St. George topped all small cities with populations of 150,000 or fewer in the survey. The city has 110,515 residents who enjoy a mild climate, clean air and low annual precipitation. It also has the lowest crime rates of all the 379 communities surveyed. St. George stands first in employment rate among the 138 small towns in the Farmers study.

Click this link for more from the Sacramento Bee:

http://sacramento10.cityspur.com/2009/11/24/where-are-the-safest-places-to-live-in-the-united-states/

Through this arrangement, Jones Waldo will offer Utah companies access to legal resources and strategic business advice regarding opportunities in China, a rapidly expanding area of the global economy. We are excited to be at the forefront of companies who see the value of thinking globally and look forward to assisting business owners who are ready to benefit from the opportunities that are waiting.

We’ll be posting items of interest concerning doing business in or with China. Let us know if there is a particular topic you’d like to know more about.

• The Trustee is authorized to destroy those client files for which two notification letters have been sent with no response from the file’s owner. Such files may be destroyed 30 days after the second letter is sent.
•  Files that appear to have been closed, with no activity for four or more years, may be destroyed by the Trustee.

Files will be destroyed by a commercial shredding operation. We urge you to contact Sheila Berger at 435 628-1627 if you have received a notification letter from the Trustee and have not made arrangements to pick up your file.

Also, we have received several comments to our blog posts regarding the Graff Firm’s former clients. For reasons of confidentiality and out of concern for client privacy, we have not been publishing these comments. Please be assured, however, that we do see each comment and we are doing all we can to get files returned. We appreciate hearing from you.

DIXON TRUMAN & FISHER, PC
Ronald W. Truman
20 North Main Street, Suite 205
St George, UT 84770
Phone: (435) 652-9000
Fax: (435) 652-0770

KYLER KOHLER OSTERMILLER & SORENSEN, LLP
Mathew N. Sorensen, Partner
856 South Sage Dr., Suite 300
Cedar City, Utah 84720
Phone: (435) 586-9366
Fax: (435) 586-9491

Thanks to these firms for their willingess to help.

Tim Anderson, as the trustee, has filed motions for continuance in several cases pending in the Fifth and Sixth District courts  in which hearings were scheduled.  We have provided information to the courts in those districts to make them aware of possible scheduling problems arising from the situation.  We are currently investigating information on client trust funds and other client property.

If you are a former Graff client with a current matter which was being handled by the Graff office and you have not heard from us, please contact this office by calling Sheila Berger at 435 986-2101, or by email to sberger@joneswaldo.com.

If you are an attorney who wishes to be included on the panel of volunteers, please email tanderson@joneswaldo.com.

We feel it is important that the public understands that the trustee is handling these matters entirely on a volunteer basis, with no remuneration, and that no cases will be taken on by the trustee or any other attorney in his office.

GUIDELINES FOR PARTICIPATING ATTORNEYS:

• Panel members will take on at least one case pro bono (without payment) within the limitations set out below.

• Panel members will commit to providing twenty hours pro bono services on accepted cases.  The lawyer will review the case and in the event more than twenty hours may be required to bring the case to a conclusion, an agreement with the client will be entered as to how fees will be handled for work beyond the first twenty hours.

• Panel members agree, in any case accepted having time sensitive issues of a jurisdictional nature, to take needed action timely to silence all such issues.

• Panel members must have malpractice insurance in force through his or her own law firm.

• Panel members have the right to review the proposed case and accept or reject the situation, but will at least provide advice and counsel to the client as to how the client might proceed.

• Panel members who accept one or more cases, under the terms set out above, will also be placed on a list of lawyer names that will be distributed at the discretion of the Trustee to former clients of Matt Graff. The lawyer may accept or reject any potential clients contacting the lawyer and the lawyer may charge customary fees to such individuals. 

PANEL MEMBERS

As part of this process, we here in the St. George office of Jones Waldo are inventorying all files.  Any matters in which Jones Waldo has a conflict of interest are being directed to Lowry Snow of Snow, Jensen & Reese, who has been designated by Tim Anderson to act as the “conflicts trustee” for such matters. In addition, Josh Little of the Durham Jones & Pinegar law firm has been appointed to be an back-up conflicts trustee in the event there is a conflict with both the Jones Waldo and Snow Jensen firms). We are preparing to notify the Graff firm’s clients by mail when their files will be available for them to pick up in person. In order to obtain their files, we will require them to provide picture I.D. and sign a release or affidavit, after which they will be able to take their cases to an attorney of their choice.  Due to our involvement in the trusteeship, Jones Waldo will not be taking on any cases that we review and deliver to Graff clients.

Our goal is to process the huge number of files in a short time period so that deadlines are not missed and statutes of limitations problems are averted. Former clients of Mr. Graff who know that they have upcoming court hearings or other deadlines may contact Sheila Berger at 435 986-2101 to alert us to their situation, and we will maintain a  list of files that are particularly urgent and try to expedite the process of getting them to their owners.

Watch for further information here.

Enter the Foreign Trade Zone – FTZ.  An FTZ is a location to which imported goods can be shipped upon arriving in the U.S. and treated for the most part as if they have not yet entered the U.S.  They are not just near seaports.  There are 275 U.S. government approved FTZs across the country, including one in Salt Lake City and another in Las Vegas.  Imported products admitted to the FTZ are not entered into the U.S. customs territory until their withdrawal from the FTZ.  Products can be moved from one FTZ to another and still avoid customs (and duty) payments. 

Thus, a product arriving in Long Beach, California, from China can be processed into the FTZ there and then be shipped to the FTZ in Salt Lake City.  If the process takes weeks or even months because the product, for some reason, is warehoused in the FTZ, the products are “Kings-xed” from U.S. Customs.  This allows the importer to pay the duty at a point in time much closer to delivery into the market.  For items that take a long time to sell, such as large equipment and vehicles, this deferral of the payment of duty can be critical.  In fact, it is possible that the FTZ could even be used to move imported products across the country from FTZ to FTZ and then on to Canada without ever becoming subject to payment of duty in the US.

Another advantage is if products are imported into the U.S. but are defective, become obsolete, or otherwise need to be destroyed.  If held within the FTZ, no duty will have been charged to the importer – obviously important to the importer who may be unable to sell the products. 

Now, back to our unassembled goods vs. finished BMW example.  If you arrange to have your product assembled from the imported components (as well as those already here in the U.S.) at a facility within an FTZ you only pay 2.5% duty on your imported components.  This can be a significant incentive to assemble and warehouse your products in an FTZ. 

The benefits of an FTZ to a small Utah-based importer can be significant.  The benefits range from deferring, eliminating or reducing customs duties, improving cash flow by lowering inventory costs as well as inventory levels, and other consolidation advantages.  

The Utah Foreign Trade Zone is located at 1105 South 4800 West in Salt Lake City, not far from Salt Lake International Airport.  The Las Vegas Foreign Trade Zone is at  McCarran International Airport.  For more information go to www.commerce.gov, www.goed.utah.gov or www.expand2nevada.com.