Top 10 Legal Issues You Should Know

At a cocktail party recently, a good friend told me a horror story about how she got kicked out of her apartment after years of residency. Her landlord had suddenly decided to turn the place into a short-term vacation rental.

That left her with 30 days to figure out what she was going to do with her life. She had no lease and never thought it was a big deal because she had been there for so long and felt she had a good relationship with the owner.

This made me realize that there are a lot of issues in life that many of us don't know the legalities of until we are forced to suddenly deal with them. I made a quick call to my friend Roman Whittaker, who's a partner in the Palm Desert-based firm to ask for a top 10 refresher course in legal issues everyone should know.

He kindly delivered me the following list that covers California:

1. If you don’t have a written lease that states a specific term or length of the lease, or you have made an oral agreement with your landlord to lease your residence for an unspecified time, your landlord can typically kick you out on 30 days’ written notice. The good news is that you can also typically leave on 30 days’ notice.
2.  You don’t have to register a trademark or trade name to have a legally protectable interest, but if you don’t register, your interest is generally only good in the city or county where you’re using it. If someone else registers your trademark or trade name before you start using it, they can force you to stop using it.
3. You can help protect yourself from personal liability by properly forming and operating your business as a corporation, but you can get even more protection by using a limited liability company instead. 
4. You can’t just go solicit money from perfect strangers for your business venture without a bunch of legal documentation, unless you want to take the risk of running afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
5. The contractor that’s doing your kitchen or bathroom remodel (or other home improvement) must be licensed and must have a special “Home Improvement Contract” signed between you that explains your rights. If the contractor isn’t licensed, you don’t have to pay them a dime (even if they did a good job); and, if there’s no special Home Improvement Contract that you both signed, you only have to pay “quantum meruit”—the fair value of their work—if anything at all, regardless of the agreed price.   Oh, and one more thing, the contractor can’t take more than 10 percent of the contract price or $1,000, whichever is less, as an upfront deposit for any work.
6. All agreements regarding the sale of real property must be in a written contract signed by the parties in order to be enforceable, but there are a few important exceptions to this law.
7.  If you’re expecting to be paid any sort of commission from a transaction involving the sale or financing of real estate, you can forget it, unless you’re licensed by the Department of Real Estate as a sales person or broker (or maybe if you’re a lawyer). You might, however, be able to enforce a signed, written contract for this sort of thing if you structure it as a “referral fee” under certain circumstances, as opposed to a commission. 
8.  Your lawyer is supposed to have you sign a written contract for any legal services in excess of $1,000.
9. That debt collector who’s harassing you should never be calling you before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., and they shouldn’t be talking to your employer either.
10. Unless you’re an “exempt” employee, you’re supposed to take a 10 minute break every four hours and a half hour lunch break during a full workday.  If not, your employer probably owes you money.

Disclaimer: Please note that publication of this top 10 list does not create an attorney-client relationship, does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon, since each jurisdiction has different laws, each situation is fact specific, and it is impossible to evaluate a legal issue without a comprehensive consultation and review of all the facts and documents at issue.