By Aron Solomon

To say that Amy Cooper is a pathetic character, in the literary sense, would be right on.

In what social media dubbed the ultimate Karen moment, after a deeply problematic meme, Cooper was charged for filing a false report a year ago after a 911 call to the NYPD to falsely complain that a birdwatcher was threatening her. While the charges were eventually dismissed, Cooper was quickly fired by her employer.

Yet at the end of May, Cooper, formerly an investment portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton, filed a lawsuit against the company, asserting that its CEO, Jenny Johnson, and other unnamed employees “had been negligent, discriminatory and defamatory in their treatment of the case and her subsequent termination,” according to Human Resources Director America.

As part of her claim, she is seeking lost salary, as well as emotional and punitive damages, for what she has characterized as “emotional and mental anguish.”

Cooper was fired less than 24 hours after the incident came to light through a viral video that became one of the most significant social memes of the past few years.

Franklin Templeton’s position has remained consistent from the onset: We don’t tolerate racism, we did an internal review of the situation and we think our termination of this employee was appropriate.

Clearly, the company has no choice but to remain consistent in its position, and it may not be wrong in having terminated Cooper. But maybe this isn’t as linear as it appears to be. While social media can cancel anyone they want at any time, cancel culture doesn’t legally extend to the workplace.

Michael Epstein, a lawyer based outside New York City, explains that in New York, the law is more complex for some employees than others:

“New York is an at-will employment state. Yet for employees who have a contract, if the termination violates the terms set forth in that contract, which may include an obligation of the employer giving proper notice, the terminated employee may have a case.”

Aside from the notice provision, the company is going to need to show that its actions with Cooper definitely met a company (and perhaps met an industry) standard. Franklin Templeton needs to demonstrate that it was acting in good faith, actually did a thorough investigation and (here is a critically important point) can demonstrate that it has acted similarly with other employees.

There is no legal requirement that a company conduct investigations at the level that state prosecutors do, though. The law does not require a company to act perfectly in terminating an employee; it just needs to be acting in good faith.

There is a lot to unpack here, beginning with how Franklin Templeton has treated similarly situated employees. That’s going to be a little difficult here given the egregious nature of Cooper’s actions, captured on video and made public to the entire world through the often dark magic of social media.

But if Cooper has evidentiary support for a claim that she was indeed treated differently than other similarly situated employees, it could begin to pull Jenga pieces out of what appears at the moment to be a well-fortified Franklin Templeton legal position.

A lingering question is why Franklin Templeton needed to dismiss Cooper so quickly.

Was it actually possible to complete an investigation in one day, or was a large company reacting to a social media powderkeg by pouring milk on it rather than lighting a match by launching a broader, more granular investigation that would have not only taken significantly longer but also been met with a public outcry if the company chose to, for example, place her on temporary leave?

We may learn that Franklin Templeton didn’t wait solely because it feared the wrath of social media.

We may learn that the company felt that it needed to balance doing the politically expedient thing with the legally expedient one, perhaps erring a bit on the side of assuaging an angry social media mob that was not only out to get Cooper, but could have quickly turned on Franklin Templeton in a second if the company hadn’t acted as quickly and decisively as it did.

All of these questions will be answered if Cooper’s lawyers actually filed a suit that can make it over any initial procedural hurdles. While critics have been quick to call her lawsuit baseless, what is clear is that the intensity of the outrage of the incident has irrevocably changed the trajectory of Cooper’s life.

Christan Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher at the heart of the story, told NPR that what she did was “pretty crappy without a doubt,” but added “I’m not sure that her one minute of poor decision-making, bad judgment and, without question, racist response necessarily has to define her completely,” which, up until today, it has.

Whether the result of this lawsuit will cement Amy Cooper’s status as an ubervillain of New York or will show that she was treated unfairly by her employer is now a matter of law, not public opinion.

And it will all turn on whether Franklin Templeton followed the right legal procedures or allowed itself to be swayed by outrage rather than reason, as is far too tempting in this deeply vitriolic social media climate.

This article originally appeared on WesternJournal.com: https://www.westernjournal.com/op-ed-remember-karen-called-cops-black-birdwatcher-might-get-last-laugh/

By Aron Solomon

The major players in crowdfunding include Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Crowdfunding is the process of raising money for your business or project (often referred to as a “side hustle”)  from individuals, who are known as the crowd.

Crowdfunding is an absolutely massive industry. The global crowdfunding market was calculated to be at $14.2 billion in 2019 and is determined to reach $28.8 billion by 2025.

While there are multiple crowdfunding platforms, I did the research and chose Indiegogo as the crowdfunding platform that I wanted to use. As you read this, I have an active crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, so I’m able to share some of my experience here.

Here is why you should consider a crowdfunding campaign if you want to try something new.

It helps you cross a fear threshold.

Even with a successful watch business, my co-founder and I were hesitant about doing a crowdfunding campaign. But after three weeks on Indiegogo, our web traffic is up 8 times the norm and we’ve sold other products already on our site through the increased free exposure.

If you have something that you’ve created and would like to share with people, building your crowdfunding campaign is easy and helps you get beyond your fear.

Crowdfunding allows you to share your side hustle even an early stage of product development

You only have an idea, some sketches, and a notion of what you want the prototype to look like? That’s fine.

Rest assured that every person who launched a crowdfunding campaign was worried that it would fail. And while many have failed, a lot of others have had massive success, turning side hustles into huge businesses.

You’re going to get better at Indiegogo the more time you spend on the site and working in their platform.

It’s a fast learning curve in crowdfunding.

Say you’ve designed a better, more comfortable blanket. Be really clear why it’s better than what’s out there. If you have a cup that keeps coffee hot for longer than other cups, hit that point again and again in your campaign.

Side hustles are proven to be good for you.

A side hustle can get you out of a rut and help you see the world in a different way. For many people, a side hustle can honestly change your life. Even Harvard Business Review has given the thumbs up on side hustles,

Just remember that if this is your first rodeo, it’s important to get to know the clowns. In other words, as Adam P. Birkhold, a partner in the law firm Birkhold & Maider, LLC, suggests: “It’s worth having someone look over a manufacturing contract if it’s your first time building a product. You want to make sure that the relationship that you’re actually entering into is what you expect it is. There are potential traps in any contract and an experienced set of legal eyes will help you steer clear of trouble and keep your eyes on the prize – getting your great product to market.”

If you don’t try, you’ll never know.

Being afraid of succeeding is a real thing and for many people, fear of success is a bigger deal than fear of failure.

Jon Bramnick is a very successful lawyer and founder of Bramnick Law firm. He’s also a politician, comedian, and book author. For Jon, everything he does complements his other work. And it pays off, having won the Funniest lawyer in New Jersey Contest, In his work, Jon meets “thousands of people. Most are respectful. Some are not. The book I wrote – ‘Why People Don’t Like You’ shares some lessons for the latter group.”

And even my own dad, Norton Solomon, has kept up side hustles well into his 80s, writing a business book just before his 85th birthday – Lessons From the School of Hard Knocks: How to Live an Extraordinary Life.

I’ll give him the last word here. “Side hustles keep you fresh. Everyone I know who fully retired was disappointed by the experience. You can do side hustles your entire life, and if a crowdfunding campaign is a way to get you out of a rut and excited about building something new, try it, learn from it, and get it right.”

This article originally appeared on InsideSources.com: https://insidesources.com/why-you-should-try-a-crowdfunding-campaign/

By Aron Solomon

For the technology enthusiasts among us, last week’s Supreme Court decision in Van Buren v. United States is one we shouldn’t soon forget. In a 6-3 opinion written by Justice Barrett, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, remanding the case for further proceedings.

Nathan van Buren was a former Georgia police officer who was convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). He was accused of taking money in exchange for looking up a license plate in a law enforcement database and was convicted by the district court for violating the CFAA because he allegedly used that database for an improper purpose, even though it was a database that he was allowed to access for work purposes.

The CFAA, 18 U.S. Code §1030, makes it a federal crime to access a computer without authorization or to exceed authorized access, and get any information in this way. Exceeding authorized access is defined in §1030(e)(6) as using authorized access to a computer to obtain or even alter information that the person with authorization is not entitled to.

Yet the CFAA has plenty of critics, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, all of whom filed amicus briefs in this case. Each of these advocacy organizations believes that the CFAA itself is vague and the decision of the district court and the Eleventh Circuit is a very dangerous and far too broad interpretation of the law. Pragmatists on both sides of the argument agree that the goal of Congress in enacting the CFAA was to make it illegal to destroy or even temporarily disrupt the functionality of a computer (which today would include the many forms of computers we use). Where the sides diverge is whether Congress also intended to extend this illegality to include things that a service provider didn’t want us to do, which is at least in the proximity of multiple slippery slopes.

In writing the majority opinion, Justice Barrett argued that under the CFAA, exceeding authorized access does not include “violations of circumstance-based access restrictions on employers’ computers.” So “an individual ‘exceeds authorized access’ when he accesses a computer with authorization but then obtains information located in particular areas of the computer — such as files, folders, or databases — that are off limits to him.”

The Court firmly disagreed with the government’s argument that terms of service violations on the sites we visit are a CFAA violation. Instead, Barrett suggests that the correct approach is “gates-up-or-down” — either we are entitled to access the information or we are not.

So what does this mean for you and me?

First, it means that we need to continue to be smart about what we do with computers and what we choose to do online. Josh Geist, a partner at the Pittsburgh law firm Goodrich & Geist, cautions us that as individual users of the Internet, we should always be vigilant when it comes to terms of service:

“Terms of service are a contract between you and the sites, software, and programs you use. While not many people read the terms of service, everyone needs to understand that not reading them isn’t a valid legal defense.”

As of today, the most comprehensive and accurate interpretation of where we all stand legally, is that the CFAA has no business criminally enforcing the terms of service limitations set by private parties (such as Google, your employer, your college) as to what purposes you can access information for or even how you can use this information.

Had the Court upheld the Eleventh Circuit, it could mean that we would be committing a federal crime each time we violate a website’s terms of service, which could honestly mean that we would be committing federal crimes daily. The danger is that a broad legal interpretation of the CFAA becomes a true Pandora’s Box, with private companies getting to decide which of our daily user behaviors (such as “embellishing an online dating profile,” as quoted from Barrett’s opinion) they would seek to prosecute and when.

For those who are thinking of Aaron Swartz, you’re sadly in the right ballpark. A decade ago, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on Massachusetts breaking-and-entering charges, after he connected a computer to the MIT network and set it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT.

So that parallel is clear: Both van Buren and Swartz had at least limited legal access of use and in both cases the CFAA was applied (or misapplied, depending upon your orientation here) to charge them. Finally, in both cases, critics felt that the charges were overzealous (“Nixonian,” in Swartz’s case) and overreaching, yet led to van Buren’s conviction and Swartz’s suicide before his trial.

But nothing is yet written in stone by Van Buren. At least not yet. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas, joined in his dissent by Justices Alito and Chief Justice Roberts, throws a softball for the Court to use in any future similarly-situated case:

“The question here is straightforward: Would an ordinary reader of the English language understand Van Buren to have ‘exceed[ed] authorized access’ to the database when he used it under circumstances that were expressly forbidden? In my view, the answer is yes. The necessary precondition that permitted him to obtain that data was absent.”

What is becoming clear is that this incarnation of the Supreme Court is proving themselves to be unpredictable, occasionally surprising, and always entertaining for those who like to watch Supreme Courts do their thing. The 6-3 majority opinion here is a serious hodgepodge of political leanings, from Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh on the right to Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan on the left. The ideological differences between the two extremes in this group (arguably Barrett on the right and pretty clearly Sotomayor on the left) are fairly massive.

Especially in dealing with an unpredictable Court, no one should believe that this issue is settled. Don’t be surprised if a similar issue plays chutes and ladders in the courts and ends up back in front of the Supreme Court as early as their 2021-2022 term, set to begin this October. As content as advocates of our digital rights feel this week, they could feel equally aggrieved a year from now if not before.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat.com: https://venturebeat.com/2021/06/09/what-the-supreme-courts-decision-on-federal-computer-crime-law-means-to-you/

By Aron Solomon

Last week saw the latest startup implosion. This was a company that tech media (and the company itself) hyped up as a future unicorn. The company was recognized by organizations that rank the top startups in the nation and everything looked great on the surface. This cautionary tale (no one will actually pay attention, so it’s not really “cautionary”) involves a startup that raised close to $200 million and, between what they did to themselves and coronavirus finishing them off by pulling out one Jenga piece at a time, just sold for $3 million.

Of course, in these situations, investors aren’t getting their money back. And aside from whatever money the founders took off the table (often more than they truly should have) during those fundraising rounds, the founders aren’t getting any money either.

And when this happens, there seems to be a belief that everything just goes away. This best case (and pretty unlikely) scenario being that the founders and investors cordially agree that they took a nice swing at the fence and while the ball looked like it was going to be a home run, sharply dipped into the outfielder’s glove as the uncertain footing of the warning track became a very hard wall. 

But is there really no situation where the founder of the startup can be held personally liable for some of the debts of the company?

Of course they can, explains New Jersey lawyer Michael Epstein. 

“Each startup is different. Assuming well-executed legal startup formation the startup itself is a legal entity responsible for its own debts. However, there are many circumstances where founders personally assure debts, particularly in the early days or even before the startup’s legal status was solidified.”

This happens all the time. The first problem is when founders do what so many founders need to do in the early days, which is use personal debt to fund their startup. There are companies out there now that are trying to fill the gap between the need for early stage startups to have access to a credit card and the danger of founder liability. Several new financial products, including Brex, seem to be trying to fill this gap, giving founders the ability to use credit card debt for the startup without being personally liable for it. None of these products comes without significant downsides, so read your fine print closely. 

But the much larger problem isn’t about the inevitable credit card debt in launching a startup, it’s about when founders essentially attach themselves to much more significant debt. They could (and absolutely should not) personally guarantee debt/investment into the business, not looking ahead to see that if the startup ends badly (and the vast, vast majority actually do) they they may not be able to walk away obligation-free. 

The danger may be more pronounced in startup verticals that scale quickly. Last week’s news that the startups in the electric vehicle space are in trouble should come as no surprise, nor should it if we find out that some of these companies took nontraditional funding routes that may involve personal obligation for company debts. 

Another type of founder liability that is far too rarely discussed is when founders are held liable for negligence and other wrongdoing. Imagine you had a startup that had terms of service with your users limiting what you could do with their data. And then you either chose to do some nefarious things with it or simply ignore inappropriate uses of their data that a reasonable startup founder should have caught. In a situation such as this there is the possibility that tort (and/or contractual) law comes into play and some liability attaches there. This could involve founders being named individually to a lawsuit, not simply the startup itself. 

This is all complicated territory, so the best advice is to always get your legal work done upfront in a reasonable, reliable way. Building new things is great for you personally and can have a huge benefit for our society. Yet founders are never going to fully eliminate personal exposure, so going into your new business with a solid legal foundation is the first think I teach my business school students and it’s what you should also always keep in mind in launching your new venture. 

This article originally appeared on BanklessTimes.com: https://www.banklesstimes.com/2021/06/07/are-founders-ever-liable-when-their-startups-fail/

By Aron Solomon

No matter the technology, there is no better time than now to have technology be the catalyst to drive social change, to improve the outcomes of our use of vehicles while allowing us to continue to use them to help our economies grow.

The CDC Report on Global Road Safety is some remarkably sobering reading. According to the report, the leading cause of death for people under 55 is automobile accidents. While passenger vehicles are something that we now take for granted in the United States, they literally drive economic development around the world.

The threshold issue is why we still have so many accidents, particularly fatal ones. Why are cars and trucks still causing so many fatalities, especially where, as Erik Pavia, founder of Pantheon, observes:

“Cars are safer than ever, but there’s not cultural awareness around auto fatalities the same way there is around cancer. Seems like a big opportunity for a startup to do some good.”

Among technology’s best uses in our society is as a catalyst for a cultural shift. So if innovation, in its various forms, comes to address and help reduce this leading cause of death, how can it drive a cultural shift not just here but around the world?

Globally, some of the solutions are far easier than we think because they are things we take for granted in the US, such as crossing at proper intersections, obeying speed limits, and riding in safe vehicles. When I personally think back to my close to 4 million miles of international travel, I reflect upon the road safety things we take for granted here not even being options in many parts of the world. A good example is crossing at a light. In many countries, this can be even more dangerous than crossing when one simply sees an opportunity. I can think of several occasions when I was in a lot of danger crossing, but was following the rules perfectly. The road safety notions to which we are married – such as the law and convention that if a light is red and you cross the street, cars will stop, as they are legally required to – simply aren’t in force in some other places.

Here at home, one of the things that keeps the highways and byways of this nation far safer than they could be is your ability to seek a legal remedy if you are injured.

Michael Epstein, a partner with the New Jersey law firm, The Epstein Law Firm, P.A., points out that a huge part of what keeps us even reasonably safe on our highways and byways is the stick part of the proverbial carrot and stick:

“The ability to exercise the right to sue if you are injured through the negligence or wrongful acts of another is critically important for safety standards. Where these rights are restricted, enforcing safe behavior is infinitely more difficult.”

Attorney Esptein adds that “It’s important to also remember that product liability lawsuits have without question led to safer products as manufacturers are held accountable – this is as true in the automotive industry as anywhere else.”

This is an interesting analysis, given that anyone who thinks road traffic injuries and deaths are a North American thing. Here are the very hard facts to read from the CDC report:

• Each year, 1.35 million people are killed on roadways around the world.
• Every day, almost 3,700 people are killed globally in crashes involving cars, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, or pedestrians. More than half of those killed are pedestrians, motorcyclists, or cyclists.
• Crash injuries are estimated to be the eighth leading cause of death globally for all age groups and the leading cause of death for children and young people 5–29 years of age. More people now die in crashes than from HIV/AIDS.
• It is estimated that fatal and nonfatal crash injuries will cost the world economy approximately $1.8 trillion dollars
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• (in 2010 USD) from 2015–2030.5 That’s equivalent to a yearly tax of 0.12% on global GDP (gross domestic product)

That’s a lot to unpack, but these two additional facts are the most difficult to accept:

• The crash death rate is over three times higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries.
• There were no reductions in the number of crash deaths in any low-income country from 2013 to 2016.

So what can technology do to help?

Fundamentally, great and useful technology fills gaps. An example many of us might know would be the emergency road barriers in Washington, DC, the nation’s capital. Passable roads in DC can immediately be restricted by having large concrete pillars come out of the streets. This can be done to either keep vehicles out of a section of the capital or essentially lock vehicles into a section. These barriers have the capability of changing the nature of at least a few critical blocks at the most important time, should there be a national security threat in the area.

If technology can reduce vehicle-related deaths around the world by similarly restricting some things our vehicles can do, that seems like an admirable use for tech that probably already exists in some form. Maybe one day, someone seeking to run a red light will find their vehicle unable to do so with enough time to spare so it can stop. Perhaps the signals from the lights or presence of people crossing the street temporarily impedes its progress.

No matter the technology, there is no better time than now to have technology be the catalyst to drive social change, to improve the outcomes of our use of vehicles while allowing us to continue to use them to help our economies grow.

This article originally appeared on FleetManagementWeekly.com: https://www.fleetmanagementweekly.com/how-to-reduce-car-accidents/

By Aron Solomon

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Niz-Chavez v. Garland is a compelling one on several levels and a real head-scratcher when it comes to the 6-3 majority in the case. Framing this case is easy: For far too long, multiple federal governments have played a little fast and loose with notice requirements.

The specifics of the case involve the plaintiff, Agusto Niz-Chavez, who was born in and a citizen of Guatemala. Niz-Chavez came to the United States illegally in 2005. A full eight years later, he was served with a notice to appear in deportation proceedings.

This is where the details become very important. The government’s notice to appear did not include the time and place of a hearing. A second notice later indicated the hearing would take place on June 25, 2013. Niz-Chavez applied for withholding of removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act and relief under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

From there, it became the same cycle of losses so many immigrants to the United States find themselves experiencing once the legal system becomes involved in their lives. An immigration judge denied his motion. The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed the immigration judge’s decision, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit denied a petition for review.

The fundamental question in this case – and one that is deeply important to people in Mr. Niz-Chavez’s situation – is whether the government must serve a specific document that includes all the information identified in section 1229(a), or whether the government can serve that information over the course of as many documents and as much time as it chooses.

The Supreme Court’s decision, which came down during the last week of April, reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals in a 6-3 opinion. Writing for the majority, the Gorsuch opinion of the court held that a notice to appear sufficient to trigger the “stop-time rule” must be one single document containing all of the information about an individual’s removal hearing specified in §1229(a)(1).

This stop-time rule was enacted by Congress as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). As it relates to someone such as Mr. Niz-Chavez, it stops a non-citizen’s accrual of time in the United States once the government serves them with the notice to appear pursuant to §1229(a).

As petitioner’s counsel, David Zimmer, partner at Goodwin, stated in the oral argument back in October,

“In IIRIRA, Congress created a new form of notice, a notice to appear. Congress largely copied the pre-IIRIRA notice provisions, but, crucially for this case, Congress cut the language authorizing the government to provide time and place information in a separate hearing notice and made that information a required part of a notice to appear.”

Michael Noriega, a partner at the New Jersey law firm, Bramnick, Rodriguez, Grabas, Arnold & Mangan, LLC, sees the Court’s decision in Niz-Chavez as long-overdue.

“This past week, the Supreme Court handed down Niz-Chavez v. Garland, reinforcing the principle that proper notice is at the foundation of any decision to deport someone from the United States.  The government’s choice to hurriedly issue Notices to Appear without dates or times were deemed acceptable by the Immigration Court, despite the deficiencies.”

Noriega also asserts that: “The Supreme Court has now recognized that the government’s rush to charge should not outweigh the non-citizen’s right to fair notice.  This decision will impact thousands of future and past cases as both parties attempt to rectify the past several years’ worth of defective notices while opening avenues of relief for thousands of non-citizen families.”

A very interesting aside in this case is that it is yet another example of this court showing its unique and unpredictable (probably an understatement) nature. A group of strange bedfellows aligned with Justice Gorsuch here: the court’s three liberals – Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan – as well as two other conservatives – Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a dissent, which was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

This article originally appeared on InsideSources.com: https://insidesources.com/the-strange-alliance-in-niz-chavez/