Some Important Bills To Watch Tomorrow

Posted on July 02, 2012 by Keith Paul Bishop

Tomorrow, the Assembly Judiciary Committee will hear several important bills that passed out of the Senate:

  •  SB 323 (Vargas) - This bill would enact the California Revised Uniform Limited Liability Company Act to supersede the Beverly-Killea Limited Liability Company Act.  The bill purports to repeal the Beverly-Killea Act but this presents a constitutional issue because the legislature failed to include a "reservation clause" in the original law.  For more on this problem, see State Power Over Corporate Charters.
  • SB 491 (Evans) - This bill is a "gut and amend" that started out life in the Senate as bill dealing with probate of wills.  As amended in the Assembly, the bill now provides that any term in a contract of adhesion purporting to waive the right to join or consolidate claims, or to bring a claim as a representative member of a class or in a private attorney general capacity shall be deemed to lack the necessary consent to waive that right, and is void.  For more on the evils of "gut and amend" bills, see this opinion piece by Pepperdine Professor Gary Gallis.
  • SB 1058 (Lieu) - This bill rewrites the statutory provisions pertaining to Victims of Corporate Fraud Compensation Fund which is administered by the California Secretary of State.  I wrote about this bill in May: Bill Illustrates Ills Besetting Corporate Fraud Fund.
  • SB 1208 (Leno) - This bill would require domestic and foreign corporations subject to the California Disclosure Act to disclose compensation information and the names of their five most highly compensated retirees.  See my posts Disclosure Bill May Put Retirees At Risk and California Disclosure Bill Clears First Legislative Hurdle And DOC Spells “Relief”.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will be hearing AB 2260 (Hagman) which proposes to eliminate California's Pseudo-foreign corporation statute, Corporations Code Section 2115.  See “Hallelujah, I’m A Bum!” Bill Aims To Allow Tramp Corporations To Enjoy Their Home. 

July

Today is the first business day of July, a month named for Julius Caesar.  Actually, Caesar's full name was Gaius Julius Caesar, but this famous Roman's family name wasn't Caesar and his first name wasn't Julius.  His family name was Julius, a name that reached back to the very foundation of Rome.  The Romans traced their ancestry to the refugees of Troy.  At the end of the movie "Troy", you see the Trojan hero Aeneas escaping from the city.  He also manages to save his father, Anchises, and his son, Iulus (aka Ascanius).  Eventually, Aeneas and Iulus make their way to Italy where they establish what was to become the city and eventually the empire of Rome.  Thus, Caesar's family name denotes a claim of ancestry to the founder of Rome.  The Roman foundational epic poem by Vergil, The Aeneid, tells the story of Aeneas' peregrinations and Iulus' early battles with the locals in Italy.

Caesar is what is known as a cognomen, which was a nickname or honorific.  The german and slavic titles, Kaiser and Tsar (or Czar), are derived from this cognomen.