The Carlson Dash Digest

During this season of thanks, we would like to take a moment to thank all of our clients and colleagues. We are proud of the firm we have built, our partnerships with our clients, and we greatly appreciate everyone’s ongoing support. On behalf of everyone at Carlson Dash, we wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving.

We had a great response to our inaugural issue of The Carlson Dash Digest last month and look forward to bringing you “legal news you can use” each month! Our goal is to provide practical, relevant and topical content to our clients and peers. We hope you find The Digest to be a practical resource and we encourage reader feedback. If there is a topic that interests you that has not been covered, drop us a line and we will be sure to cover it in a future issue, or offline.

November Topics

• Sole Proprietorship to S-Corp: Choosing What Works for You – Partnerships (Part 2)
• Contract Terms: Analyzing the Technical vs. Practical Impact
• Anatomy of a Business Assets Auction

Construction Contracts: The Boiler Plate That Gives You Fits

On October 24, 2014, James Dash was a featured speaker at an Illinois State Bar Association (ISBA) seminar at Northern Illinois University College of Law entitled “Construction Contracts: The Boiler Plate That Gives You Fits.”   The seminar addressed common construction contract terms and recurring issues that often arise in those contracts.  Jim’s segment, “The Devil is in the Details,” focused on the importance of paying attention to detail and included the topics of “pay when/if paid” and “no damage for delay” clauses and delay damages.

Jim’s practice focuses on real estate-related litigation, with an emphasis on construction (including mechanics lien claims), as well as title insurance defense work. Jim’s clients include a number of companies whose businesses are in, or related to, the real estate, title insurance and construction industries. For a list of upcoming ISBA seminars, please visit http://www.isba.org/events.

Legal Tidbits

Ignorantia juris non excusat is a Latin term the legal profession has embraced which generally means that ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating the law. If one walks into any courthouse in the United States on any given day, it is quite likely that a judge will be heard using that legal principle to explain to a perplexed-looking party why he is ruling against them. Yes, one is presumed to know the law. That principle was advanced back in the day when attorneys became attorneys by “reading the law” while serving as an apprentice, like any other tradesman.

However, in the United States, we have more laws than one can count, let alone read. For instance, in 1936 the number of pages in the Federal Register, which serves as the catalog for federal laws, was about 2,600. Today, the Federal Register is over 80,000 pages long.  For sake of perspective, War and Peace is only 1,440 pages long. And the 80,000 pages does not include a listing of any state or municipal laws, and each unit of government has hundreds (if not thousands) of its own laws.

So, if someone tells you that ignorance of the law is not an excuse, you might want to ask them if they are aware of the number of the laws on the books. Therefore, how can anyone be anything other than ignorant of most laws? It would be refreshing to see our elected officials reverse course and run on platforms of reducing the number of laws on the books.