William A. Miller, Esq.

In 1988, one of my first legal projects was to get a bank from Colorado off the back of a local developer who had built a shopping center. It turns out the bank was fearful that Arizona was about to enter a bad season in commercial real estate, the only problem was the developer was really not in default. The judge slammed the bank & by the time we cut a settlement deal with them, the market had really corrected. They should have waited and played fair. Declaring bogus defaults hurt them.

Now, the next shoe is about to drop because of commercial loan resets. Commercial landlords continue to lose office & retail tenants at an accelerating pace, indicating that the industry’s troubles are worsening.

The amount of occupied space in U.S. shopping centers and malls declined a net 8.7 million square feet in the first quarter of 2009, according to real-estate-research company Reis Inc. The amount of occupied space lost in that one quarter was more than the total amount of space retailers gave back to landlords in all of 2008 and any other year in recent history, according to Reis. It makes 1988 look like a cake walk. If you need help dealing with the ever changing real estate market give the Scottsdale law firm of William A. Miller a call at 602-319-6899.

As a real estate lawyer working in Paradise Valley and Scottsdale for over 20 years, I have seen scores of families ship-wrecked by money. ‘Around the world, inherited wealth is hard to preserve, says an article from Intelligent Life, a quarterly published by one of my favorite journals  The Economist:

Families that preserve their wealth over the generations are rare. The fact that the first generation makes it, the second husbands it and the third blows it is so widespread that it reflects reality. Some say, “clogs to clogs in three generations”—a northern English saying—has its equivalent in many other languages: Erwerben, Vererben, Verderben (earn it, bequeath it, burn it) in Germany; “from the stables to the stars and back in three generations” in Italy; and my favorite “from sandals to sandals in three generations” in China. 

I once had a Trust fund client show up to Court in a $2,500.00 double breasted Italian blazer with white pressed Armani pants and I am not kidding- sandals. I could hear his grandfather roll over in his grave. 

We have significant real world experience at the real estate and commercial law at the Firm of William A. Miller in Scottsdale, Arizona. We also have been helping families set up Estate plans to minimize the above sandals problem for the last 15 years. Give us a call at 480-948-3095 to see if we can help. If nothing else, make your kids work. That will solve 95% of the sandal problem.

Why are all the con men now “going green”? Pretty simple. These are the same type of idiots and narcissistic jerks who polluted our rivers in the 1940-50’s. It is where the money is. It is easy money because there are no rules. It is a brand new industry and language and the best B.S. gets the contract and hustles the rest.

Remember money is green. Add that to the fact that our President, who only recently was well versed enough in economics & finance to buy his first home at the age of 43, gave a few hundred billion to going green and you have a perfect storm. My due diligence first question to the potential green investment guru on a client’s behalf is… How long have you been a member of Green Peace or the Sierra Club? Rhetorical indeed. Call the Law Firm of William Miller with further questions about any investment in stocks, real estate or the ‘go green’ tsunami. 602-319-6899.

What should a litigant do when confronted with disclosure of confidential metadata? Conversely, what should you do if you learn that confidential metadata has been disclosed? Some recent case law may offer insight:

In People v. Gomez, 134 Cal. App. 3d 874, 879 (1982), the court, dealing with privileged material in general, held that failure to take reasonable precautions to maintain the confidentiality of information may be deemed consent to its disclosure.

Amersham Biosciences Corp. v. Perkinelmer, Inc., 2007 WL 329290 (D.N.J. 2007), may be particularly instructive in determining the meaning of “reasonable precautions” when dealing with confidential metadata, as it is the only case dealing with this particular topic. The New Jersey district court was asked to decide whether reasonable precautions were taken in the inadvertent disclosure of some 500-plus privileged Lotus Notes e-mail documents that were deleted within subfolders when converted to CD, but remained embedded in the larger folder when converted to single image files.

The court held that if the confidential nature of the documents was apparent on the face of the documents after their conversion from their native format to single image files, then the final spot check conducted by the disclosing party may not have been reasonable. Consequently, it would appear that “reasonable precautions” means that counsel should probably review each electronically-stored document at every stage of the conversion process. More on this issue can be found at www.law.com.

At the law firm of William A. Miller, we have experience in handling these electronic discovery issues. Give us a call at 480.948.3095 to learn more.

I just sent in my annual money for registration of a vintage car I own to the great State of California. I drive it too much, yet I cannot bear to drop the California plates. The car is classic, just like my memories of California. It is where I was born, but I was raised in Arizona. Back then in the 60’s and 70’s, we did things right in Arizona. Self made men. No excuses for failure. No social climbing needed. You fight, you win. You quit, you lose. That is it! “Buckle down kid”, that is what my dad said. Yet, California went French on me over the last few years.

California is now in a French-like bind: unable to afford a welfare-type state, and unable to overhaul it. “The people say they want all these programs, then there’s nothing they want to pay for,” says Hector De La Torre, a Democratic assemblyman. “The schizophrenia in the legislature reflects the peoples’.” Let us pray that Arizona stays true to Goldwater type freedom and self reliance.

We do not take wimpy cases at the law firm of William A. Miller in Scottsdale. No coffee burn scams. No the-teacher-was-mean-to-my-kid nonsense. But, if you really have been injured by a real estate or stock scam, give us a call at 480-948-3095. We will strive to make things right the old fashion way. The Arizona way.

At the law firm of William A. Miller in Phoenix Arizona, we take Arizona-granted licenses as a privilege. You cannot build a house without a contractor’s license. You cannot give legal advice without a law degree and license to practice law. Good luck suing in this State if you do not possess one. If you build a house without proper authority, good luck suing the homeowner, our Courts will toss you out.

The same goes for trying to sell beers at a burger joint, no license, no beers.

We just filed a multi-million dollar suit against a group of entrepreneurs who bought bank loans with unused lines of credit for pennies on the dollar. Now they are trying to foreclose. The law does not allow such and over the next few weeks, we will be reminding the Court and the entrepreneurs that acting like a bank requires a license! We’ll keep you posted on the results.

I know I am aging myself but like Bob Hope used to say in the “Road Show” flicks, “no ticky, no laundry.”

If some non-licensed group has hampered you, be it selling you worthless stock without a securities license or giving you liposuction without a medical license, give us a call to discuss your rights. Our number is 480.948.3095.

No one wants to even think about the F-word — “Foreclosure.” It is so sad to see so many good folks losing their homes in foreclosure. It is also good to see some banks playing “fair” and trying to work with defaulted borrowers. Yet note something curious in Arizona law. Normally after a default and foreclosure, all the bank can do is get your house and sell it in the open market. If it does not fetch a higher price than the loan, it is not your problem, other than botched credit. They cannot sue you for the difference (deficiency).

Arizona’s laws that prohibit deficiencies are found in Arizona Revised Statutes Sections 33-814.G and 33-729(A).  These types of laws are also called “anti-deficiency legislation.”

A.R.S. § 33-729(A) states: “. . . if a mortgage is given to secure the payment of the balance of the purchase price, or to secure a loan to pay all or part of the purchase price, of a parcel of real property of two and one-half acres or less which is limited to and utilized for either a single one-family or single two-family dwelling, the lien of judgment in an action to foreclose such mortgage shall not extend to any other property of the judgment debtor, nor may general execution be issued against the judgment debtor to enforce such judgment, and if the proceeds of the mortgaged real property sold under special execution are insufficient to satisfy the judgment, the judgment may not otherwise be satisfied out of other property of the judgment debtor, notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary.

A.R.S. § 33-814(G) states: “If trust property of two and one-half acres or less which is limited to and utilized for either a single one-family or a single two-family dwelling is sold pursuant to the trustee’s power of sale, no action may be maintained to recover any difference between the amount obtained by sale and the amount of the indebtedness and any interest, costs and expenses.”

At the law firm of William A. Miller in Scottsdale, Arizona, we can help you sort through these laws to give you as much protection as possible. So give us a call at 480.948.3095 if you want to have us look over your case. LAW is not a four letter word.

When I broke the NCFE (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/01/business/fi-poulsen1) fraud back in 2002, the first thing I did was sue the third-party professionals, the lawyers, accountants and financial firms, who helped NCFE commit their crimes. My favorite law school professor Charles Ayers always said, “go for the deep pockets.” Well, it is now time for the Minnesota accounting firm of McGladrey & Pullen to give back some of the money they got for helping Bernie Madoff. The firm has just been sued in both Madoff’s and Tom Petters’ Ponzi schemes.

Last week, an investment fund that placed $280 million with Madoff sued in Connecticut state court saying its auditors — Goldstein Golub Kessler in 2006 and McGladrey & Pullen in 2007 — failed to detect the fraud. And, in October, the Ellerbrock Family Trust filed a similar suit in federal court in Minnesota saying that McGladrey & Pullen failed to conduct thorough audits or take other actions that would have uncovered alleged fraud by Petters’ companies.

At the Law Firm of William A. Miller in Phoenix we manage a number of high-profile estates. On Jan. 1, the amount exempted from federal estate taxes rose to $3.5 million from $2 million, which means that estates at or above the new limit would save $675,000 in estate taxes (at the 45% rate) compared to last year. So, party on, trust fund preps, heirs and heiresses. But wait, this may all end sooner than expected.

Under the current law, the estate tax is scheduled to disappear altogether in 2010, so the heirs of millionaires who go to their reward next year stood to inherit everything without Uncle Sam taking a cut on any of it.

While that is how the law stands, the notion of uber-rich being able to pass on their millions tax-free never squared with common sense reality. Of course, there are good arguments against the so-called death tax, especially that it taxed income twice; first when it originally was earned, then when it was saved and invested over time.

We are more than happy to help you properly plan your Estate at the law Firm of William A. Miller. Give us a call at 480.948.3095.

OK, it’s now 2009 and we are all looking for a fresh start. We settled three significant matters at the law firm of William A. Miller in Phoenix, Arizona, over the last 30 days. I like to say, “I am a patriot first and a conservative second” and this quote from Cicero in 55 BC is as timeless as the saying of the Bible.

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

Sounds like there is nothing new under the sun. Good Luck to our President-Elect in 2009.