01/11/2006
The Big Game will be exciting. Watch for brilliant moves by the defense, but never under estimate the power of the offense to launch a dazzling end run or throw a Hail Mary pass that will turn the tide in their favor. As the contest gets heated, there will be fumbles, interceptions and calls of unsportsmanlike conduct. But this grueling spectacle won’t feature halftime entertainment or slick advertisements and the television audience will be very small.
Unlike the professional football playoffs that are flooding the airwaves of America, the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr. will capture a much smaller share of the nation’s attention, but the stakes of this game are much greater than any sports event.
Among those sure to be paying rapt attention to Capitol Hill’s latest grilling of a justice-to-be are small-business owners whose enterprises are increasingly threatened by state and federal government agencies that stretch the interpretation of laws beyond their original intent. Many are aware that the National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation’s defensive posture helped block an end run by the U.S. Tax Court last year. Taking the case for small business all the way to the Supreme Court, the foundation successfully turned back the tax court’s secretive practice that allowed special trial judges to withhold reports from taxpayers who had appealed decisions.
NFIB’s Legal Foundation has a flexible game plan; it can play defense or offense, depending on the challenge. Created to represent the interests of small-business owners inAmerica’s courts and to educate entrepreneurs about legal pitfalls, the affiliate of the nation’s largest small-business organization scored several victories in 2005.
Weighing in on a Fair Labor Standards Act case, the group helped overturn a district court ruling that determined finance and insurance employees, who earn money from commissions on goods and services sold at dealerships, were not exempt from overtime requirements. By preventing excess payments, this effort results in significant savings for small firms.
Taking another case to the Tennessee Supreme Court, the foundation successfully argued that “loss of enjoyment of life benefits” should be excluded as part of a workers’ compensation award. The ruling will keep workers’ compensation insurance premiums from escalating, which, according to a recent NFIB study, ranks as the third-most important issue of concern for small-business owners.
In New York, the Legal Foundation added a few more points to the small-business scoreboard by successfully halting the expansion of workplace-safety liability. Agreeing with its reasoning, the State Court of Appeals ruled that an employer cannot be held liable for the personal injury to an employee’s spouse due to secondary exposure to asbestos.
There won’t be any replays highlighting the foundation’s leaps across the legal goal lines, nor will you see any locker-room interviews with champagne toasts, but the small-business sector will celebrate the results on their bottom lines. They’ll be able to use more of their hard-earned dollars to expand their enterprises and create jobs as a result of these unheralded legal victories. And I’d say that is something worth celebrating.
