This article, by Daily Journal staff writer Eli Wolfe, discusses The Scali Law Firm's recent expansion into Sacramento with the hiring of Monica J. Baumann.

In the October/November 2016 issue of West Coast Dealer, The Scali Law Firm published a template letter of opposition to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for independent auto dealers to consider completing and sending to the CFPB in advance of its rule-making concerning the potential ban on class action waivers in automobile financing agreements.

To better serve its Central and Northern California clients on staying ahead of the rapidly changing automotive regulatory landscape, The Scali Law Firm today announced that it has expanded to Sacramento by adding Monica J. Baumann who, as CNCDA’s Director of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs, has overseen cutting edge, industry-affecting litigation, assisted in the preparation and presentation of new legislation affecting auto dealers in California, overseen the revision of a number of the CNCDA’s dealer manuals, spearheaded the first ever CNCDA Employment Law Manual, and presented numerous educational compliance seminars to auto dealers.

The Part 1 of the article Selling Your Dealership: Organizational and Compliance Considerations, by Scali Law Firm attorneys Christian J. Scali, John P. Swenson and Gus N. Paras, was published in Automotive Buy Sell Report.

Our recent article, Information Security best practices in an age of spear-phishing, malware and ransomware, was just featured in the National Association of Dealer Counsel's September 2016 issue of Defender.

Three months ago, we reported that the California Court of Appeal stretched precedent to expand the FEHA’s protections for persons merely associated with someone with a disability (the first case of its kind to do so). Specifically, the Court found that an employee who had informed his employer of his need to administer dialysis to his sick son, and whose request to work the early shift had been accommodated for years, could maintain a claim for failure to reasonably accommodate a disability when this accommodation was taken away (apparently for no good business reason). The reasoning was that FEHA’s reasonable accommodation provision extended to persons with disabilities who were associated with employees or applicants and this association was itself the employee or applicant’s “disability.” But the Plaintiff in this case had previously abandoned his claim for failure to reasonably accommodate. So the defendant asked the court of appeal for a rehearing of the issue in light of that critical fact. The court of appeal agreed to rehear the case.

Last week, the DOT released its new guidelines on the development of highly autonomous vehicles. Scali Law Firm managing partner, Christian J. Scali, comments on these guidelines in the Daily Journal's article titled New driverless car standards create a patchy road map, by staff reporter, Matthew Blake.

As print, radio, and television media become a smaller part of consumers’ lives, dealerships are relying more on internet advertising to reach new clients. Despite this increased use of internet advertising, many dealership websites are not compliant with applicable laws. For example, although many California dealerships provide legally-mandated disclosures after a monthly lease payment in their print ads, they often fail to provide these disclosures online or bury them in a tiny disclaimer at the bottom of a web page. But the majority of advertising laws apply consistently in all forms of media. This article briefly addresses three major deficiencies that we often see on dealership websites.

That was the issue on appeal in Nichols v Century West, LLC et al., 2016 Cal.App.LEXIS 689, after judgment was entered for the dealership. The court of appeal held that post-dated downpayment checks provided to the dealer on the date of sale—as opposed to payments scheduled to be made at a later date—are not “deferred” downpayments.