Nasir and Matt talk about theincident involving two driverless cars almost colliding and employer liability in using driverless cars.

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NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to those business items. My nes—my—m—How did I get a stutter all of a sudden? My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. You know, I was actually thinking, right before that happened, I was like, “Wow. This is the first time you did two intros that were normal and you didn’t screw up on.”

NASIR: I know, Monday’s episode did come out a little too normal so I had to twist it up a little bit.

MATT: Yeah, you went all Porky Pig on us. Is that who that is?

NASIR: Yeah, pretty much. Porky Pig represents the stuttering community which, apparently, I’m ready to join.

MATT: So, we have a pretty interesting thing to talk about. Well, I don’t know. You were way more interested in this than I was. I’m not really sure why but I’ll give my summary and then you can give your summary of it. But, from what I can tell, it’s basically Delphi – I believe I’m pronouncing that correct – had a driverless car and Google had a driverless car. Apparently, they almost got into an accident, but they didn’t. That’s how I see this story. But you were way more intrigued about this thing than I was.

NASIR: Yes, that is accurate, I would say. The internet kind of got interested in this and maybe it was just kind of the time that I happened to be surfing because, you know, as we know, driverless cars are kind of coming about and really making its way into actual roads and, when you have two driverless cars almost get in an accident but they don’t, it’s as if, like, “Okay, we’re getting closer to that point where we just have a bunch of cars zipping around without people in the driver’s seat.”

MATT: From the accounts here, and I think both sides are kind of really downplaying this, especially Google – no, sorry – especially Delphi that says the vehicles didn’t even come close to one another because they actually had an official in one of the cars and basically said the Google car cut it off and the Delphi car took the appropriate action and didn’t change lanes and that was that. But I’m not sure how fast these were going but the Google cars that are driving around now are going, like, five miles an hour that are going around taking photos of Street View and everything. Even if they did hit each other, it’s not going to be significant by any means. But what about when it gets to the point – assuming it does get to the point – where these cars are going down the highway and there’s an issue of a lane change that’s obviously a much bigger issue at that point.

NASIR: I think they’re going faster than five miles per hour, right?

MATT: The instances of other issues where the Google car, the ones that do Street View and everything, have been in wrecks, I think they’ve every time said it was the fault of a human driver but the actual accidents have been very slow speeds that cars have been traveling. That’s why I assumed. They could have been going faster. I’m not really even sure.

NASIR: Well, actually, Google’s car, I think they’ve had three-plus accidents over the last few years of nonstop driving and all the accidents were – you’re right – they were caused by other drivers, actually. For example, the car would stop at a light and they’d be hit from behind or something to that effect. You know, whether they could have stopped later or whatever, given more room in the back, obviously, Google’s car isn’t responsible for that. But, anyway, the point is that I think they’re on regular roadways but it begs the question that, okay, what are some of the liability aspects that are going to come from these types of cars? And not only these types of cars but, also, what if your employees start driving these types of cars? Or, in general, what is the liability of your employees driving cars out there ...

Nasir and Matt discuss Obama's plan to increase the threshold for who can qualify for overtime pay.

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NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And here we are on our 204th episode and I think we should be due for a recap episode in about, what, sixteen or so? So, I’m looking forward to that.

MATT: Yeah, if we did it like the first hundred, but I think we ran out of topics.

NASIR: Yeah, right!

MATT: We’re just going to talk about the things we talked about in the first episode and see if there’s anything new.

NASIR: Well, really, we should start with Episode 4 or whatever we covered in Episode 4 we could cover in 204.

MATT: Hmm.

NASIR: And see how it’s updated.

MATT: I’m trying to think what that was.

NASIR: I can look it up right now.

MATT: I think Phil Mickelson was Episode 6.

NASIR: Some memory there.

MATT: I don’t remember any of the other ones but, for some reason, the Mickelson one I think was 5 or 6 maybe. I don’t know. Are you actually looking it up?

NASIR: Yeah, I’ll let you know in a little bit.

MATT: It’s coming up on two years ago so I guess that would be a pretty impressive memory.

So, President Obama has been in the news – not as much as maybe he used to be.

NASIR: By the way, starting the sentence with “President Obama in the news” is probably not that unique.

MATT: No, I know. I said “probably not as much as he used to be.”

NASIR: Oh, okay.

MATT: Because there’s the new presidential election so he’s kind of fading out.

NASIR: Episode 4, by the way, sauce versus crust – classic episode.

MATT: I should have known that. Now I’m ashamed. Let’s edit that out.

NASIR: Let’s edit that out?

MATT: I definitely remember that now.

NASIR: I don’t even know what you’re talking about with Phil Mickelson. I don’t even remember covering him – ever.

MATT: I’ll try to look it up.

NASIR: Oh, yeah, that was Episode 9.

MATT: Gosh, not bad. All right, enough of this.

NASIR: Anyway…

MATT: So, we’ve talked a lot about minimum wage and most of it has been not only just specific states but I guess more specific cities as well though we’ve talked about I know San Francisco. We mentioned recently the city in Washington State that changed their minimum wage but we haven’t talked too much about overtime pay and eligibility for it so, like I said, Obama’s administration’s coming to an end. This is the perfect time for him to kind of get some of these things in before he exits the White House and this is quite a change from just raising minimum wage a dollar or whatever it was. This deals with overtime pay and, now, on the federal level, he’s raising the threshold, the minimum threshold from what’s currently $23,660 to $50,440 so I guess that would be more than double the current amount that it’s at and so those people are now eligible to receive overtime pay within certain restrictions but I think I saw this as estimated to affect five million workers in the US. I think I saw that somewhere but pretty significant change to what it currently is.

NASIR: What’s the federal minimum wage now? I think that’s $8.25 I want to say? Actually, no, $7.25. So, $50,000 a year, that’s about three times… I’m trying to do my math which I’m horrible so $50,000 is about $24 an hour just to make it simple. That’s about, yeah, three and a half – almost three and a half – times the minimum wage which is a substantial increase. But let’s break down what this whole overtime exemption is. We’ve talked about independent contractors and employees and the differences between the two and it’s one of the most common misclassifications that employers can do. But the second is probably the difference between exempt and non-exempt. When we say exempt, it can mean a lot of things. But, generally, people mean that we’re referring specifically to exempt to overtime requirements so they may other exemptions ...

Nasir and Matt discuss theTexas Supreme Court decisionthat ruleda Texas employer was not liable for work-related injuries sustained to one of its employees.

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NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that business news. My name’s Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: Welcome. Welcome to you all.

MATT: We’re in the 200s now so I think we’ve officially made it.

NASIR: We’ve officially made it. We should have just started with Episode 200. It would have been better for our egos.

MATT: Well, what’s crazy is there’s usually not a lot of podcasting news, but there was a bigger story this week with Marc Maron when he had Obama on. He didn’t put podcasting on the map but it was like a big moment for podcasting – or so I’m told or so I heard. But the crazy thing is he’s done over 500 episodes and he only releases once a week. Maybe he used to release more frequently but, I mean, to get in the 500s releasing once a week, he had to have done multiple episodes a week in the past. I know he was really early into the game but that’s insane.

NASIR: Well, it could be, I mean, if you think about it, it’s just ten years – 2005. That’s not crazy because podcasting has been around before 2005.

MATT: Yeah, it’s been around a lot longer because that lawsuit with the guys that had like a recording system claiming they were podcasting that ended up ultimately getting dropped because they realized there’s no money in podcasting. Joke’s on them.

NASIR: Could have fooled me.

MATT: Yeah, we’re making lots of money on this so I don’t know what they’re doing wrong.

NASIR: No.

MATT: So, we’re in your backyard for this one.

NASIR: You’re in my backyard right now?

MATT: I don’t know how close you are to the Supreme Court in Texas.

NASIR: It’s in Austin.

MATT: The story was in Dallas.

NASIR: Well, the Supreme Court’s in Austin.

MATT: Okay. Well, this story was in Dallas.

NASIR: I’ve actually never been in Dallas yet. I’ve pretty much been everywhere else except Dallas.

MATT: Everywhere in Texas? That seems impossible.

NASIR: That’s right. I stand behind that.

MATT: Okay. So, ultimately, it was a decision by the Texas Supreme Court and they were clarifying some previous decisions which we can get into the procedural side of it but, basically, here’s a rundown of what happened. There was a man who worked for a Kroger and there was a situation where I believe it was some sort of oil leaked through the ventilation and it was leaking onto the floor or something and so he was told to clean up the mess. And so, it seems like this might have happened some time in the past because it’s not the first time he’s done this task, I believe. What their protocol is for this is they use this powder absorbent that they call Spill Magic to clean this up – and I’m not exactly sure what this is but that’s what they used to do it.

NASIR: Spill Magic?

MATT: Yeah, Spill Magic.

NASIR: Of course. It’s actually the Spill Magic system – whatever that means. I assume it’s just like that powder that just absorbs spills.

MATT: Is that what you deducted when I said it was a powdery absorbent?

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: Fair enough.

NASIR: I’m just deducing from Spill Magic.

MATT: So, he’s cleaning this up and it’s going all right, no problems, and then at some point – I guess while he was mopping it up – he slips and falls and actually fractures his femur, dislocates his hip – some pretty rough injuries.

NASIR: Ouch.

MATT: Yeah, obviously not good. There’s some major medical issues. You know, there’s going to be some medical expenses involved. The kicker of this – and this is something that you can inform us about it – is Kroger didn’t have workers’ comp to cover this or there probably wouldn’t be an issue in the first place. Like I said, you can confirm this but it looks like in Texas you’re able to bypass the workers’ comp or there’s no requirement in some instances to h...

Nasir and Matt look back at the last 100 episodes.

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NASIR: All right. Welcome to our 200th plus one episode. Wait.

MATT: So, the idea was, this is #201. The idea was you can’t do a best of the first 200 if the episode is #200. That makes sense, right?

NASIR: Well, I was also thinking, like, is it one of those things where 201 is the 200th episode because we didn’t start at episode 0?

MATT: That’s not how math works.

NASIR: That’s not how math works. Well, I was thinking, you know, the year 2000 where people talked about the new millennium and, like, never mind, because there was no year zero. Anyway, welcome to our business podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to these business news items that we cover, and we’ve done it about a couple of hundred times minus a couple of episodes here and there which were also recap episodes, right? Yeah, I think we’ve done one recap episode, right?

MATT: Well, we did one on #20, I believe, because we were both gone or something.

NASIR: Yeah, we were both gone.

MATT: Then, we did one, I think 20 and 100 and then this one. There might be… I don’t remember.

NASIR: Like, a true recap like a replay, kind of like a TV show where they just splice a bunch of clips together. That’s basically what we’re going to do.

MATT: Ah, yeah. One, at most two, but definitely one because I remember doing it but, yeah, at most, two of them.

NASIR: The first one, yeah, I was out of town and you just did the intro for it. It was like episode 20 which I think we should do. We should do it for this 201st episode and then again 20 episodes later.

MATT: Just do a recap every 20 episodes. Well, that’s why the episodes are longer too. It’s made a little bit more sense.

NASIR: That’s also true. Well, anyway… what we have coming up are basically the most popular episodes that we’ve had in the last hundred episodes, I think, the best of, right?

MATT: Yeah, and I can probably give you a summary right now. it had to do with Uber, independent contractors, The Office, and pizza.

NASIR: And Yelp.

MATT: And Yelp.

NASIR: Yeah.

MATT: Yeah, those five things.

NASIR: All right. Well, enjoy the show!

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MATT: We have a great episode today. We haven’t had a guest on in a while – at least it seems like it’s been a while – but we have Mark Faggiano with TaxJar, the founder and CEO of Taxjar. Did I get your name right, Mark?

MARK: You did. Nice work. Good to be here, guys.

MATT: Well, yeah, thanks for being here.

NASIR: Yeah. So, taxjar.com is a company in San Diego but what’s interesting about what they do – and, obviously, Mark can speak more of it – is on sales tax and dealing with, especially from a small business perspective doing online e-commerce, I know a popular business that seems to be kind of sprouting up probably in the last few years – and, Mark, you can probably correct me if I’m wrong – is these kind of online sellers that are using Amazon to fulfil its shipment and basically use a shopping cart instead of setting up their own website. What about the sales tax implications in that? I think sales tax in general is just a mess of laws because you have to deal with how each states applies different taxes, depending upon where it’s being sold and who it’s being sold to. Mark, this is something you deal with every day, right?

MARK: Yeah. So, to call it a mess is really an understatement. There’s probably some more words that you don’t want to use to better describe it but you’re exactly right.

So, you know, five years ago, if we were having this conversation, if you talked to an online seller, they would probably say, “I’m an eBay seller” or “I just sell on eBay” and what’s really happened and where we’re at now is that folks are multichannel, right? They’re selling on eBay. They’re also selling on Amazon most likely. They also have their own website and they’re using a point-of-sale device. They’re using Square to go to a craft fair on a weekend or,

Nasir and Matt celebrate the 200th episode by discussing America's pastime and why the FBI has decided to get involved with a scandal in Major League Baseball.

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NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha – first baseman.

MATT: Oh, no, I’m Matt Staub and, actually, I played first base because I’m left-handed.

NASIR: Oh, that’s just my last name – first baseman. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

MATT: I only really ever played first base and pitched for a little bit but I was mostly first base just because, if you’re left-handed, that’s pretty much the role you get thrown into just because it’s advantageous. You have the glove on your right hand and you can catch all the balls that are thrown from the rest of the infielders.

NASIR: I didn’t play much baseball but I think I was in the best position. Isn’t the best position in tee-ball right outfield? That’s what I was.

MATT: There’s probably four outfielders. Well, in regular baseball, there’s only three outfielders but there may be, like, a left, a right, a right center, and a left center.

NASIR: I’m pretty sure there was just three. I just remember – gosh, I hated that tee-ball. I did one season and it was horrible. I was a soccer guy.

MATT: Yeah. I mean, I liked baseball but focused on other sports after a while – not soccer.

NASIR: You were tennis and golf? You look like a tennis and golf guy.

MATT: Yeah, I play tennis. I liked playing golf but I was never really good at it. But, yeah, tennis was what I went with. No regrets for me – easier sport to play than baseball.

All right. Well, this is a pretty interesting story. It kind of just came out of nowhere. By the time this goes up, it won’t be fresh in the news but, as of the day we’re recording this, this is still a pretty new story and I guess there could be a lot of things that happen between now and then, but the FBI’s gotten involved with one of the baseball teams in the Major League Baseball. The St. Louis Cardinals are investigating this hacking issue. Let me give a little background facts here. The current Astros general manager used to work for St. Louis Cardinals. I’m not sure in what capacity but he had developed this system that was used that they called Redbird – this computer network that he was a part of. Eventually, he left the Cardinals and went to the Astros and developed a similar style computer system that he called Ground Control and there’s a lot that goes into this. I guess one of the big things – for those of you who don’t know a lot about baseball – there’s all these different levels before you come up to the major leagues. This whole minor league system and there’s a strategy of when you bring players up because you don’t want to bring a player up too quick because he might just not be ready and then it ruins his… it’s a mental game after that and then it just ruins him for the rest of his career. So, part of it was they have this whole system in place of when to bring players up but they also have more confidential information as well such as trade proposals – stuff that would be a great thing to have if you’re trying to get inside information on a team. So, Houston set this up. As of right now when I’m going over this story, they don’t know who the people in the Cardinals organization was that did this, but they basically were like, “Oh, yeah, that guy that used to work for us, he had that master password list, let’s take a look at it.” They took a look at it and I guess one or multiple passwords lined up and they were able to hack into the Houston Astros system at that point because I guess he used the same password. I guess that’s a whole other issue of where that’s crossing the line in terms of hacking but, you know, they were able to gain access to basically a lot of confidential and proprietary information in one of their opposing team’s systems and, yeah,

Nasir and Matt discuss the decision handed down by the California Labor Commissioner that classified an Uber driver as an employee instead ofan independent contractor.

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NASIR: All right. Welcome to our Uber podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: I hate how “uber” is an adjective as well as a company. I don’t like the company. I don’t like the adjective.

MATT: Well, I don’t know, I mean, I guess there’s probably some sort of connection to why they named it what they did, but I don’t know if it really.... I don’t know if they... I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t wait to read that transcript back when I just say “I don’t know” five times in a row.

NASIR: In fact, that’s the only reason we have a transcript – to laugh at you.

MATT: She could always cut it out I guess and make me look a little bit more intelligent.

NASIR: No.

MATT: Yeah, this is a double whammy because we’re talking about two things you don’t like – Uber and the whole independent contractor employee issue. If this podcast was live, we would be hitting the front page here because we’re quick to the scene but I guess, by the time this comes out, it’s going to be pretty delayed but that’s all right.

NASIR: Unfortunately, but that’s okay, yeah.

MATT: This shouldn’t be anything too big that happens legally between right now and when it comes out since they’re filing the appeal and waiting.

NASIR: That’s true.

MATT: Just different takes, I guess.

NASIR: So, what’s the news?

MATT: So, yeah, what happened exactly, decision handed down by the California labor commission. Long story short, one of their Uber drivers, she got this complaint trying to get unpaid wages reimbursement for expenses, liquidated damages, waiting time penalties – which what we just talked about recently – but she brought this against Uber and the California labor commission determined that she was, in fact, an employee of Uber and not an independent contractor like every single driver up until this point has been classified. In fact, they have a big group of I think over 1,000 employees in San Francisco but, other than that, that’s pretty much it, right? I mean, all of the drivers have been classified as contractors.

NASIR: Yeah, and when you say 1,000 employees, you’re not talking about the drivers. You’re talking about actual employees – probably in offices somewhere.

MATT: Right.

NASIR: So, when we’re reading this – and we’ve been talking about this – besides the independent contractor versus employee issue – we’ve been talking about that since the beginning of the podcast – but even the Uber issue, we’ve talked about class action lawsuits against them, we’ve talked about a bunch of cases against them. I’m pretty sure this is the first case – and I use the word “case” kind of lightly here and I’ll tell you why in a second – that has classified one of their drivers as an employee and the internet is going crazy off of it and I think it’s fair to start out with what’s Uber’s response in the statement because I think it’s very accurate and they say that the California labor commission’s ruling is non-binding and applies to a single driver. Let’s talk about what that means and I think this is important for those in California but also in other states that have administrative hearings which is basically this employee went to the California labor commission and, through their administrative hearing, you know, if you talk to any litigation attorney, it’s a very loosey-goosey kind of atmosphere. The rules of evidence aren’t as strict. You don’t actually need an attorney to represent you. I wouldn’t even be surprised if an attorney wasn’t representing the driver here.

MATT: Yeah, she was pro per.

NASIR: There you go and that’s not surprising. I think that employers should be conscious of this that, if you do have a violation, it’s not as if there’s this huge burden for emplo...

The guys close out the week by talking about the legal concerns of on-call employees in the retail industry and how states are working on legislature in support of these employees.

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NASIR: Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to that news. My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And welcome to the world of the law and business.

MATT: The world where we talk about one topic per episode, more or less.

NASIR: That’s right. Only Mondays and Wednesdays now though, right? This is our last episode for the week so make sure you guys pace yourselves.

MATT: So, will this be…? Oh, no, we’re well before the 4th of July weekend. I’m getting way ahead of myself.

NASIR: I know. It’s still June, man. It’s like the middle of June.

MATT: We’re on the second, third of June as we’re recording this so it wasn’t incredibly far off.

NASIR: Today’s not the second or third of June.

MATT: The second one-third of June.

NASIR: Oh, second… it’s going to be the second third of the month.

MATT: Yes.

NASIR: I know how everyone kind of refers to months and to split it up into thirds – that’s one way to do it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone do that but okay. No, actually, we’re going to be – let’s see – the third sixth of the month, I think, actually.

MATT: Yeah, that’s correct. Okay. First time getting something math-related correct on the show.

NASIR: Or actually what’s better is I think this episode’s coming out on the 17th 30th of the month.

MATT: All right. I’m going to move on to the topic here which I wasn’t even really aware this was going on – probably because I don’t work in retail – but we’ve all heard of on-call shifts, especially for doctors or surgeons – I guess surgeons are doctors – nurses.

NASIR: Lawyers – just start naming professions.

MATT: Police officers, maybe.

NASIR: Firemen.

MATT: Firemen, for sure, yes.

NASIR: Or women.

MATT: But, in retail, there’s a thing that’s apparently legal – or for now somewhat legal. It’s on-call workers. Basically, it’d be someone – there’s a whole slew of different stores that are being accused of this but we’ll just take the first one I see here. So, J. Crew, for example, has a list of the employees they have and they set their schedule for the week and maybe I get my shifts and I’m going to definitely work on Tuesday and Thursday but I’m on-call for Monday, Wednesday, Friday. What that means is I have to call the store close to an hour before – I know I saw two hours so we’ll say at least two hours before – to find out if I’m working that day because I’m scheduled to work from 4:00 to 9:00 but I don’t know until I call in at 2:00 pm which, as you can probably think, this causes a lot of problems for the employees because they can’t really schedule anything else during those times which, going back to the doctors and different professions, yeah, those people get compensated higher based on reasons like that. But, for the people in these retails jobs that might be making minimum wage or a little bit more, this is a huge issue because you can’t work another job. Maybe you want to go to school part-time, you can’t do that because you might have to work on a Wednesday night and when you have class. So, I could see how this would become a huge problem if I was in this position. Were you aware this was so rampant in the retail industry?

NASIR: I mean, on one hand, I understood that you could be called in last minute, but this whole concept of you have to actually call in. Like, they described one worker who worked at Bath & Body Works, she was a part-time worker but she would call literally an hour before. This is what she says. She calls an hour before, she lives 25 to 30 minutes away, and then they would put her on hold where she would have to wait to call the store several times before someone would pick up and then she says she would be looking at her watch,

Nasir and Matt discuss the FTC's precedent decision to go after a Kickstarter campaign that is alleged to have taken backers' money.

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NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: Matthew Staub joining us once again with nice covered facial hair, I would like to add for the record.

MATT: Actually, the last time you said that – or I think probably the only other time you said that – we recorded and then I just hated it afterwards and immediately shaved. It’s not going to happen today but I just remembered that happened last time because you made that comment and then I don’t know if the episodes were even uploaded yet.

NASIR: Probably not. So, what are we covering today? It seems like, I mean, this is a common issue of ours – crowdfunding – but at least some good news coming from this issue. I mean, usually, we’re pretty critical of what’s going on. So, what happened this week?

MATT: Well, it’s good in one sense and it’s not necessarily bad. I guess it’s kind of bad as well so we’ll get to that. But it’s really the first of its kind as far as I’ve seen. The FTC is stepping in over one of these crowdfunding projects and I believe this one was done on Kickstarter. It is a board game that combines Monopoly and the science-fiction of H.P. Lovecraft – which I’m not familiar with that, I don’t know if you are.

NASIR: I have no idea what you just said. I just heard Monopoly.

MATT: Yeah, I think everyone knows what Monopoly is.

NASIR: It just seems like a version of Monopoly which frankly is not that original. It seems you can pretty much buy any kind of Monopoly version and I also noticed that, by the way, it doesn’t look like they got permission to use the Monopoly trademark or anything. I don’t know. I mean, I’m looking at the game now – the board game – it just looks like a Monopoly board game with different names.

MATT: Oh, I’ll get to that, but let me finish off the back story here. So, he puts his project up on Kickstarter and it actually was really, really successful. I think it raised 350 percent of its goal – a little under $123,000 for this project which, back in 2012, that’s pretty serious raise for a Kickstarter project.

NASIR: Let’s see. 1,246 backers, that’s not too shabby.

MATT: So, yeah, very successful. But what happened, of course, was no one got the actual game and you said the thing about Monopoly – the trademark infringement – and that was one of his excuses, saying he ran into legal problems.

NASIR: Oh, really? Interesting.

MATT: One of which if the company owns the rights to Monopoly and things like that. but what was found out after the fact was he was actually – I say “he,” I think it was all one guy who was doing this even though there might be other people.

NASIR: The back story does refer to other people that were helping but they deny any knowledge of what happened so they may have just been kind of on the side of things – maybe some designers here and there.

MATT: Yeah. And so, it looks like some things might have been used to develop the game – who knows? But he also was found that he was essentially taking the money from the Kickstarter campaign and using it on personal expenses. I think it talked about paying his rent.

NASIR: Did they actually find out that’s the case? Because I’m seeing some comments that people are actually saying that but I don’t know if they approved it yet, did they? But $100,000 is not that much money to create an entire board game. Take away the legal issues for a moment, right? Just $100,000 itself, that can go pretty quick in starting any business, let alone it’s looks like they have pieces that are pretty detailed and so you have to create the moulds and get that done and mass produce and then you have to ship and let’s say you have 1,000 or so backers, they paid about $100 each and so, you know,

The guys close out the week by talking about businesses dealing with hiring and firing obese employees.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha.

MATT: And I’m Matt Staub.

NASIR: And one of my favorite songs of Weird Al Yankovic is his parody of “I’m Bad” which is appropriately named “I’m Fat.” Do you agree? Yes or no?

MATT: I agree that is a parody. I don’t know. That song is pretty good. Yeah, I do remember it. He has a couple of good lines in there.

NASIR: Do you have a more favorite Weird Al Yankovic song? I’m not a big fan of his but, out of the songs that he has, I think that’s one of the best – at least the video is pretty good.

MATT: I mean, “Amish Paradise” is pretty good. It’s a classic.

NASIR: Ah, that’s true, and that’s a little bit later in our generation too.

MATT: “Eat It” – Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”

NASIR: Oh, yeah, “Eat It” is good. I’ll go with a classic, “I’m Fat.”

MATT: So, why did you bring that up? Is it a disability to be overweight? I guess not even overweight. Obese is the classification we’re really looking at.

NASIR: I think everyone’s kind of settled that, okay, your weight, that’s not a disability. You could typically be discriminated against based upon your weight. But, obese, that kind of has a clinical association to it, right? Because that’s like a category of your BMI which we decided last week is worthless.

MATT: You said that, like, a second after I thought of it and I was going to bring that up, yeah. I think that is technically a way to calculate if someone is overweight. Like, it’s definitely overweight and I think obese is a category too. But you could be an NFL player and be classified as obese according to BMI. That’s why it’s dumb.

NASIR: To be fair, some of those guys are frankly obese. I mean, they are just huge.

MATT: The offensive linemen but not, like, J.J. Watt who’s a Houston guy for you. He’s not obese but I bet he probably qualifies as overweight or obese under that. Anyways, why is this an issue? Because let’s say you terminate someone as an employer and they come back and they say, “Oh, I have a disability under the ADA – obesity,” like, “Oh, well…” It’s that or you need to accommodate their disability at work too is another thing that comes. This all kind of falls under the same umbrella. Obesity isn’t a disability under the ABA and I think – let’s see – the EEOC is now saying it is, right?

NASIR: Yeah, I personally have always said that obesity can be considered a disability but depending on this or that, and this was maybe I think the last time I really looked into this issue is a couple of years ago but I think, more recently now, it’s trending to go the other way. It’s very hard to prove that obesity is a disability and one of the particular cases that I saw was the employee had a difficult time from a medical expert’s perspective to establish that obesity was somehow caused by some physiological disorder and that it didn’t have to do with any habits. And then, in the particular case that I saw, if you were obese when you came into the workplace and then fired right afterwards, then you can’t really say that you were terminated because of obesity or from some disability because you were already obese in the first place.

MATT: Yeah, and I think the difference with this disability or with obesity as a disability versus other items that would fall under disability is you can be born with a disability in terms of… let’s say, you know, you can’t walk. Like, that’s a disability you were born with or if you got into a car accident or something like that. Oftentimes, if you’re overweight or obese, I mean, you can have some sort of genetic issues as well but it kind of just falls on the individual and I think that’s why – this is kind of what you were alluding to – there needs to be some sort of symptom there and I think that’s kind of the key point ...

Nasir and Matt discuss the topic of price discrimination and how businesses are able to legally charge more to different customers.

Full Podcast Transcript

NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist to those business news articles that we cover on this podcast. My name is Nasir Pasha.

MATT: Terrible, and my name is Matt Staub.

NASIR: I’m trying to be descriptive to the thing that we’ve been doing for the past year and a half now.

MATT: That was straight up typical attorney talk right there – just way too many words to a conclusion.

NASIR: I fall into that trap too in my contract drafting, depending upon my mood. Sometimes, I want to try to impress with my writing skills.

MATT: Yeah, I always remember, if anyone’s seen your art of contracts presentation, how you take a huge paragraph and boil it down to like a couple of words, more or less.

NASIR: That’s classic.

MATT: Yeah, I enjoyed that. You know what I don’t enjoy is price discrimination though.

NASIR: I hate price discrimination!

MATT: Yeah.

NASIR: We should talk about that.

MATT: Yeah. Well, I guess we can talk about it. People might be surprised that, in some cases, what they would label price discrimination might be acceptable. I guess it just depends on what their definition of price discrimination is but there is a way it can be seen, I guess, as legal. Really, this is getting back to my economics courses that I took many years ago. We’re looking at perfect versus imperfect price discrimination.

NASIR: What does that mean?

MATT: It’s basically, if you’re a business and someone comes to you, whatever price they’re willing to pay is what you should feasibly charge I guess is how I look at it.

NASIR: Oh, I got you, yeah.

MATT: Yeah, and imperfect is going to be what’s seen as acceptable that, for different locations for example or different ages, you can charge different prices. In an ideal world, as a business owner, you would like to see perfect price discrimination or pure price discrimination because you’re just getting the maximum amount of money someone’s willing to pay but that’s not seen as acceptable. It’s the imperfect price discrimination meaning charging different prices based on some sort of differentiation is going to be seen as acceptable.

NASIR: Basically it’s somewhat similar to – what’s it called – supply and demand, right?

MATT: Yeah, that’s what I was getting at.

NASIR: Why didn’t you just say that? I’ve been waiting here for so…

MATT: I mean, it is somewhat supply and demand but I think one way to look at it is charging different prices based on, you know, San Diego, for example, they’re going to charge higher prices than somewhere in rural Utah and different ages. If you go to the movies, you and I might be charged the highest price. There might be children or seniors that get charged a lower price.

NASIR: That’s messed up. That’s discrimination.

MATT: That’s messed up?

NASIR: An example of this price discrimination so-called is that Staples, what they do with their online prices, if you, as a consumer, are shopping from a location that has a lot of competitors – you know, Office Depot, et cetera – then your prices may be lower. You know, if you’re in a location, maybe a rural area that doesn’t have as many competitors. And so, that’s the kind of price discrimination we’re talking about. You know, in general, I think it’s been accepted that price discrimination is legal. Whether it’s ethical or not, I mean, to me, it’s the aspect of charging as high of a price you can for those that can afford it. You know, I think everyone’s in that kind of boat – you charge as much as you can – but it just depends upon what you’re selling. If you’re selling bottled water to people that are trying to leave a disaster area, that’s one thing. Or gas prices. Or if you’re just providing some service where you want to charge as much as you can because you’re really good at what you’re d...