Reference no: EM132279883
You were a starving senior at USC when, to your dismay, you dropped your cell phone on the sidewalk, cracking the screen. After saying a few curse words, you begin to think of how you are going to afford to fix your phone as you do not have insurance on it. In your dorm, the wi-fi is working well (!) and you search YouTube for “how to fix screens.” You figure it out, order the part from Amazon, and, for a whole lot less than anyone would charge, you fix your phone. Soon friends begin asking you to fix their phones and you discover you are pretty good at it.
Following graduation, you decide you would like to open a phone repair shop near USC to serve other starving college students. You plan on having a shop as well as offering pickup and drop off service for students who can’t travel to your shop. A friend, Reginald, says he would like to go in with you-he has no particular skills with phones, but has a house on Russell Street that could be used for the business. Another friend, Sarah, says she wants in and can contribute $10,000 in start-up money and has a reliable car.
What do you need to do before you can open your business? How many of these issues involve legal issues? What kind of legal issues do you foresee? How will you run your business? Who will be in charge? Where do you see your largest legal liabilities (how you can be successfully sued)? How can you limit your legal liability (make it harder for people to successfully sue you)?