Legal Questions

Personal injury lawyers choose to delve into a more specialized area involving only personal injury litigation. Personal injury litigation involves a large number of claims including accidents, medical malpractice, product liability, workplace injury, wrongful death, and more. These lawyers may belong to any number of professional associations, some of which are mandatory and others voluntary. They may also be partners (owners) of a law firm or strive to be a partner. Personal injury victims with a strong case should not have to pay any out of pocket expenses.

Often, when people are involved in accidents or harmed by medical negligence or a defective product, they are confused and donÂ’t know what to do or where to turn. The most common type of personal injury claims are road traffic accidents, accidents at work, tripping accidents, assault claims, accidents in the home, defective product accidents and holiday accidents. The injuries can result from incidents involving automobiles, bicycles or other vehicles; accidents occuring on someone else’s property; or other similar accidents or catastrophic events.

There is no substitute for the advice of competent legal counsel. A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal representation to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence or wrongdoing of another person, company, government agency, or other entity.

Assuming you survive the accident, how would you recover the money you spend for medical care, the money you lose from not being able to work, and the pain and suffering that are thrust upon you as a result of someone elseÂ’s negligence.

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The FDA has taken the first step in allowing produce to go through a process called irradiation which kills pathogens like E-coli. It’s what a Sioux City company does everyday.

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NEW YORK (CNN) — Facing pressure from the state’s top court, the New Jersey Legislature voted Thursday to give gay and lesbian couples the rights and privileges of marriage, while using the term “civil unions” to describe the partnerships.

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This past weekend, Barack Obama announced his vice-presidential choice, veteran Senator and fellow lawyer, Joseph Biden.  Here’s a quick roundup of posts from the blogosphere on Biden’s position on various legal issues, as well as how he matches up intellectually and ethically against Obama.

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Based on the questions I get from the readers of my website, many people are confused about how their single member limited liability company will be taxed.

Questions like:

I am trying to figure out how I will be taxed as a single member LLC, which forms do I need to use?

When I pay myself, how much to I need to withhold for income tax?

I understand that an LLC can be taxed as a sole proprietor but does that change if I give myself a salary or commission?

Will I be taxed on both the profit from the llc and the income that I pay myself?

So let’s answer these questions by starting from the big picture overview.

A limited liability company is not taxed separately as a corporation at the entity level. The purpose of using a pass-through entity like an LLC or partnership instead of a c corporation is to avoid this double-taxation of profit.

Instead, tax is paid by you, personally, on your LLC’s net profits, and the LLC does not pay taxes separately.

As a single member LLC, you can choose to be taxed as a disregarded entity. This means that you use a Schedule C to report all your income and expenses and arrive at a net profit or loss.

This net profit is what you pay taxes on. Hence, you want to maximize your legitimate business expenses on your Schedule C.

In terms of paying yourself out of LLC profits, the simplest way is to simply write yourself a check. No payroll process, no withholdings. You are not receiving a “salary”, you are receiving your share of the limited liability company’s profits.

Most people don’t realize that everyone pays quarterly estimated taxes. For employees, your employer withholds that tax from your paycheck and pays your taxes for you. As a self-employed business owner, you are now responsible for making quarterly estimated payments.

To figure out the right amount to withhold, it’s helpful to use software like Turbotax.

In addition to income tax, you will also report Self-Employment tax. You are required to pay this at the end of the year. It is calculated based on your Schedule C and a separate Schedule for calculating the exact amount of your SE taxes. There are a few deductions on your Schedule C that are not permitted on your Schedule SE–for example, your limited liability company can take a deduction on your Schedule C for health insurance premiums paid for you and your family, but cannot take that deduction on on your Schedule SE for purposes of self-employment tax.

Therefore, the forms needed to do your taxes for a single member LLC taxed as a disregarded entity (i.e. as a sole proprietor), consist of:

* Form 1040

* Schedule C

* Schedule SE

* Your appropriate state tax forms

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The American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute in its 2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey found out that most employers subject their employees to forms of electronic surveillance such as Internet usage, phone conversations and numbers dialed, as well as locations and activities through video surveillance.

New Trends

Depending on which side of the fence you are straddling on, the emergence of new forms of employee surveillance is either very propitious or very unfortunate. Today, employers monitor social networking sites and the blogosphere for employees who might be less than model employees. If you are an active member of both Internet spheres, be very careful about being a smart ass towards your employer, your boss and your co-workers.

With millions of anonymous blogs out there, you need not worry for now. What you need to worry about is when video surveillance in the workplace infringes on your constitutionally-protected right to privacy.

Does an Animal Like Employee Privacy Rights Exist?

Unfortunately, employee privacy rights are virtually non-existent in the private sector as the abovementioned surveillance measures can tell you. There are two reasons for these:

* Your employers have the right to protect their office space and equipment, business documents and trade information, as well as prevent employee misbehavior, among others. In this case, employer security comes above employee privacy rights. Your employers have the option not to tell you about video surveillance though most employers would rather inform their employers as protection in the event of lawsuits.

* Your state government might not have strong employee privacy rights laws, if ever it does have one. The laws essentially allow electronic surveillance due to its explicit non-prohibition; most laws will protect your privacy only to the point when the reasonable expectation of privacy is complied with. In this case, video surveillance is not allowed in areas where employees can expect reasonable privacy to carry out personal matters like taking restroom breaks and changing clothes.

What You Can Do When Surveillance Invades Privacy

At the first instance of employment, you have to be informed of office policies regarding employee privacy rights. In the same survey, employers fired employees on the basis of violations of these policies in relation to Internet use, e-mail messages, phone usage and other employee misbehavior caught on video surveillance.

Fortunately for you, we live in a country where everybody’s voice has a chance to be heard in the courts of law. You can challenge your firings in court where judges and juries can take into account other factors in the termination of employment.

Even if you are still employed with the company, you can still file lawsuits when laws on the reasonable expectations of privacy are violated. For example, if you discovered that your employer had video cameras installed in the locker room and in the shower room, you have the right to complain because your personal space is being unnecessarily invaded. After all, what part of undressing and doing your ablutions constitute your violations of office policies? Regardless of the paranoia of employers, they do not have the right to violate fundamental privacy rights protected by our Constitution.

You can do your part in putting balance in an increasingly Big Brother environment. If you can do something about unnecessary and intrusive video surveillance, Internet monitoring and phone scrutiny, then do it lest you become another hapless victim.

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When done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies’ decisions about the environment, says a new report from the National Research Council.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Pfizer appears to be getting ready to slash thousands more workers and shut down some of its plants, but part two of CEO Jeffrey Kindler’s plan to revitalize the struggling drugmaker did not inspire rave reviews on Wall Street Tuesday.

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