Posted on March 21st, 2019
Below is a complete transcription of the video.
Hello again, fellow entrepreneurs. This is John Fagerholm. Today I want to talk about an awesome labor board win that I had this morning.
First, I’ll tell you about the facts of the case, but that’s just the story. There’s actually a moral to it at the end of this that I want to convey to everybody.
I have a client that she ceased operating her business a few years ago. She recently got a labor board claim. The labor board claim was for unpaid wages from about six months after she had ceased operations.
Obviously, she didn’t owe any money. But the dollar amount was very big. Big enough where there was a lot of risk. We really put a lot of time and effort into doing the research and finding the evidence to prove that this person could not have worked these hours that she’s claiming because the business didn’t even exist.
After doing these hours and hours of evidence and working on my cross examination and everything else that I was working on to prepare, I called my client up last night to ask a few questions that I needed answered for some ideas that I had about what I was going to present in my opening.
As we’re talking and she’s telling me the answers, she says to me, “This would be wonderful if I could just wrap this up into my bankruptcy.” I’m like, “Wait a minute. What bankruptcy? You didn’t tell me anything about a bankruptcy.” She says, “Yeah, I filed bankruptcy last year, personal bankruptcy, and so it wiped out all of this debt that had been created by this business that I started and failed.”
It was the business that was the subject of this labor board claim. I said to her, “Wait a minute. Send me all the documents.” She sends me the documents and, boom, there it is. It’s this labor board claim, if it went to a judgment, would have been discharged in this bankruptcy. Because of certain California case law, you don’t even have to reopen the bankruptcy.
All of this time and effort preparing to defend strictly based on money isn’t owed and all of this evidence, none of that was needed. We basically walked in and said, “Hey. This client filed for bankruptcy during this time.
This fits within that bankruptcy range. You don’t have the labor board, you don’t have the jurisdiction to even hear this.” The hearing officer says, “You know what? You’re right.” Case dismissed. That’s how easy it was.
That’s the story. Of course, most labor board hearings don’t go that way, but the moral of the story is tell your attorney everything, even if it’s something you don’t think is going to be a factor.
Of course, I don’t mean tell them anything, things the aren’t relevant to the case, but of course that you filing a bankruptcy because of the debt that you got into for a failed business is relevant. Anyway, so that’s the moral of the story.
Tell your attorney everything.
Thanks, everybody. I really appreciate it.
