at the very outset.

A business of almost any size can benefit from having a business attorney at the start. However, having a lawyer on board is absolutely imperative when you are starting a partnership. Often, people enter into partnership agreements without really thinking through partnership issues. As a result, a few years down the line, they get entangled in nasty disputes that can quickly get ugly. Having a business lawyer on board right at the outset can help prevent such disputes, and outline the steps to be taken to resolve a dispute when it does arise.

You also need a Los Angeles business attorney on board if you have ambitious plans for the future and expect your company to grow rapidly. With rapid growth can come rapid challenges and friction within a company. A business lawyer has experience setting up all kinds of businesses, and has seen firsthand the challenges that can arise in the future. He can help you avoid these challenges, or prepare you adequately for dealing with them. A business lawyer is also absolutely necessary when you're signing a shareholder agreement.

Needless to mention, an attorney will cost you less if you hire one at the time of setting up the business than if you go looking for one to resolve the dispute.

Survey Indicates Americans Want More Government Rules to Prevent Accidents

Less government is not necessarily better government, at least when it comes to traffic accident prevention. That's the message Americans are sending to the federal government. A new survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety finds that a majority of Americans want the federal administration to enact more laws to prevent motor vehicle accidents and keep Americans safer while traveling.

Sixty percent of the respondents in the survey wanted more laws to prevent motorists from indulging in dangerous behavior behind the wheel. Further, 57% also wants states to get more involved in passing laws to keep motorists safer. At least 70% of respondents in the survey also wanted stricter enforcement of current driving laws. There also seems to be strong support for tough graduated driver licensing standards for teen drivers. Eighty six percent of the respondents in the survey wanted teen drivers to complete a driver’s education program before they are receive a driver’s license.

Another fact that emerged from the survey that California car accident attorneys find particularly interesting, is that Americans believe carmakers could be doing more to keep motorists and passengers safe. Increasingly safer cars are one of the reasons why traffic accident deaths around the country have been declining, but at least 50% of the respondents in the survey believe that automakers could be doing more to make their cars safer.

The survey coincides with an initiative by the United Nations to reduce traffic accident deaths around the globe. The ten-year initiative aims to reduce worldwide traffic accident deaths by the year 2020. The Initiative is called Decade of Action for Road Safety, and aims to work with governments around the world to affect traffic safety change, to help reduce the number of fatal traffic accidents and save lives. According to the initiative, more than 1.3 million people die every year in traffic accidents. In the United States, motor vehicle accidents are the number one cause of death for teenagers and young children, and also one of the leading causes of accidental death for the general population.

Risk of Fractures in Elderly from Thyroid Drugs

Elderly patients, who are on thyroid medications to treat hypothyroidism or an under active thyroid, may be at a higher risk of suffering fractures. According to a new study, California pharmaceutical product liability lawyers may have reason to be concerned that elderly patients who are on the drug levothyroxine, which is a synthetic form of the thyroid hormone, may be at a higher risk of such fractures.

The researchers analyzed data from 200,000 female patients aged 70 and above who were prescribed levothyroxine between April 2002 and March 2007. The researchers then tracked these patients during the follow-up period, which lasted until March 2008. They found that at least 10% of these patients who had taken levothyroxine during the study period, suffered at least one fracture during the follow-up period.

Some levothyroxine users were much more likely to suffer fractures. For instance, people who had recently started taking the drug, or were currently taking the drug were at a much higher risk of suffering fractures, compared to those people who stopped taking the drug a long time ago or had stopped taking it in the past. There is a strong link between the risk of fractures and the dosage of the levothyroxine. People who took high doses had a risk of suffering a fracture that was 3.5 times greater, compared to patients who took lower doses of levothyroxine.

The researchers have concluded that the use of levothyroxine seems to increase the risk of fractures in both men and women, even after considering other factors that could cause fractures.

The researchers are advising that older patients who are on thyroid hormone replacement therapy like levothyroxine, be monitored regularly to determine whether the dosage needs to be adjusted over a period of time. It's also important for doctors to consider that there may be a natural reduction in the thyroid hormone as a result of age, which needs to be taken into consideration while deciding dosage.

FINRA Awards California Elder Financial Abuse Victim $1.6 Million in Fraud Case

Earlier this year, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority panel awarded a senior investor $1.6 million in an elder financial fraud case involving a California company.

The company, Stock Cross Financial Services Inc. had been accused of financial misconduct. The senior citizen alleged that the company recommended unsuitable and highly risky investment opportunities. Besides, Stock Cross encouraged the plaintiff to leverage the equity in his home and invest the capital.

The fraud was continuous, and left the citizens with almost nothing left to defraud. Stock Cross and its officers managed to relieve the senior of almost all his assets, including his emergency and medical cash reserves, the equity in his home, and even the money received by the insurer to replace his car.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority panel has awarded the senior citizen $320,000 in compensatory damages. He has also been awarded $960,000 in elder abuse damages, $234,000 in legal fees, as well as other costs.

San Francisco elder financial fraud lawyers find that senior citizens are often victims of all kinds of fraudulent schemes. Most often these schemes involve fraudulent sales of securities. Very often, such fraud involves unsuitable recommendations or fraudulent advice made to the senior citizen, over trading, misrepresentation, and failure to diversify investments. Besides, brokers may give poor advice about employee stock options. Senior citizens may also be at risk of financial abuse through the sale of unsuitable variable and other deferred annuities. They may also be susceptible to pension fund fraud, mismanagement of funds, negligent supervision and brokerage malpractice.

In order to prevent abuse, it's important that senior citizens keep themselves updated on the state of their finances and their portfolio regularly. Keep a lookout especially closely for any loss of income or savings, or any poor investments.

California Criminal Justice Team Recommends Women's Prison Reform

It’s not a secret to San Diego criminal defense attorneys that the criminal justice system in our state is seriously flawed. As a result, we have the largest prison system in the world, and are now under pressure to reduce the size of our prison population. A big part of dealing with prison reform in California has to do with rethinking our approach to the incarceration of women. According to California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris’ transition team, not only is our current approach to the incarceration of women financially ruinous, but it also has serious social consequences because of the fact that there are women and families involved.

The transition team comprises of law enforcement and social justice leaders in California. According to the proposals that they have put forward, widespread and unnecessary incarceration of women in California's prisons has contributed to a troubling social structure. Incarcerated women who have no contact with their children are more likely to become repeat offenders. It's a vicious cycle, because the children of such women often end up becoming offenders themselves. Approximately 75% of the 9,500 women in California's prisons are mothers. Besides, the state has the dubious position of having the largest number of female prisoners in the country.

This focus on extensive and widespread incarceration has been financially devastating for the state. The state of California spends about $52,000 to keep one woman in prison for a period of one year. Besides, social services costs for children of female inmates amount to approximately $56 million annually.

For too long, the criminal justice system in California has promoted the extensive and widespread incarceration of women, even for low-level offenses. Most of the women who are currently in California's prisons were convicted of lower-level and nonviolent offenses. In fact, there are studies to indicate that these women are more often the victims of crimes, than the perpetrators of it. Four out of every 10 women in prison in California have been the victims of physical or sexual abuse.

How Do Courts in California Calculate Child Support?

Under California's laws, both parents have an obligation to support children. However in the case of a divorce or legal separation, one parent can request the other party for child support payments.

Typically, child support will be calculated based on the following factors:

• It will include the number of children who are involved. Children will include minor children, and child support payments will cover the children until they turn 18 and graduate from high school, or 19 if they are still in high school.
• It will also depend on the amount of time that each parent takes responsibility for the child.
• Obviously, it also depends on the gross income of the parent. Gross income will include not just salaries, but also commissions, royalties, bonuses, rent, wages, pensions, and annuities. If one of the parents has been awarded workers’ compensation benefits, Social Security benefits or disability insurance benefits, then child support payments will include these factors too.
• The parents’ tax liabilities, including the number of dependents, exclusions, deductions and credits are factored in.
• California's child support laws also take into consideration FICA, mandated retirement benefits, health insurance, child support that was paid out by the parent before the court order, and other child support or spousal support payments.
• Besides, parents must also provide additional child support in cases where they will be expected to provide training for employment skills, to cover the special needs of the child, to cover travel costs for visitation or to cover the cost of uninsured healthcare.
• The parent’s financial situation, including medical expenses, catastrophic financial losses, as well as the living expenses of children with another spouse who live with the parent, must also be considered.

However, in order to fully understand how these laws could impact the payments you receive, it's important to speak with an experienced Pasadena child support lawyer.

Current Retesting Procedures for Older Drivers May Not Prevent Accidents

A study released last month indicated to Los Angeles car accident lawyers that in California and around the country, there's substantial public support for mandatory retesting of elderly drivers above the age of 65. However, current retesting methods that exist in some states may do an inadequate job of actually gauging an older motorist’s ability to drive safely.

According to a study by Canadian researchers, medical tests that are used to determine an older driver’s levels of fitness, have got it all wrong. According to the researchers, there's only so much that you can learn about an individual's ability to drive in a doctor's office. In a doctor’s clinical environment, there's none of the chaos and confusion that an older motorist can expect to find on a normal California freeway. Besides, a doctor’s office doesn't provide the right kind of setting to determine whether elderly motorists can make sudden emergency decisions and speedy responses to accident risks as they have to in the real world. For instance, in a doctor’s office, it can be hard to determine whether the driver is able to drive safely, and still focus on the pedestrian stepping off a curb.

One of the biggest challenges facing elderly motorists is that they may be able to see things clearly, but may have trouble processing the signals that are transmitted to the brain. For instance, an elderly motorist may take up to 250 ms to recognize something that would take a younger motorist just about 150 ms to see. This delay in recognizing what could be a potentially serious accident risk could prove deadly on the street.

However, according to the researchers, it is possible to retrain certain areas of an elderly motorist’s brain, to make up for the missed activity in other areas of the brain. For instance, using practical techniques, older drivers can also be taught to multitask, using different areas of the brain while they are driving.