It Can Be More Complex Than You Expect

*Firehouse Legal blog posts provide information only, and are not legal advice. For specific legal advice contact your attorney. No seriously, contact them, they’ll be happy to hear from you.*

Vacancies on a Board of Directors between elections happen frequently.  The terms are long (6 years), and

How to salvage an election process and stay on track…

What happens when a fire district forgets to post its required filing notices for an election, or worse yet, forget about the election altogether and fails to notify the election authority until after the filing period is closed? The options in this situation aren’t great

Laws, in general, do not remotely resemble “plain english” and are therefore very difficult to navigate. While individual laws may be intended to “stand alone” and address a specific concern, the courts have pretty uniformly stated that everything must be taken in context–so if the legislature passes laws that contradict each other then we must

Another great year at the MAFPD annual conference.  I enjoyed the discussions during my “Return of the Roaring 20’s” presentation and the turnout was great!

By the way, if you are a firefighter and have not had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Sarah Jahnke speak on firefighter health and well-being, you absolutely must make

*Firehouse Legal blog posts provide information only, and are not legal advice. For specific legal advice contact your attorney. No seriously, contact them, they’ll be happy to hear from you.*

So, let’s start with the threshold question: Does the FLSA apply to fire departments? The answer, as most everyone knows at this point, is yes

Over the last few years I have spent significant time preparing and presenting discussions that have tackled broad scale legal topics within the fire service. I would sometimes spend my entire presentation time speaking on a single topic: Consolidations, the impact of Missouri’s medical marijuana legalization, fire department budget and finance issues, to name a

Hello and welcome to my little blog about the fire service and the law. I sincerely hope you will find it informative, thought provoking, or at least entertaining. If I can accomplish any of those three goals then I will consider this adventure a success. 

This blog is the product of several different things. First, a recognition on my part that over time representing the fire service, many of the same questions/issue come up time and again.  Second, the non-stop encouragement (See: Badgering; hounding) of my colleague Aaron Lukken, author of The Hague Law Blog, who believed beyond a shadow of a doubt I should be blogging, and making my voice heard. Ultimately however, it was the third reason for starting this blog that tipped the scale and sent me over the edge into the blogosphere.  
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