Month: May 2016

In 2008, U.S. small businesses paid $105.4 billion in tort liability costs according to the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.  It’s a number we can assume has continued to grow, with more than 100 million lawsuits filed in our nation’s courts every year. From loss of customers and blemished reputations to devastating financial hardship and bankruptcy, they can cause lasting damage. Fortunately, understanding recent lawsuit trends may help you protect your small business.

Lawsuits by Employees

Employees may file lawsuits when they feel their employer—or a potential employer—has discriminated against them.  According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), retaliation was the most common cause in 2015, accounting for more than 44 percent of all cases. This was followed by race (35 percent), sex (30 percent), disability (30 percent), age (23 percent), national origin (11 percent), religion (4 percent) and equal pay (1 percent).

Your employee handbook is one of the best tools you have to protect yourself against employee lawsuits. It should clearly outline how you classify employees, eligibility for overtime pay and benefits, how employees should request time off, your company’s holiday and vacation policies as well as anti-discrimination, harassment and safety policies and avenues for complaint. If you’re in an at-will employment state, the handbook should explain this as well.

While you should give every new employee a hardcopy of the handbook and have them sign a document acknowledging their receipt and understanding of the materials within, you should also maintain a digital copy for easy updating.

Lawsuits for Copyright Infringement

From the music you play in your lobby and the stock photography you use on your website to the things you share in your company’s social media posts, you could be vulnerable to a copyright infringement lawsuit costing tens of thousands of dollars if you haven’t purchased or otherwise properly licensed the use of any creative property.

You can reduce your lawsuit risk by checking the original source of anything you want to publish or repost. If you don’t see a copyright notice, it’s still wise to request the permission of the author/artist. Get written consent or license the work. A simple credit is generally not enough.

Lawsuits by Customers and Vendors

Your employees are not the only parties who can sue you for discrimination; your customers can as well. Fail to provide adequate disabled access and facilities or refuse to serve a customer due to his or her race, religion or sexual orientation and you may quickly find yourself facing a discrimination lawsuit.  Personal injury lawsuits are also a hazard for any small business that welcomes customers or vendor representatives onto its premises.

If you stay abreast of the latest laws and avoid practices that could be classified as discriminatory or put your employees or customers at risk, you reduce your chances of a small business lawsuit. However, investing in general liability insurance is essential for greater peace of mind. To explore your options, give us a call today.

Do you use email to advertise your business? If so, those messages are subject to rules established under the CAN-SPAM Act. Signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003, it applies to all commercial email messages that advertise or otherwise promote a commercial product or service.

Should the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) find you in violation of the CAN-SPAM law, your business could face a penalty of up to $16,000 per email sent. However, the FTC isn’t the only one looking at the emails you send. Many email and internet service providers (ISP) use SPAM filters to keep unwanted messages out of their customers’ inboxes. In fact, according to ReturnPath, an email data services provider, one out of every five legitimate emails never makes it to its destination. It’s either swept up by a SPAM filter or blocked by an ISP.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to ensure you don’t catch the eye of the FTC as well as increase your marketing email deliverability.

• Require subscribers to opt-in to marketing emails.Blacklists are used by email providers and ISPs to reduce delivery of malicious and SPAM emails. Your email address, IP or domain may end up on one or more blacklists if multiple parties report your emails as SPAM. These reports are most likely when you add customers to your email campaign without asking them to “opt-in” or give their permission. If you suspect you may be blacklisted, you can find out here. Getting yourself removed from a blacklist can be complicated and time consuming.
• Don’t get clever with your subject lines. Under the CAN-SPAM law, your email subject line must accurately communicate the content of the message. SPAM filters also look for emails that use all caps or lots of exclamation points in their subject lines.
• Make unsubscribing easy. It’s better to make it simple for your customers to unsubscribe from your marketing emails than to get lots of SPAM reports and wind up on blacklists. The easiest way to do this is to include a clearly labeled opt-out button or link at the bottom of all marketing correspondence.
• Include a plaintext version. While most people are able to receive HTML emails these days, many SPAM filters will still send your messages directly to the trash if you don’t include a plaintext version. You can learn more about using multipurpose internet mail extensions (MIME) here. Avoid including video, Flash or JavaScript in your marketing emails as well.
• Don’t use large images or images alone. Images take longer to load than text does. If you fail to balance your images used with text, your customers may get tired of waiting for the message to load and wind up reporting it as SPAM.
• Avoid common SPAM filter trigger words. These include free, no-obligation, guaranteed, buy, order, limited time and more. HubSpot has put together an excellent, comprehensive list of common trigger words here.