Franklin Legal Issues Blog

Business ownership is a dream for many enterprising individuals. Opening the doors of your own startup to serve your community is a singular feeling of accomplishment. Before you unlock the front doors, put a down payment on a building or even write your business plan, however, there are some key considerations to make regarding your business.

The quickest way for a promising enterprise to fail is to rush into the process without a well-constructed plan. You need to know what type of business entity your venture will be. You need to know how it will be structured, plan your tax strategies, be prepared for business and commercial transactions and many more factors.

Guardrails line our highways to help us stay safe. In a crash they expected to perform in specific ways that absorb the impact and prevent injuries. To do so, they have to be manufactured and installed properly.

Some recent deaths here in Tennessee have resulted in a lawsuit claiming that a particular kind of guardrail did not perform correctly. The contractors who installed them have been caught up in the lawsuit and need representation. This case is an example of the kind of potential liability that construction firms take on and how they can defend themselves.

One of the risks that most construction projects have involves getting paid. It’s a fact of life that we all want to get paid for the work we perform. But what happens when someone doesn’t pay? The resulting situation causes a domino effect of sorts. The owner can’t or won’t pay, which means the general contractor then can’t pay their sub-contractors.

The bad boy mentioned in the headline is the pay-if-paid clause that is often written into construction contracts. What this clause does is shift the risk from the general contractor to the subcontractor. For example, if the owner of the project lost their construction financing and the contractor wasn’t paid, they could legally refuse to pay the sub-contractors for their work.