The Legal Center had a busy fall, filing six briefs in state and federal courts on issues of importance for small business owners. Our briefs touched on a wide variety of legal topics, including lawsuit abuse, labor law, agency overreach, and home equity theft.
NFIB was active in state court on the issue of lawsuit abuse, filing a brief in Bernavage v. Green Ridge Healthcare before the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Our brief argues that plaintiffs should not be allowed to, at the last possible minute during trial, add a new theory of liability (recklessness) in order to
obtain punitive damages. This is unfair to small business defendants and goes against Pennsylvania’s Rules of Civil Procedure. Instead, the existing rules must be upheld to ensure that small business defendants are not subject to underhanded tactics.
We next filed amicus briefs in two related cases, Amazon.com Services LLC v. NY Public
Employment Relations Board, and NLRB v. State of New York, both in federal court. These cases aim to stop New York from placing private sector employees under the authority of the State’s Public Employment Relations Board. Instead, our briefs argue that the National Labor Relations Act, which sets national labor standards for private sector employees, preempts the New York law. If the courts agree with our argument, businesses will not have to be subject to a harsh and confusing maze of contradictory labor laws in New York State.
The Legal Center supported a challenge to an intrusive FCC reporting rule by filing a brief in Ohio Telecom Association v. FCC at the Sixth Circuit. In that case, Congress struck down an FCC rule through the Congressional Review Act (CRA), only to have the FCC re-issue essentially the same exact rule at a later date. Worse still, a Sixth Circuit panel majority affirmed the FCC’s reading of the statute. This decision, we argue, is based on a severe misreading of the CRA. Instead, the burdensome reporting regulation should be struck down because it violates the separation of powers.
We also filed a brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in McGee v. Alger County Treasurer, arguing against a Michigan law that would allow counties to keep enormous windfalls when selling foreclosed property so long as they provided a short window to recover the proceeds. This process, known as home equity theft, was struck down by the Supreme Court in Tyler v. Hennepin County, in which NFIB filed a brief. To protect the Tyler case as a win for small business owners, NFIB filed here, urging the Court to strike down the Michigan law.
The Legal Center will continue filing amicus briefs on issues that affect small businesses. To see which briefs we have filed in previous years, please visit our new Case Index.
