by RICH CASSIDY on JULY 25, 2011
I wrote about the personal side of Conference membership in my July 10, 2011 post: “The Personal Side of Legislation, at Least as the Uniform Laws Commission Does It.” Tempting as it is to write more about the personal side of Commission membership (particularly about the seven memorial speeches marking the passing of former colleagues), I’ll refrain and write instead about the substance of our work.
Recent meetings have seen a large volume of Uniform Laws adopted, reaching a high of 10 Acts last year. The Commission’s leadership knew this was stretching our resources, both financially and in terms of the time of our membership, none of whom are paid for their work.
A conscious effort was made to narrow the pipeline of new Uniform legislation and it showed results this year. One revised Uniform Act, one Model Act and three new Uniform Acts were reviewed and presented on July 12 for approval by a vote of the states.
Each represents a significant effort to move the development of state law forward, particularly in areas where substantial uniformity in the law from one state to another would be helpful.
The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act is intended to bring order to a subject that most people – even most lawyers — would be unlikely to think about. As more and more of the law is published electronically rather than via printed materials, how can users know that what they are reading is what lawmakers adopted? And how can they find what was the law last year or the year before? The Act sets up a framework for the authentication of digitally published material. It requires that official electronic materials be authenticated, preserved, and made permanently accessible to the public. The authenticity of legal source material is something we take for granted. It doesn’t seem very important, until you don’t have it!
The Commission also adopted a Uniform Certificate of Title Act for Vessels. It sets up a system, like Certificate of Title for Motor Vehicles system, that documents the ownership of boats, facilitating their purchase, sales, and financing. When adopted in a particular state, the Act would qualify as a Coast Guard approved state titling act. In addition, as a consumer protection measure, the Act requires the owners of boats suffering significant hull damage to obtain a certificate of title reflecting that condition before transferring ownership.
The Commission also adopted the Model Protection of Charitable Assets Act, which provides state Attorney Generals with more clearly developed legal tools to make sure that the public trust in charitable institutions is not misplaced. The Commission uses the Model Act format to promote the development of law in areas where there is no compelling need for state law on a topic to be the same or similar from state to state.
The Commission also adopted the Harmonized Uniform Business Organizations Code which brings together unincorporated entity law, and for states that choose to adopt it, corporation and not for profit corporation acts, into a single code of entity laws. The harmonization process involved the revision of the following Model and Uniform Acts:
Model Entity Transactions Act;
Model Registered Agents Act;
Uniform Partnership Act (1997);
Uniform Limited Partnership Act (2001);
Uniform Limited Liability Company Act (2006);
Uniform Statutory Trust Entity Act;
Uniform Limited Cooperative Association Act; and
Uniform Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Act (2008).
Finally the Commission made significant changes to a product it promulgated in 2005, adopting Amendments to the Uniform Debt Management Act. The Amendments bring the Act into conformity with the Federal Trade Commission’s 2010 amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule to cover the business of debt-management services. The Amendments address the timing of fee collection and use of powers of attorney and make changes to clarify its disclosure and reporting requirements and to simplify the Act.
At my next opportunity to post on this subject, I’ll provide a quick briefing on Acts that were “read the first time,” at the Vail meeting and will therefore likely be on the Agenda for final adoption next year. And I’ll describe the new Study Committees and new Drafting Committee that the Executive Committee approved for the future.
Rich