Posted on April 8th, 2021
Below find a complete transcript of this video.
What’s up fellow entrepreneurs. It’s John fogger home again, I know it’s been awhile, but I took an extended COVID break from making videos so that I could focus on my clients and the health of my business. Uh, now that it’s a new year, I thought it’d be good to get back to making some videos for you.
So for the first video of 2021, I think it’d be good to talk about what I saw happen during 2020 with California laws in general clients in general and lawsuits in general, uh, and following videos, I’ll be more specific about the topics that I pick and discuss.
Now remember as always I’m a lawyer, but I’m not sure lawyers, so please seek competent legal representation for your specific problem. So as expected, lots and lots of COVID related laws in 2020, uh, at some point in March and April between the federal government, the state government, the County, the city, there were new guidelines being handed down almost every hour and certainly daily.
Uh, fortunately for all of us business owners that has slowed down significantly, even though there’s still additional guidelines that have been coming, and as expected, most of these guidelines made it very difficult to operate a business and in several industries impossible, and my humble opinion and from what I could observe from representing my clients, I don’t think most of these guidelines made a difference in containing the spread of the coronavirus, uh, California in LA, especially continue to have some of the harshest lockdowns yet.
California has some of the highest infection rates and highest death rates in the nation. And LA, you know, has some of the highest infection and death rates in California.
So I don’t know, I’m certainly not a medical doctor, so I wouldn’t be able to refute anyone that is a doctor, but honestly neither is the LA County health director that is making those guidelines.
So who knows, maybe there was a way to battle the pandemic without killing businesses and jobs to California. So I don’t know medicine, but I do know law and business and business was certainly not blooming in 2020 for my clients.
Hardest hits, hardest hit were my restaurant clients. Um, and I think that’s the same story everywhere, but LA has been hit especially hard because of the constant flip-flopping on opening and closing. So lots of restaurant clients were not able to survive the initial shutdown while others survived the initial sit-down, but closed permanently after the second wave of shutdowns during the, you know, the coveted holiday season.
So some of my restaurant clients invested heavily in converting to outdoor seating when LA opened up outdoor seating only to lose that additional investment when LA changed his mind, uh, just weeks after approving outdoor dining. But the best performing sectors I saw for my clients were in construction and trucking most thrive through 2020, but still not the same pre COVID levels.
Uh, they both considered essential businesses. So that was, there was plenty of work to go around, but since the industry, uh, employees lower end positions, um, and, you know, with the unemployment, it just, they, they just had a tough time finding, finding good and stable employees. Um, as expected employment claims went up in 2020 for my clients.
Many more claims came. Uh, my clients went 2020 as people were laid off in March and April. Uh, if there was any bright spot for my clients at 2020, it was that the pandemic also log jam the court system. So bad news for lawyers suing, but good, good news for clients being sued because of the huge log jam in the courts.
Many plaintiff’s side lawyers were willing to resolve employee issues without lawsuits and were willing to resolve existing suits at better price points. So that was good. The alternative to selling quickly for them was to potentially wait several years to go to trial, who knows what’s going to happen.
So waiting years to enforce rights and then trying to go after business that may or may not be around, was a good motivator to settle early at a discounted rate. So, anyway, uh, well, that’s, that’s what I generally observed in 2020, and that’s all I have for this video.
So until next time be productive,
