PoliticsNY

May 28, 2025

>>>> Op-Ed LINK | Albany shouldn’t empower the shakedown of small businesses

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By NFIB New York State Director Ashley Ranslow

Running a small business is an uphill battle, especially in today’s tough economic conditions. Adding insult to injury, New York state smothers small firms with complicated and expensive compliance demands and the country’s most hostile liability environment. Forbes ranks New York as the second worst state to start a business, and for families trying to make ends meet, that costly liability climate leads to lost wages and inflates the price of everything from groceries to prescription medications.

Unfortunately, legislation under consideration in Albany would only make matters worse by rubberstamping legal shakedowns. It would be a radical transfer of resources from small businesses to already wealthy attorneys.

Rather than help independent business owners and struggling families by reducing costs and easing regulatory burdens, lawmakers are considering a number of bills that would turn local shops and restaurants into targets for predatory lawsuits. The latest bill would hand attorneys a new way to extract money from small businesses. The proposal functions like a private tax: it empowers lawyers to make flimsy accusations about “unfair” business practices and extort monetary settlements –– including fees for the attorneys’ time to draft the demand letter, of course –– to avoid a lawsuit.

Worse, lawyers can act on behalf of individuals who had little or no contact with the company they’re threatening to sue. The demands will mostly force quick settlements, not resolve legitimate disputes. Indeed, this bill will reward the volume of legal threats, not whether the claims have any validity.

The looming threat of catastrophic liability will force business owners to second-guess decisions that used to be routine. Simple things like advertising a discount or updating a website will become legal calculations. When the law has no definition of what counts as “unfair,” lawyers will contort normal business practices into threats no reasonable customer would escalate to the level of a lawsuit.

Defending against questionable claims drains time and resources. Those costs get passed on to customers through higher prices and lost earnings. By one recent estimation, New York households see their budgets drained by a whopping $7,914 each year due to excessive lawsuits and questionable legal claims.

This bill will make it easier for unscrupulous attorneys to file and cash in on those claims, flooding Main Street with demand letters and court filings that exploit uncertainty in the law. The reality is, small businesses support strong rules that hold bad actors to account, but they also need predictability and due process.

Lawmakers must reject this proposal and others like it. Let’s focus on promoting real affordability and an economy that works for hardworking business owners and families, not wealthy law firm partners looking to make a quick buck.

Ashley Ranslow serves as the New York State Director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, or NFIB. For 80 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals.