When Opening a Liquor Store, Are Zoning Legal Issues Attorney’s Responsibility?
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Summary
Just before opening a liquor store, it was discovered that there were zoning legal issues. Whether their attorney was responsible will depend in part on whether they were hired as a business set-up and zoning attorney, or something else. |
“My question pertains to a business that I am trying to open. I am opening a liquor store. We were all set to go and at the last minute ran into a zoning issue. My question is should the lawyer I retained to help us open this business have checked the zoning requirements of the property before we were almost ready to open? This has cost me a lot of out of pocket money and I’m wondering if it could have been avoided by more thorough leg work?”
It really depends on what you hired the attorney to do. If you hired them as a zoning attorney, absolutely. On the other hand, if you hired them for something else completely unrelated to zoning, for example if you hired them as a contract attorney to review your contracts with your supplier, absolutely not.
In either case, zoning is such a fundamental issue when opening a business, that ethically, and quite likely legally, you were obligated to do your own due diligence when considering opening a business in that location.
So, is the lawyer responsible? Maybe. Are you likely to be able to get them to be held responsible for your financial losses? Unless determining zoning issues was within the scope of the services for which you hired them, and they told you that there were no issues, and you relied on those assurances probably not.
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For more on this subject check out these categories: Property, Business Law, Zoning
Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. is a noted family law expert, Internet law expert, and Professor of Law at Lincoln Law School of San Jose. Contact This Author
State laws vary, and the above is intended as general advice, and not direct legal advice regarding any one particular situation in any one state. For direct personal legal advice related to your own situation you should consult an attorney familiar with the laws of your state and with your situation.
