Arizona Business Laws

If I Won my Case, Should I Worry About an Appeal?

Hi. I’m Kathi Sandweiss at Jaburg & Wilk. I’m an appellate lawyer here. Congratulations on winning, first of all. But if your opponent appeals, you are going to have to defend the judgement. By defending the judgement, what we’re talking about is we need to tell the Court of Appeals that your trial judge didn’t make any reversible errors. The process as the appellee is simpler. It basically involves only one brief as opposed to the two briefs that the appellant would have to file, so there would be an answering brief that’s based completely on the record that was presented to the trial court. And at that point, we’re telling the Court of Appeals that, based upon the evidence presented, the fact finder, either the jury or the trial judge, did not make any errors, and that based upon the legal issues presented, the trial judge made no legal errors, and that’s very important because we’re looking at what’s the standard of review on appeal. If it’s a legal error that the appellant is urging, then it will be reviewed de novo. If there’s a factual error alleged, then the court of appeals will defer to the fact finder, which would be either the trial judge if it was a bench trial or a summary judgement motion, or it would be the jury. In that case, you’ve got a much better chance of it being affirmed on appeal.

If My Lawyer Made a Mistake, Can I Challenge the Appeal Outcome?

There’s a big difference between lawyer mistake and trial court mistake, and a big difference between lawyer malpractice and then appeal. Clients are always coming to me and saying, “I told my lawyer he should look for these financial records, and he never did, and he never presented them.” And clients will say, “I told my lawyer we had a fraud case, but he never raised that issue in the trial court, so can we appeal this?” And what I am telling you is, that’s not an appeal unfortunately. An appeal is based solely on the record that was presented to the trial court. If we don’t have that evidence in the record, we’re not going to be able to present it to the Court of Appeals. What the appellate court say is that they want the trial court to correct its own errors first. Therefore, if an error hasn’t been presented to the trial court, it’s not going to be presented to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals can’t reverse it. What we’re looking for is an error by the judge. I know it sounds kind of funny, we’re looking for judge-made errors, but that’s what an appeal is. We’re looking at a three-judge panel, a higher court reviewing what one judge did in the lower court.

By: Kathi Sandweiss

First Meeting With Attorney

I’m Neal Bookspan of Jaburg Wilk. I’m an attorney who helps businesses and business owners manage their legal risks. The first meeting between a new client and an attorney is very important. To prepare for that meeting, it’s always good if the potential client not only spends the time to outline their issues and know the facts and issues that they’re coming to the attorney about. But then to not only prepare the documentation or bring the documentation, but to actually review their documentation while they’re outlining it. Because the more that they remember and the more that they know, the more successful that first meeting can be in figuring out whether they have a situation that the attorney can help them out or not.

By: Neal Bookspan

I’m Beth Cohn. I’m an attorney at Jaburg Wilk, and I work in the area of business transactions.

How Do I Prepare to Sell My Business

What people need to do first is to determine whether they have a buyer for their business. And a lot of times they’ll come in and they’ll say, “I want to sell my business,” and I’ll say, “Who are you going to sell it to?” And they don’t really have an idea of how to go about finding a buyer.

Can’t Find a Buyer

Sometimes they will sell their business, and other times they can’t find a buyer, so what they look at is that they look at the possibility of children coming into the business. Or they sometimes look at the possibility of employees buying their business.

How Should I Transfer Ownership to My Children

Sometimes what they’ll do when they’re transferring to their children is that they may sell interests in the business to their children, and what the parents will do is that they will decrease their own compensation so that what they’re getting is payments for their business interests instead of getting paid salary. So that works out really well, and it creates the cash that the parents need, and it gives the children the ownership in the business.

What Are My Options Outside of Family Members

The two choices are to try to find a buyer during their lifetime so that they can at least get the liquidity from the business and enjoy that part of their efforts and labor. Or after they die it’s sometimes very difficult to sell the business, because when the key person dies a lot of times the value of the business goes down significantly.

By: Beth Cohn