Ep 47: Paris Hilton Suit and Recording Your Employees

The guys discuss the most recent lawsuit involving Paris Hilton's breach of contract and answer, "Is it legal to record audio of employees in the workplace without their consent?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: Welcome to our business legal podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener, sends in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. I almost forget the dot-com there. MATT: That’s all right. NASIR: I nailed it. MATT: We bought all of them – all the domain extensions NASIR: That’s right. Actually, I looked into dot-pizza. Apparently, dot-pizza is not out yet. I was going to buy just the waiting list one but I wasn’t sure how that works. As soon as it comes out though. MATT: I find it hard to believe that stuff is going to catch on, but who knows? NASIR: Yeah, we’ll start it, for sure. Well, I’m excited for this episode. I think it’s going to be our best episode ever because we’re covering your favorite celebrity. MATT: Yeah, and I didn’t even know Paris Hilton was relevant. I don’t understand why she was even relevant in the first place it’s a lawsuit that involves Paris Hilton and I’m sure this isn’t the first lawsuit she’s been a part of but it basically deals with a breach of contract claim. They’re saying that she breached her licensing agreement. I guess she had a sponsorship deal with a shoe company, Antebi Footwear Group. She had some deal with them and basically got in trouble for promoting one of their big competitors on her social media which to me is not a surprise because she never came off as intelligent so I’m not really shocked by this. NASIR: Yeah, some rival product called Parisian Parc Footwear. We are so out of touch. I have no idea what these two companies are and what they do. Well, I guess they sell footwear. One of the reasons we’re bringing this up is they are saying that she breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Now, this is an interesting concept because this covenant of good faith and fair dealing sometimes is just put in as a clause in the actual agreement but, a lot of times, this is just an implied term in every agreement. The point is that Paris Hilton may not have a term that says you can’t promote a competitor’s product on Twitter in a term and saying, “Okay, well, now I guess I can do that.” But this implied faith and good dealing covenant is actually considered a term in there and it could be a cause for breach. MATT: Yeah, and the reason it’s in there is for examples just like this and so it’s not really surprising. I always think it’s interesting. You’ll see this in sports. An athlete will be contracted with one shoe company like Nike and then they’ll play for a team that’s sponsored by another company like Adidas and there’s always issues of conflict. “Well, I’ve got to wear my shoes – the company that I have a deal – but I’m playing for the US National team that has a deal with this other company. what am I supposed to do?” There’s probably outs in that situation but not for this where Paris Hilton just appears to be not the smartest. NASIR: If you read between the lines, this is what happened it looks like this company sued Paris only in response because Paris Hilton filed a lawsuit saying that they having been paying royalties for about a million dollars or so. And so, what it looks like is she may have tweeted this or promoted this competing product and this other company stopped paying her. And so, she made the first move. I’m just wondering if she sued first before she even promoted the competing product. It would definitely change the facts there if that’s the case. MATT: That’s a good point, too. I’m kind of stuck on the fact that one of the few things I do know about Paris Hilton is she hates how big her feet are. I remember seeing that. This is true!

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