Legal Berkeley CA
In order to understand legal matters and the jargon of the legal world, this site can help you to research local laws, court processes, and crimes, as well as inform you on proper legal procedures.
Every state and the federal government provide that certain property is exempt from the claims of creditors. This means that no matter how much you owe, your creditors in Berkeley cannot take this property away from you. In some states the property you can keep is only worth a few thousand dollars, but in other states, it can be millions of dollars.
Negligence is carelessness that causes personal injury to someone else. It can be an action, like carelessly knocking a brick off a rooftop, or a failure to act, like a landlord who doesn't repair a broken stair. Negligence often forms the basis for personal injury lawsuits. To support a legal claim for negligence...
What happens if I trip and during the cruise or while I am getting on or off of the ship? The standard of care is that the cruise lines must exercise "reasonable care under the circumstances."
For information on how to value your specific claim, and to find out if your state has a limit on non-economic damages, contact a personal injury attorney in your area.
A personal injury lawsuit is simply a legal action, brought in court, by someone who has been injured (either physically or emotionally) by another person, usually by way of an accident, fall, or product malfunction.
What is a 'reservation of rights' letter in Berkeley? If you are sued, the legal complaint filed against you may state several different claims, some of which may be covered by your liability insurance policy and some of which may not be covered.
This article gives advice to a parent who believes their child's high school sports coach is physically and mentally abusive to the athletes and parents. Read on to find out what the law says and what actions you can take if you ever find yourself and your child involved in this kind of situation.
A picture can be worth a thousand words. If you are in a car accident, photographs of your vehicle and the other vehicles involved may provide important evidence of the severity of the impact and how the accident happened.
Even If you are partly responsible for a car accident, you may still be able to recover damages from the other driver.
The law provides that you are entitled to recover damages from the person or persons whose wrongful conduct, whether negligent or intentional, injured you.
You may not make job decisions based on an employee's race, ethnicity, or national origin. Read on and learn more.
If you are upside down on your mortgage, bear this in mind, that the banks are upside down too. They are not only upside down in terms of their own balance sheets, but also in terms of their recordkeeping.
There are a few situations when you'll want or need the advice of a good small-business attorney. Here are just a few examples of serious legal issues that require the help of an experienced lawyer.
You may need to register your business name with the local, state, or federal government -- especially if it's considered fictitious. If your business is organized as a corporation, LLC, or limited partnership, in most states you automatically register your business name when you file your articles of incorporation, articles of organization, or statement of limited partnership with your state filing office.
A sole proprietorship is a one-person business that is not registered with the state like a limited liability company (LLC) or corporation. You don't have to do anything special or file any papers to set up a sole proprietorship -- you create one just by going into business for yourself.
Thinking about purchasing an existing business? Here are some things you should know before you take the plunge.
A buyout agreement, as business lawyers explain in this article, lets you plan what will happen when a partner leaves the business. When you create buyout provisions for your partnership agreement, you and your partners will be prepared if one partner wants to leave the business, or worse, dies, goes bankrupt, or gets divorced.
The right structure -- corporation, LLC, partnership, or sole proprietorship -- depends on who will own your business and what its activities will be.
Certain federal laws apply if your business extends credit to customers. Read this article and know more.
These frequently asked questions explain what intellectual property and copyrights are, and how and what they protect.
This article talks about how to register your copyright and get maximum protection from the U.S. federal copyright laws. You must register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office before you are legally permitted to bring a lawsuit to enforce it.
To evaluate the effectiveness of the major players in corporate governance, we have to decide what we are trying to achieve. We want jobs that pay a decent wage and goods and services that meet our needs. We want structures and systems that enable us to express our creativity and ingenuity, and when we meet those challenges, we want to share the benefits of the results.
Learn the benefits and drawbacks of corporate taxation. Corporations are taxed differently than other business structures: A corporation is the only type of business that must pay its own income taxes on profits. In contrast, partnerships, sole proprietorships, and limited liability companies (LLCs) are not taxed on business profits; instead, the profits "pass through" the businesses to their owners, who report business income or losses on their personal tax returns.
All definitions of the term corporation reflect the perspectives (and the biases) of the people writing the definitions. Some lawyers and economists neutrally describe the corporation as simply “a nexus (bundle) of contracts,” arguing that the corporation is nothing more than the sum of all of the agreements leading to its creation.
Most people have heard that forming a corporation provides "limited liability" -- that is, it limits your personal liability for business debts. What you may not know is that there's more to creating and running a corporation than filing a few papers. You'll need to keep good records to handle the more complicated corporate tax return and, in order to retain your limited liability, you must follow corporate formalities involving decision making and record keeping. In short, you've got to be organized.
How do you know whether a corporation or LLC is right for your business? For the majority of small businesses, the relative simplicity and flexibility of the LLC makes it the better choice. This is especially true if your business will hold property, such as real estate, that's likely to increase in value.
These are steps you should take if you are involved in a car accident.
When you hire a lawyer, make sure you know what you're getting into. This article discusses what to do if a lawyer refuses to return fees for services they did not perform and what to ask for when retaining a lawyer.
Dual citizenship refers to the legal right some individuals have to be citizens of more than one country. There are advantages to dual citizenship. It can save individuals money on taxes and other legal fees. Plus, there is a certain amount of freedom that goes along with having citizenship in two or even more countries.
If someone violates your patent, you can take legal steps to stop the infringement. To decide whether an inventor is violating (infringing) a patent, it is necessary to carefully examine the patent's "claims." (Claims are terse statements of the scope of the invention, and most patents contain more than one of them.) The elements of each claim must be compared with the elements of the accused infringer's invention (usually a device or process).
Questions about obtaining and maintaining the legal guardianship of a child.
Estate planning is an area of our Finances that is probably the least exciting, and often the most over looked. In addition, many people just want to jump right into all of the tax savings strategies without ever taking care of the basics.
Title VII prohibits discrimination in all terms, conditions, and privileges of employment, including hiring, firing, compensation, benefits, job assignments, promotions, and discipline.
Find out what you have to submit to the federal government when you start a business. Before a small business can legally begin, it must address a number of requirements with governmental agencies, from the city to the state to the federal government. None of these requirements, from taxes to licenses to environmental compliance, are difficult or even terribly time-consuming, but finding out what you need to do can be like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what it will look like.
Here is an overview of the incorporation process. The name of your business cannot be the same as the name of another corporation on file with your state's corporations office (usually the Secretary of State's office). It must end with a corporate designator, such as "Corporation," "Incorporated," or "Limited," or an abbreviation of one of those words.
Here is what you need to do to form an limited liability company. The name of your business cannot be the same as the name of another limited liability company (LLC) on file with your state's LLC office (which is usually part of the same division as corporations, often the Secretary of State's office). The name must end with an LLC designator, such as "Limited Liability Company" or "Limited Company," or an abbreviation of one of these phrases ("LLC," "L.L.C.," or "Ltd. Liability Co.").
Here, a scenario involving a person wishing to retrieve a case file from a lawyer they fired is presented. A legal expert gives some suggestions on how to deal with a lawyer who refuses to turn over property, including filing a lawsuit against him/her.
Hiring a lawyer on contingency means that he/she will only get paid if the case is won. Read on to learn about how to find a lawyer who will work on contingency and what kind of case he/she is likely to take.
If you've sorted through the many types of business structures and decided to create a corporation, you're facing a list of important -- but manageable -- tasks. Here's what you must do. To form your own corporation, you must take these essential steps.
Before we ever decide to look for an immigration lawyer, we have to be acquainted first with immigration law. We should know that immigration law cannot be handled by just any lawyer but an immigration lawyer in Berkeley. So if you dream to go to another country, particularly the US, you will seek a lawyer who handles the legalities for admission to that country.
It is wise not to use copyrighted graphic art without permission. Read this article and know more.
What sets the corporation apart from all other types of businesses is that a corporation is an independent legal entity, separate from the people who own, control, and manage it. In other words, corporation and tax laws view the corporation as a legal "person" that can enter into contracts, incur debts, and pay taxes apart from its owners.
Here is what you have to know about copyright protection. Read this article and know more.
You can't license your idea unless you can guarantee your ownership. Ownership may be challenged by your employer, a coworker, a contractor, or another inventor.
Limited liability companies combine the best parts of partnerships and corporations. A limited liability company (LLC) offers protection from personal liability for business debts, just like a corporation. However, unlike a corporation, which must pay its own taxes, an LLC is a pass-through tax entity: The profits and losses of the business pass through to its owners, who report them on their personal tax returns just as they would if they owned a partnership or sole proprietorship.
