Category Archives: Business Law

Information about legal issues affecting small businesses, including big business. The latest news, videos, and discussion topics on Legal Issues involving business and money.

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Is Legal Weed Hurting the Restaurant Industry?

Colorado’s restaurants are feeling the pinch

by Whitney Filloon

Numerous major cities across the U.S. have suffered from a shortage of cooks in recent years: From Austin to Madison, San Francisco to Denver, the boom of new restaurant openings has outpaced the number of qualified applicants available to staff them.

The primary contributing factor fueling all this seems to be the industry’s notoriously low wages. In big cities like Seattle and SF, it can be tough to afford rent on a cook’s salary, leading many to look to other industries — including the burgeoning legal marijuana industry, Bloomberg reports.

In Denver, where weed has been legal for recreational use since 2012, chefs say their workforce is being lured away to higher-paying, lower-demand jobs in the cannabis industry. Bobby Stuckey of the acclaimed Frasca Food & Wine in Boulder tells Bloomberg that “Colorado’s restaurant labor market is in Defcon 5 right now, because of weed facilities.”

Colorado’s legal pot industry is currently valued at around $1 billion, and it takes a lot of labor to fuel that, from “budtenders” (the weed gurus who serve on the front lines at dispensaries) to trimmers and even pastry chefs, who help produce edibles like brownies and candy. While starting pay for budtenders hovers around $10 to $12, growers and trimmers can make around $20, sometimes with full benefits — and restaurants simply can’t match that.

Full Read – http://www.eater.com/2017/3/30/15121934/restaurant-labor-shortage-legal-marijuana-industry

Blog, Business Law, Criminal, Immigration, International, Legal News, Organized Crime, Supreme Court

Russian mafia boss still at large after FBI wiretap at Trump Tower

There, indeed, was an FBI wiretap involving Russians at Trump Tower.

But it was not placed at the behest of Barack Obama and the target was not the Trump campaign of 2016. For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower.

The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” Tokhtakhounov was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.

Five months after the April 2013 indictment and after Interpol issued a “red notice” for Tokhtakhounov, the fugitive appeared near Donald Trump in the VIP section of the Moscow Miss Universe pageant. Trump had sold the Russian rights for Miss Universe to a billionaire Russian shopping mall developer.

“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the FBI agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News. “He is prominent, he has extremely good connections in the business world as well as the criminal world, overseas, in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, other countries.”

Gaeta, who ran the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime unit of the FBI’s New York office told ABC News at the time that federal agents were closely tracking Tokhtakhounov, whose Russian ring was suspected of moving more than $50 million in illegal money into the United States.

“Because of his status, we have kept tabs on is activities, and particularly as his activities truly enter New York city,” Gaeta said. “Their money was ultimately laundered from Russia, Ukraine and other locations through Cyprus banks and shell companies based in Cyprus, and then ultimately here to the United States.”

The FBI investigation did not implicate Trump. But Trump Tower was under close watch. Some of the Russian mafia figures worked out of the 63rd floor unit in the iconic skyscraper –- just three floors below Trump’s penthouse residence — running what prosecutors called an “international money laundering, sports gambling and extortion ring.”

The Trump building was home to one of the top men in the alleged ring, Vadim Trincher who pleaded guilty to racketeering and received a five-year prison term. He is due to be released in July.

“Everything was moving in and out of there,” said former FBI official Rich Frankel, now an ABC News consultant.

Read Full – http://abcnews.go.com/US/story-fbi-wiretap-russians-trump-tower/story?id=46266198

Blog, Business Law, Civil Rights, Family, Legal News

Tempe ‘squatter’ loses in court again as judges affirm lower-court ruling that case lacks merit


Steve Sussex gives a tour of the property his family has occupied for 137 years on the corner of First Street and Farmer Avenue. Sussex is in a dispute with Tempe over rights to the parcel. Ben Moffat/azcentral.com

A Tempe man whose family has squatted in a century-old house on valuable property near downtown has again lost a court decision in his ongoing battle to keep his land.

A three-judge panel from the Arizona Court of Appeals said last week that a Superior Court judge was correct in tossing out Steve Sussex’s case against the city of Tempe because it had no legal merit.

But the man’s 12-year turf war remains far from resolved. Though Sussex can’t prove he rightfully owns the land, the city has so far failed in its effort to oust him. The case — and the land — remain in limbo.

Sussex’s attorney, Jack Wilenchik, said Monday he would appeal to the state Supreme Court. A separate court case, with Tempe asking a court to remove Sussex from the property, is still pending at the Superior Court level.

Wilenchik has fought the city’s move to eject Sussex, arguing in a counterclaim that there are problems with the city’s claim to title as well.

“I haven’t been able to get him title to the land, but the city hasn’t been able to eject him, either,” Wilenchik said. “So it’s been the same as its been for the last 120 years.”

Full Read – http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2017/03/06/tempe-squatter-loses-court-again-judges-affirm-lower-court-ruling-steve-sussex/98820154/

 

Blog, Business Law, Civil Rights, Legal News, Supreme Court

Judge Tosses Dakota Pipeline Motion Seeking to Block Construction

by NIKITA BIRYUKOV

A federal judge has denied a motion brought by the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes seeking a preliminary injunction against an easement needed to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in a court filing Tuesday that the tribe had waited too long to raise the religious concerns upon which the motion was based.

“At this point … the [Army] Corps has granted the permits and easement, and DAPL’s construction under Lake Oahe is days from completion,” Boasberg wrote. “Rerouting the pipeline around Lake Oahe would be more costly and complicated than it would have been months or years ago, as doing so now requires not simply changing plans but abandoning part of a near-complete project and redoing the construction elsewhere.”

full read – http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dakota-pipeline-protests/judge-tosses-dakota-pipeline-motion-seeking-block-construction-n730271?

Blog, Business Law, Civil Rights, Legal News, Supreme Court

Los Angeles County Sues State Over Political Boundaries Law

Los Angeles County is suing over a new state law it says discriminates against more than 1 million voters while taking away the power of the Board of Supervisors to draw its own political boundaries

By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles County is suing over a new state law it says discriminates against more than 1 million voters while taking away the power of the Board of Supervisors to draw its own political boundaries.

The lawsuit aims to block the 2016 law that creates a 14-member commission to draw boundaries for county supervisor districts after the 2020 census.

Commission members would be chosen from political parties, the lawsuit says, unfairly excluding about a quarter of county voters who register with no party preference and comprise the fastest-growing portion of newly registered voters.

Aides to state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Los Angeles, who wrote the law, said Tuesday that the intent of SB958 is to include those independent voters on the commission.

“If the citizens redistricting commission is good enough for the state Legislature and Congress, it should be good enough for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors,” Lara said in a statement.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court says the law illegally takes away local control, unfairly applies only to Los Angeles County and makes the process more political. Based on current registration, 70 percent of commissioners would be Democrats, 25 percent Republicans and 5 percent from smaller political parties, the lawsuit states.

“I think that’s a valid concern, but it’s also a valid concern that politicians shouldn’t be drawing their own district lines. So there are competing benefits on both sides,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation. She was not involved in passing the law.

Read Full – https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2017-02-28/los-angeles-county-sues-state-says-1-million-voters-harmed

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