Join Phil Silberman and Austin Black in Episode 15 of the ‘Weekly Docket’ as they navigate the latest legal storms, from the FTC's groundbreaking ban on noncompete agreements to Biden's bold move against TikTok. Delve into the intricacies of noncompete clauses and their impact on American workers, as well as the high-stakes battle between global tech giants. Plus, get expert insights on handling post-breakup property disputes and the contentious debate surrounding speeding tickets. Don't miss out on this riveting episode that dissects legal news, tackles burning legal questions, and offers insightful rants and raves!
Join Phil Silberman and Austin Black in Episode 15 of the ‘Weekly Docket’ as they navigate the latest legal storms, from the FTC's groundbreaking ban on noncompete agreements to Biden's bold move against TikTok. Delve into the intricacies of noncompete clauses and their impact on American workers, as well as the high-stakes battle between global tech giants. Plus, get expert insights on handling post-breakup property disputes and the contentious debate surrounding speeding tickets. Don't miss out on this riveting episode that dissects legal news, tackles burning legal questions, and offers insightful rants and raves!
Welcome to Silberman Law Firm's weekly docket episode 15, where we talk legal news and practical law. Today is April 26th, 2024. I'm Phil Silberman, owner of the firm and your host, and I'm joined by Austin Black, my co host. How are you doing today, Austin?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:Doing well, how about yourself?
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:I am hanging in there, excited for the show. What's on our docket today, Mr. Black?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:So first, we are talking about a lot of bans in our legal news section. the Federal Trade Commission banning non compete agreements is the first thing we're focusing on today. we'll be going over the, sort of potential repercussions of that. and then next we'll be talking about Biden signing a bill into law that will effectively ban TikTok if its parent company ByteDance does not sell it within nine months time. then we'll be moving on to our legal questions. section focusing on what to do after you inevitably break up with your ex girlfriend, ex boyfriend, with whom you decided to buy a house, which is not a good idea in the first place. But if you did that, we'll talk about how to deal with that situation. Then rants and raves section, speeding tickets. Are attacks on the public? Do they keep us safe? and I think a lot of people are quite opinionated about that and you'll hear ours and we'd love to hear yours too.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:All right. I'm excited for the show. So let's go ahead and kick it off with our legal news section. And the first thing we're talking about is the FTC announces a rule banning non competes nationwide. And before we get into the nitty gritty of that rule and that story, Let's talk about first what a non compete is. And non compete law is very similar throughout the country, but we are Texas attorneys. So we're going to talk about it in the context of Texas law. Basics of a non compete, which is an agreement between an employer and an employee for the employee. not to work at some future time is usually what that is. And in the state of Texas, it has to be part of an employment contract. That's known as otherwise part of an ancillary enforceable agreement. That's the employment contract usually. So you bring the employee in, sign that contract. There has to be consideration. Which is usually the trading of confidential information. So the employee signs agreeing not to compete for some length of time. The employer usually promises some degree of confidential information, which is the consideration. And then you get this binding non compete agreement.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:and frequently, right? Many employees are not even aware that they're signing these things because they don't read their agreements carefully. They may ever read over like their compensation section, their, benefits, all that, and their employment agreement. But a lot of times they don't even notice that they're signing a non compete as part of this.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:They're just happy to get the job and they come in on day one and they sign some stuff. And in our firm, we get a lot of calls. where they've signed them almost always after the fact and then they're wanting to resign or they've been fired. And they say, Oh, hey, my employer told me I'm subject to this non compete. Will you please review it and tell me what it means? So we do that a lot. the agreements themselves in Texas have to be reasonable in scope. the idea is that the non compete must legitimately protect the employer's interest and the scope of work that the employee's doing must be match up broadly with what the employee is going to be doing in the future. So if you've got a guy working for you, that's, engineering, computer chips, you can't have him sign in a non compete saying that
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:He'll never make any chips in the future. Any chips. It doesn't matter if it's a computer chip, a potato chip. No, can't do any of them.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:so the scope has to be, yeah, that game, he may get a job selling the chips or marketing the chips, right? the computer chips. So that would be. Different than engineering than designing the chip. So the scope has to be roughly the same, from his current job to his potential future job. Then you've got geography, in Texas, you'll often see, a radius. if you're looking at a radius around the, a certain area of geography, you'll often see like a five mile radius or something like that. People forget that 30 mile radiuss, can be really. large. So it has to be reasonable in geography, roughly the same area where the employer operated. And then you've got, the time and in Texas, generally 5 years is about the max you can get. Two years is what you usually see in a non compete agreement and all of that stuff, geography, scope, and time, all that can be reformed. So if the employer gets it wrong and makes it overly burdensome, you can go back to the courts and ask the courts to reform it, to make it something that would be considered. legal. But the one thing you can never get back, the ancillary enforceable agreement. So if you have no other independent agreement, you can never get that back. that non compete is going to be considered invalid. And if you don't have the right consideration that you can never get that back out of those things cannot be reformed. I used to take a lot of calls at the firm and I would get all these calls someone would call up and say, Hey, Texas is a right to work state. My, my non compete must be invalid. And the reality is that is some kind of urban myth that has been made up by the general public. in Texas, we do encourage work and we are a business friendly state, but, Non competes in Texas can very much be enforceable. And this general concept of Texas being the right to work state is something that has come up through the ranks of the general public and amounts to a myth. It really doesn't have anything to do. With non competes and we have to bring people down a bit and say, that non compete you signed may absolutely be enforceable. Now, these things are incredibly pervasive. you used to think, okay, only executives or higher up people. Signed non competes, but in fact, they can be signed by nail salons and sales people, and they really have made their way into the lower ranks of employees, which has been incredibly frustrating to me from a policy standpoint. I don't think that the guy sweeping the floor, should be subject to a non compete.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:You don't think that the person cleaning your poodle should be subject to a non compete? That was the dumbest one I've had. There was
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Oh,
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:client we had who was subject to a non compete. They were a dog groomer in a dog grooming company, operated out of someone's house with two people, and they were subject to a non compete. I was like, what?
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:there, there's some secret sauce, there, that's clearly going to legitimately protect the employer's interest, that pet groomer's interest. You can't find anybody else to clean your dog. You know that's a good, that's a good example there. In Texas, we have something called the common calling doctrine, which basically means the lower skilled the job is the more unlikely it is to be held as a valid non-compete. So at some point, the guy grooming your poodle, assuming that's a pretty low skilled job, assuming he's not doing it for some kind of fancy dog show. Does it really legitimately protect the employer's interest to keep that guy from going out and grooming other dogs? I,
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:don't think so,
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:We did try to do something about it in Texas. a while ago, there was Texas house bill. 1043. It did not pass and It was a Democrat bill. And I thought this was a shoe in and it basically said, yeah, anybody that makes less than 15 an hour, you can't bind to a non compete. And that sounds completely reasonable to me. Now, who out there, you're paying someone 15 an hour or less that, that needs to be subject to a non compete. I thought that would have passed. unanimously through the Texas House and Senate.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:Are you a Democrat, Phil?
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:I, I am, I,
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:trying to infringe upon people's right to contract in this great capitalist society?
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:I'm a pretty conservative guy, but I don't always vote along party Republican lines. I consider myself an independent. But, surely, I thought reasonable minds would prevail on this one, but I guess not.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:You would
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:so House Bill 10 43 got shot down and finally the FTC Federal Trade Commission decided they were gonna take matters into their own hands. And say enough's enough. We are just completely banning any non compete across the country. I saw that news break. our show producer, Aaron let me know about the news 1st and I was initially shocked at the FTC passing that rule for several reasons, but. FTC passed the rule. Obviously Biden administration, Democrat left-leaning FTC right now and they've said, here's the good things about the rule. So let's start off with the policy. One in five Americans are affected by non-competes. That's 20%. That's a huge number. They expect the band to generate over 8,500 new businesses annually. Increase worker earnings by about 500 per year. Reduce health care costs by 194 billion over the next decade. And we're going to get 17 to 29, 000 more annual patent filings. Don't ask me how they know that, but they have all these lofty goals and aspirations for this rule.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:that being said, that all does sound reasonable. Dr. Non competes are huge, right? So I also don't know where they're getting those numbers, but it doesn't sound out of the ballpark to me.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:And by the way, in Texas, physician non competes, doctor non competes have a different standard. we won't get into that for the purposes of the show. Lawyers, under the rules of professional conduct, you are not allowed to have a lawyer sign a non compete. So Austin, that non compete I had you sign before I hired you is completely invalid. You feel free to go,
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:for letting
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:to, to go. Go start your own firm if you want, the rule itself, no non competes, complete ban. It's effective about four months from now, and it does not apply to senior executives that make over about 150 grand a year. That number sounds pretty low to me. but that was the number they chose and employers must notify the workers that their non compete is no longer effective and it won't be in enforced in the future. So that's the rule in a nutshell, but let's talk about the elephant in the room. Does the FTC have the power to do this? What do you think, Austin?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:I would say no, but with how many things have gone into law via just executives, put the executive branch pushing it into law, I wouldn't be surprised if this stayed. but we'll see.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:your hunch is probably a good one, and I think we need to give the listeners the kind of the history of the FTC and talk a little bit about the FTC. the FTC cannot make new law, right? it's just doesn't have that kind of power. It can make certain rules that act like statutes, but then you have to ask yourself, really, what's the practical difference between a rule of statute and a new law? And when does the FTC. The FTC under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1912, that's when Congress created the FTC, has the power to enforce a law that, makes it unfair, is an unfair method of competition in commerce. And is declared unlawful. So the FTC has the power to enforce unfair competition and unlawful. And by unfair methods of competition that mostly referenced the antitrust act, the Sherman and Clayton antitrust act. And that was way back. In the early 1900s and then Congress formalized in 1975 under the FTC Improvement Act, I think that's ironic. Anytime we get bigger government. the people that pass the bigger government want to call that an improvement, my libertarian tendencies can beg to differ with that, but we had the FTC Improvement Act of 1975 that formalized the FTC's ability to pass these rules and the FTC. They make rules all the time I'll give you an example. We've got this thing called the FTC care labeling. So Austin, you know that tag on the back of your shirt? Okay, if you ever look at that tag and it says, Hey, you've got a cotton shirt, wash it in cold water or hot water or whatever, a certain way.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:yeah,
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:You can thank the FTC for that rule. Now we generally, as a people, all right, the United States, the public and Congress, we're okay with the FTC telling us how to care for our. cotton shirts But what we don't want the FTC to do is to pass a rule or a proposed purported law that says you can no longer make cotton shirts. So that's over the line, tell us how to care for our shirts, but don't ban the manufacturer of cotton shirts. And that's really the example here with non competes, right? You can generally make some rules regarding unfair competition and non competes, but you can't go too far. don't ban non competes. And we've got a quote here. This is from Neil Bradley, the head of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. And he says, If they, they referring to the FTC can issue regulations with respect to unfair competition, there's really no aspect of the U. S. economy that they could not regulate.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:Which is true I for one submit to our new FTC overlords and would like to see what policy implementations they do next
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:okay, so we've got Austin arguing here for big government, and this U. S. Chamber of Commerce, They should have had a lawsuit on file Wednesday or Thursday of this week. and that was expected the groups that follow these things. they knew this was coming. They already had the complaint teed up and They've already filed a lawsuit and I have not read that pleading, so we're going to see how this comes out. I don't think there's a chance at all that this non compete ban stays in place. no one's asking me, but if I were to make the law, I'd pick out a number like if you make over four or 500, 000 a year, that sounds like a pretty high level executive to me and anything above that, you've got money to pay for lawyers and you can therefore, contract an attorney and you're a sophisticated player and if a non compete is part of your deal, then that should be enforceable. but to me, This is a complete overreach of the Democrat run FTC. Lena Kahn is the head of the FTC. She's absolutely run amok, and I believe she's completely drunk With power. And I would like to remind you, Ms. Khan, that this is still a democracy and we elect, Congress, we elect our house of representatives. We elect our senators. And if those people duly elected by the people, want to pass a ban on non competes, then that, that's where it needs to come from. It doesn't need to come from, unelected bureaucrats, in my opinion. We'll see how it comes out, but I don't think there's a chance that the courts don't overturn that, unfortunately, even as much as from a policy standpoint, Austin, I would like to see it banned in some way. All right. Moving on to our next story about banning Biden signed a bill banning Tik TOK, and it also gives about 95 billion to fight bad guys. So I think a lot of people miss the pork part of that bill, pork, P O R K. And hey, we'll ban TikTok, but Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan get 95 billion as well, a part of the deal here's the details. Okay. So bite dance is the owner of TikTok. He's got about a year to sell, and nothing is changing until then. You can still upload Austin, all those videos you make dancing and lip syncing. You can still upload all of those to TikTok.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:glad to hear that.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:So keep. Yeah, keep doing that. Creators out there, you can keep rocking and rolling. And this thing passed. Just overwhelmingly 79 to 18 in the senate. This was really a bipartisan deal But before we get to tick tock, about fighting the bad guys. Okay, and We've got three wars going on. We've got israel fighting hamas We've got Ukraine fighting the Russians and then we've got Taiwan trying to remain independent and keeping the Chinese away. So 95 billion for that. Let's talk about Taiwan. and we give money to Taiwan to keep China away. Why is that important to us? I guess we love democracy and we want Taiwan to be independent, but more importantly to our economy. Taiwan manufactures 44 percent of all imported U. S. chips. It would be a terrible thing for national security and our economy. If Taiwan were to fall and be assimilated by China, because Austin, we know truthfully the difference between Taiwanese and Chinese people are, it's really merely political and China wants that island back, but, our allies rather make a lot of chips there and we import them. So that would be bad. Money's got to go to Taiwan to keep, them independent for a while longer.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:do wonder what exactly that money is being utilized for, because there's
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:well,
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:between Taiwan and China, like in terms of military.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:I can only assume boosting their military. in reality, half of it will be wasted and then maybe the other half will do some good of the 95 billion is generally what I budget for, all right, let's get back to the tick tock part of this bill. let's give a little summary here. ByteDance is a Chinese company. They're de facto under control of the Chinese Communist Party because of that. The US, our government, our people, we have some very legitimate concerns that, we don't want the Communist Party having all of this data on our citizens. We also don't want the Chinese Communist Party to use TikTok to sow discord in our country and to influence elections. I think it's quite possible that we could go to war with China at some point, hopefully not in my lifetime, and TikTok could then be used as a propaganda piece. As part of that. So we have some real national security concerns about TikTok. So the bill passed, all right, we're now TikTok must sell. They've got about a year to sell. If they don't sell, it's going to be banned on app stores and web hosts, which will effectively kill TikTok in the United States. The Chinese knew this was coming. So they've had some response. They fought back. They ordered Apple to remove WhatsApp and Threads, which is, owned by Meta, TikTok's going to file a lawsuit in response to this as well, they're going to argue that this is a, illegal violation of first amendment rights. my response to that is who cares? we're not going to destroy our country to preserve our first amendment rights. We're not just going to hand our country. To the Chinese on a first amendment argument. that's dead in the water. I think this is generally a good bill. There are some serious national security concerns. So let's talk about winners and losers though. winners meta, meta, obviously Instagram and Facebook. They're a big winner here. There's going to be less competition. YouTube, Google. All right. Who owns YouTube? They're a big winner here. Losers, everyone under the age of 25 with incomplete frontal lobe development, they're losers here.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:hey, okay? There are some funny things on TikTok, okay? And it's not only people under the age of 25 that enjoy some of it. There are good cooking tutorials, etc., okay?
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Yeah, So if you, when you heard the news, if you were like, bruh, cap, this is super sus, you're a loser in this news. you, your life has been destroyed. You're going to have to find something else to do with your time.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:thought you were just leaving it at, you're a loser. I was like, that's a bit harsh, I think.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:I think we do have some younger listeners. some of my teenagers friends, I think, actually listened to the show. So brah out there. If you're listening, you're going to have to do something besides tick tock, try doing your homework or something productive.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:this isn't going to change anything though, right? Because if TikTok actually gets banned, almost everyone who is, has any following on TikTok also has a corresponding following, albeit smaller on, like YouTube shorts. And Instagram Reels, which are just like their answer to TikTok, right? So if this ban goes forward, everyone's just going to migrate over to those. It's not going to change, the impact of the U. S. there might have, there might be less, suspected Chinese influence, but the brain rot is still going to exist.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:I agree with that. And I'm, you're talking about creators. There are some creators out there that have done very well and they had when the original proposed bill was, floated. That kind of caused a panic for creators and small business owners that were very dominant in the TikTok space. So they very quickly moved over to start investing in their YouTube, platforms and their meta platforms. I've got about 4, 000 followers on Tik TOK, as I don't care for Tik TOK because of all the negative stuff we say about the Chinese on the show, Austin and social media. TikTok has effectively shadow banned me. whatever.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:the
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Good riddance. I don't,
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:I don't say negative things about you on here. I would still like to visit China in the future. So
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:okay. just by virtue of being associated with this show, Austin, I don't, I do not recommend You go to China because you may just be disappeared and I'm gonna have to find a new co-host. Oracle is also a big loser because they were providing all the cloud storage and, data services to TikTok. So Oracle a big loser in this deal. How does this come out? I think TikTok is gonna sell, I think they're gonna find a buyer. Microsoft has said that there's, they're interested. There's also some private equity funds that are thinking about pooling their money together.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:TikTok is going to sell? The Chinese government has indicated that they'll block any forced sale.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:what are they going to do if, okay, fine. If TikTok doesn't sell, all right, then they're effectively not going to operate in the U S and they've destroyed billions of dollars of value. So fine. The Chinese can say don't sell and that can be a principle thing and tick tock just goes away. Maybe it remains popular in other parts of the world, but that.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:I think is going to happen, but we'll see. So
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Okay. but yeah, we'll see what happens. so let's answer some legal questions. We've got someone who bought a house with an ex girlfriend and they want their name taken off the mortgage and the deed and she is refusing. she won't refinance the property. what can be done?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:a few options. there's a nuclear option, then there's slightly less nuclear option. they've broken up, right? And the other person is just sitting in the house. They don't have the credit to refinance. Okay. Their credit is terrible without their partner who was on the mortgage and on the deed. And so they don't want to move. and their partner is like, Hey, I'm like also on this mortgage on this deed. I want to get out. I want my equity in this house. They're like, no, I'm not going to do anything. Okay, so in Texas, we have what's called a unilateral right of partition. What that means is if you own a property with someone else, You can force a sale from someone who doesn't want to sell the property to get your equity out of it if the other person will not sell. Okay, that is the nuclear option you're talking about. filing a lawsuit to force a partition sale and take out your interest in the property, and obviously if the property is sold and the mortgage is satisfied, you're good on that front too. the last nuclear option would be, if your ex partner, is reasonable to listening to you, and will actually go through some steps to deal with what they need to deal with. They can get a deed from you, signing over your interest in the property, so you'll sign over your interest in the property to them, and then in return, they'll grant you back a deed of trust that will give you the power to foreclose on the property. If they don't pay the mortgage that you're still on. Okay. Cause again, we're assuming they can't refinance. And that's called an old TV that's spelled O W E L T Y. Okay. That would be the less nuclear option. so basically you sign over your interest in the property to your ex partner who is living in the house. They have full ownership on the deed. You're still in the mortgage cause they can't refinance, but they give you the power to, if they choose to stop paying on the mortgage, you can foreclose on the property. Okay. Get you the mortgage debt satisfied and it won't ruin your credit.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:that's exactly right. Yeah. don't, don't buy a property with a current. Boyfriend or girlfriend but if it's too late, you've already done it. if you can't get the other person to voluntarily deed the property or come to some sort of agreement by old to you, which is what Austin talked about. Yeah. The partition lawsuit is the way to go. I think we can talk about and start ranting and raving. And today we're talking about speeding tickets. Now, are speeding tickets ever a good thing? Nobody likes them, but maybe they keep us safer. now Austin, even you, and Austin's kind of rolling his eyes, even you can certainly say at some point, isn't there a number where you think it does keep us safe? You've heard that speed kills. what do you think?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:I'd say 20. I think 20 is,
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:20, 20's over.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:be like more reasonable, we could see like a percentage of the speed limit, right? The percentage
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:no.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:limit is, maybe. I don't know.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:so I pulled some interesting data and I found some things that are just really fascinating. The fastest freeway in America. Is 85 miles an hour. I didn't know that we had, speeds of 85 miles an hour, but I guess everything is bigger in Texas because that's on, US highway one 30, which is a toll road that goes generally from like Pflugerville around Austin towards Sagin and the San Antonio directions. I was wondering, can you in fact be arrested for speeding in Texas, Austin?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:No, you can't, but you
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:No.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:for reckless driving.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Yeah. Reckless driving. if you're going so fast, what you're doing is completely reckless. You can be. Arrested for that and that is, section 5 45 0.40, one of the transportation code reckless driving. This was another interesting statistic in 2018. the fastest ticketed motorist was a Porsche nine 11 doing 166 miles an hour in a 75. Mile per hour zone in Carson County. It's a rural area in Texas. Maybe that guy should go to jail. Awesome. What do you think?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:If that guy was sober, I have so much respect for it. If he's not sober, yes, absolutely in jail.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Okay, so there's awesome. There should be some level of discretion when we send people to jail. All right. What about going 39 Is that a? Is that more of a tax on the public? Or is that like a safety concern? If you're going 39 and a 30,
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:yeah, I think that's just a tax, and I think it's shown that it's just a tax by the fact that everyone, at least in Texas, knows that you get pulled over for speeding so much more frequently towards the end of the month, as opposed to the beginning of the month, because all the police officers have their quotas of how many people they need to pull over.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Is that true? is that Austin's just urban myth speculation or dude?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:I think it's true,
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Okay.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:think it's true.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:I'm going to say we don't have any data to support that, but that's an interesting thought, Well, I was pulled over by the Spring Valley Police Department a couple weeks ago and Spring Valley it's a very wealthy municipality. That's kind of surrounded by by the greater Houston area. But I was going through Spring Valley and I got pulled over for going 39 and a 30. They always like to ask, why were you going so fast? Stuff like that. the right response always. If you ever get pulled over is officer. I was driving the speed limit. Never admit anything because the second you admit something, if you do want to challenge it, if you do want to try that case, the officer is going to go up there and he's going to be the witness and he's going to testify that, uh, well, he told me why he was going so fast. He admitted to going over the speed. They're coached to do that. So don't admit it I got pulled over going 39 in the 30. He's given me a ticket. I looked at him and I said, you, sir, and this department ought to be ashamed of yourselves. For writing a ticket for going 39 in a 30 and he basically just scribbled something on a ticket. He threw the ticket at me and walked off. I logged in to pay the stupid little fine 200 dollars or for the ticket or whatever. I remember this thing called deferred adjudication or deferred disposition. Do you know what that is, Austin? Have you ever done that with a speeding ticket?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:I've heard of it. I will say, I don't know exactly what it is though.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:if you're ever given a ticket out there, you have some choices, one plead guilty or no contest. you plead guilty, pay the fine. You don't want to do that because then it goes on your record. And the data shows that if you're over 25 years old, your insurance premiums will go up by about 10 percent or you can, plead not guilty or no contest, always plead no contest. And then you can choose whether or not you want to do a driver safety course. Or you want to do this thing called deferred disposition. Never do the driver's safety course unless they're going to make you do it because then you have to pay for the course and it's just a waste of time. So if you can get deferred disposition, go ahead and do that. You basically plead no contest to the ticket. You pay a fine with the court and then you have to go some time without a ticket. And if you go the required amount of time, usually it's three months, six months, a year without getting another ticket. Okay. Then it doesn't go on your record and you just paid the fine. That's what you're supposed to do. so I was, going through the process of on their website, going to try to take the deferred disposition. And I noticed something really interesting that kind of teed me off again. and I didn't know this, but the city of spring Valley on their website said, If you go try this case, if you plead not guilty and you ask for a trial, which I thought about doing because I was mad about it. I said, I'm going to go try the case. I'm going to make the city pay the prosecutor. I'm going to make them impanel a jury and I'm going to get on, I'm going to do a little grandstanding and they'll probably find me guilty anyway, but I'm going to get my two cents in. and then I saw the spring Valley, city website. If you lose, if you're convicted and you try the case. Then you have to pay the officer's overtime rate. And I thought to myself, Austin, does that sound legal? Does that sound constitutional to you?
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:Does not. But I also think there are a lot of unconstitutional things that happen.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:the idea of paying, if you're accused of a crime and now you've got this deterrence to try to, defend yourself of having to pay the government's witness. that's a pretty raw deal. That strikes me as having some constitutional issues. So I got curious and I looked it up, but it turns out under Article 102. 0011 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Justice of the Peaces, JPs, and municipalities can, in fact, if you're convicted, charge you for a peace officer's overtime. there you have it. That is, how it goes when you get a ticket. This is really just a tax on the public. This is just a, a money thing. I consider it a shadow tax. it's a revenue generator, speeding tickets, parking tickets, all that one, all that.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:wonder when that article was passed into law. because I remember years ago, it was like going around on social media, et cetera, what people said was the proper way to challenge a speeding ticket, like talking about the calibration of the radar gun, like all that sort of stuff. And so I wonder if the passing of this, coincided with that getting really popular, because a lot of people
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Yeah.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:trying to do this. and I wonder. I wouldn't be surprised.
philip-silberman_3_04-26-2024_095426:Yeah, maybe the idea here, the state of Texas is generally saying, okay, speeding tickets. We recognize this as a tax. it's a moving violation. So the city is trying to make some money. The JP is trying to make some money. We don't want people, asking for a bunch of jury trials and putting burdens on the city and sucking money out of that. FYI, if you don't know Spring Valley, it's part of the Memorial Villages. it's a plush, very wealthy Memorial Village. I did look up this little statistic from niche. com. And Spring Valley village has a C plus for crime and safety. The other villages in the area like Bunker Hill, Hunter's Creek, Piney Point, all have A's and A pluses. So I'm gonna tell you Spring Valley Police Department based on that rating, you probably need to stop writing so many tickets and you need to go out there and do some real police work. that's my rant for the day. That brings our show to a close. I've been your host, Phil Sliberman. Austin Black has been my co host. Like us, follow us, review us wherever you get your podcasts. If you've got a legal question email us at info at sylb law firm dot com. I n f o at sylb s i l Be like boy law firm dot com Tell us you want the question answered publicly in the podcast. Thanks for listening, everybody. Have a great day.
austin_3_04-26-2024_095426:Thanks. Bye.