On January 1, 2011 California enacted a law that creates a new way for Californians to share cars. It’s a great opportunity for people who have cars, people who need cars, and entrepreneurs who want to help other people share cars! I’ll explain below how to take advantage of that new law.

But no matter where you live, it’s still possible to share your car. And here is a little info on how to set it up legally:

 The Legal Nitty Gritty: How to Share a Car

Let’s say you have a car you really only use on weekends and evenings, and you have a couple of neighbors who may be interested in using your car during the day.  Unfortunately, your insurance company is going to make it a little bit challenging to share with those neighbors. Typically, you can’t add other drivers to your car insurance unless they live in your household or unless they are on title to the vehicle. Beyond that, insurance policies usually let other people drive your car occasionally. If someone else is driving your car regularly, your insurance company may decline to cover the other person’s accident, arguing that the policy does not cover other regular drivers. If another driver uses your car only occasionally, but pays you for the use of your car, your insurance company may again decline coverage, arguing that you are operating a car rental business, a use not covered by your policy.

Given these limitations, I generally advise clients to do one or some of the following if they want to share their car:

1)       Get permission from your insurance company:  Get your insurance company’s permission in writing. Explain to them the situation, such as “my neighbor will borrow my car every Saturday to drive to her photography class.” Although that sounds like a “regular” use, your insurance company might say that it’s fine and covered under the provision for occasional drivers. If they approve, you’ll have it in writing in the event of an accident.

2)       Put the other drivers on title: If you plan to regularly share your car with someone who does not live at your address, put the other person on title to the vehicle and sign an agreement with them providing that you will take them off title at a later date. Once they are on title, the insurance company will be willing to insure both of you.

3)       Keep it casual and occasional: Allow people to use your car only occasionally and don’t enter into an agreement to have them pay you. Maybe casually ask that they fill up your gas tank when they use the car. Or casually hope they do something nice in return, which most people will, especially if they want to keep borrowing your car.

4)       Get “driver’s insurance” for the other drivers: Have the other driver purchase a “driver’s insurance” policy, which is liability coverage that kicks in if the primary insurance refuses coverage. It won’t cover damage to the vehicle, but it covers the really expensive stuff, like bodily injury.

For more information and a sample agreement for sharing your car, read Chapter 10 of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community

AB 1871 Provides a New Pathway to Car Sharing in California

California’s AB 1871 went into effect January 1.  This creative law gives us a new way around the insurance conundrum, by creating a framework whereby you can regularly let people use your car and earn money.  However, this is key: you can’t earn a profit. The money you earn from sharing your car cannot amount to more than it costs for you to own your car.  Also, if you want to share your car, you have to make the car part of a Personal Vehicle Sharing Program (PVSP) that facilitates the car sharing and will keep track of who drives your car, when, and where.  Most importantly, the PVSP provides the insurance while other people are driving your car. That way, your primary vehicle insurance does not have to cover the other people who drive your car.  The text of the law is fairly short, and you can read it here.

You can take advantage of this in at least two ways:

1)       Join a PVSP, also called a peer-to-peer carsharing company, such as start-ups Getaround and Relay Rides. Once these companies are fully launched and have a critical mass of users, this could be the easiest way to take advantage of the new law.

2)       Start your own small PVSP!  California’s new law has opened the door for many people to create PVSPs.  While it’s possible that one of the existing start-up companies could quickly grow to dominate the market, I believe there are many niches where a small and local PVSP makes sense. For example, a small PVSP would fit perfectly in condo community, apartment complex, or retirement community, where people are more likely to know and trust each other.  A PVSP could also have an edge if it focuses on a particular type of vehicle, like pick-up trucks or VW buses.

Instructions for Starting a Car Sharing Program

Here are instructions for forming a simple PVSP, taking into account the minimal legal requirements provided by AB 1871:

1)       Form an entity: First, the law requires you to create a legal entity for the PVSP, such as a cooperative corporation, limited liability company (LLC), or nonprofit corporation. In CA, this usually costs $800 a year in minimum taxes. However, there are at least two ways to avoid that annual $800: a) operate the PVSP under an existing entity, such as an existing business or your homeowners association, if allowed, or b) form as a nonprofit and obtain tax-exemption. Obtaining tax-exemption for a car sharing program can be very tricky, but it’s possible under certain circumstances. City Car Share in San Francisco is tax-exempt under 501(c)3, for example.

2)       Get members: Find an initial pool of members – both people who will make their vehicles part of the pool and people who will use the vehicles.

3)       Get insurance: Get insurance and put proof of that insurance in every shared vehicle. It’s hard to know how much insurance will cost, but I would estimate between $100 and $300 per month per vehicle, depending on how often it is used, who uses it, what the users’ driving records are, etc. The law requires that you get at least triple the minimum of legally required liability coverage, which is still not much. The minimum for bodily injury is $15,000, and I usually recommend getting a MUCH higher limit to make sure everyone is covered.

4)       Get your systems in place: Create a solid system for keeping track of who uses what vehicles, when, how many miles are driven, and where the car is parked initially and at the end of each trip. Also be ready to make all records available to insurance providers if requested. One more thing: the new law says this information must be maintained in “verifyable electronic records.” I’m really not sure what that means, and the law doesn’t explain it. Some of the peer-to-peer car sharing companies are developing advanced systems for tracking the use and location of the vehicle electronically using GPS. However, it may be legally sufficient to have people self-report where and when they drove the vehicle by logging on to a Google Doc, for example.

5)       A few more things:

•  No Profits to Car Owners: You will also need to come up with a system to determine the cost of ownership for each car, and a way to ensure that the car owners aren’t earning more money that it costs them to own the vehicle.
•  No Motorcycles and Scooters: Sorry bikers, this law only applies to passenger vehicles with four wheels.
•  No Commercial Use: AB 1871 says that the vehicles shouldn’t be put to “commercial use.” It would be a separate and interesting research project to find out what that means. If anyone feels like researching it, please post info in the Comments section, below. Operating an airport shuttle service is definitely a “commercial use,” but what about driving to the office supply store to pick up stuff for your business? Is that a “commercial use?”
•  Lock and Ignition Systems: Although not legally required, you’ll probably also want to install numerical lock and ignition systems in the cars, which I’ve heard can cost around $700.  If that’s too expensive, you can just install a numerical lock box near where the car is usually parked.

This article was originally published at Shareable.net, March 1, 2011.

What do you call a lawyer who helps people share, cooperate, barter, foster local economies, and build sustainable communities? That sounds like the beginning of a lawyer joke, but actually, it’s the beginning of new field of law practice. Very soon, every community will need a specialist in this yet-to-be-named area: Community transactional law? Sustainable economies law? Cooperation law? Personally, I tend to call it sharing law.

The Evolving Nature of Our Transactions

Contrary to what we see on lawyer TV shows, around half of lawyers primarily work as transactional lawyers, not courtroom litigators. Transactional lawyers advise on, negotiate, and structure the contracts that govern business deals, real estate transfers, loans, mergers, securities, insurance, and so on.

The evolving nature of our transactions has created the need for a new area of law practice. We are entering an age of innovative transactions, collaborative transactions, crowd transactions, micro-transactions, sharing transactions – transactions that the legal field hasn’t caught up with, like:

• Bartering
• Sharing
• Cooperatives
• Buying clubs
• Community currencies
• Time banks
• Microlending
• Crowdsourcing
• Crowdfunding
• Open source
• Community supported agriculture
• Fair trade
• Cohousing
• Coworking
• Consensus decision-making
• Intentional Communities
• Community Gardens
• Copyleft

Transactions that Put the Lively back into Livelihood

What will the world look like as these kinds of transactions become more and more common, and what are the legal implications? Let’s look at one person’s life as an example:

Lynne lives in an urban cohousing community and shares ownership of a car with two neighbors. Every day, she fluidly shares, borrows, and lends (rather than owns) many household goods, tools, electronics, and other items. She is a member of a cooperative grocery, through which she receives significant discounts in exchange for putting in a few monthly work hours. She grows vegetables on an empty lot and sometimes sells the veggies to neighbors. She has a successful rooftop landscaping business, which she launched using 20 microloans and investments from friends and family. She often barters, doing odd jobs in exchange for goods and services. She also owns a 5% share of a hot springs retreat center outside of town, which she acquired through sweat equity.

You might say that Lynne has put the “lively” back in livelihood. With the help of sharing, cooperation, and collaboration, she has managed to craft an affordable, comfortable lifestyle, put her skills to use, do varied and self-directed work, and live/work in a supportive community. She has “financed” property ownership and launched a thriving business off of the traditional financial and banking grid.[i]

Now, if only Lynne knew how to report all this to the IRS, and how to explain it to her car insurance company, the Health Department, mortgage lenders, the Secretary of State, the Department of Real Estate, the city planning and building departments, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Labor, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and all of the other regulatory and bureaucratic entities that have a say over what she can and can’t do.

And if only Lynne could feel fully assured that her rights to partial ownership in the cohousing community, retreat center, car, shared goods, and consumer cooperative would be honored by her co-sharers, or, in the event of an unresolveable dispute, honored by a court of law. If only she could find affordable ways to manage the risk of her activities, since her activities don’t fit into traditional insurance application check-boxes. If only there weren’t so many legal headaches involved in living well and creating more localized, sustainable economies….

Lawyers Are Going to Have a Ball With This

Trying to unravel the legal issues that arise from Lynne’s lifestyle would be like trying to unravel a gigantic, messy, tangled up ball of string. Fortunately, thousands of people go to law school every year because they enjoy solving tangled messes. The emerging generation of lawyers is going to have a ball with this.

At present, there is not much literature explaining the legal implications of these kinds of transactions. To those of us who have made this our area of practice, many of the legal questions in this new field sit unanswered on our giant to-do lists. One-by-one, client-by-client, we are making headway. As the ground swells with people adopting more sharing and cooperative work and lifestyles, we can look forward to a growing body of law and literature on the subject.

At the same time, the answers will never be clear cut, and lines we have grown accustomed to will be increasingly blurred. Until we evolve a new set of legal definitions, we’ll dance uncertainly around the lines between “income” and “gifts,” between “own” and “rent,” between “employees” and “volunteers,” between “work” and “hobby,” between “nonprofit” and “for-profit,” between “invest” and “donate,” and so on. Our clients may have outside-the-box livelihoods and organizations, but it’ll still be the job of lawyers to help them fit into boxes that are traditional enough to comply with the law.

A Collaborative World Calls for Collaborative Lawyers

The growth of “community transactional law” or “sharing law” has implications not just for what lawyers practice, but how they practice – how they interact with clients, deliver services, determine fees, work with conflicts of interest, and so on. Working in this field will require not only the skills of legal analysis, but also the skills of open-mindedness, clear communication, collaboration, and an understanding of the role that human needs and emotions play in collaborative transactions.

Collaboration between lawyer, client, and community is key. A lawyer brings legal knowledge, while a client brings practical knowledge, and the community provides the forum for the transactions. To the extent information is shared in all directions, thoughtful and innovative transactions will emerge. Lawyers typically don’t freely share sample documents because charging for documents is a primary way that lawyers make money. Lawyers in this new field will need to develop new revenue models that encourage sharing of information. The free flow of information will ensure better informed clients, better quality documents, and communities that are empowered with an understanding of what is possible.

Lawyers can also use sharing to make legal services more affordable, and therefore accessible, to clients. A lawyer sharing office space can keep overhead and fees far lower than a law firm built to look like the Emerald City. A lawyer open to receiving payment in time dollars or working in exchange for a bag of organic artichokes will make legal services accessible to a broader range of clients.

Documents That Are Alive [And Even Make Sense]

A large component of lawyers’ work is drafting documents, like contracts and agreements about how organizations will function. In a world where people form babysitting co-ops, community gardens, open source creative projects, and other decentralized, participatory, fluid, and adaptable group projects, documents clearly describing these arrangements will be indispensible. That is, if people can understand them. In a typical lawyer-client transaction, the lawyer might prepare a document that the client looks at, often reluctantly and quickly. The document is then put into a file cabinet, never to be seen again (unless someone sues someone, in which case everyone hires more lawyers to interpret the appallingly long and confusing paragraphs).

Documents should be living tools for a sharing organization. A readable governing document will: 1) help the group come to a well-thought-out plan, 2) serve as a handy reference for participants and encourage consistency in operations, 3) enable new people to join and get up to speed with the program, 4) promote group harmony by ensuring that everyone is on the same page, and 5) support other, similar programs, by making it easy for others to model a new program using the first one’s governing document.

Lawyers Become Facilitators

In a more sharing world, attorneys might more frequently represent groups of people, rather than just individuals and business entities. In these situations, an attorney might simultaneously play a role as a lawyer and a facilitator.

This deviates, to some extent, from traditional models of practice. For example, if three unrelated people decide to purchase a house together, and approach an attorney to draft their shared ownership agreement, the attorney might insist that each party will need his or her own attorney. Simultaneously representing multiple parties to the same transaction can put an attorney at risk of violating ethical rules, because the parties’ interests could come into conflict with each other. Furthermore, joint representation means that each individual client will not have his or her own zealous advocate. (In case you wondered, “zealous,” is a word right out of lawyers’ rules of professional conduct.)

Zeal, however, may not be the most important thing clients are looking for in a sharing lawyer. Perhaps they want one attorney who can learn about everyone’s needs, help explain the benefits and risks for each person, mediate any conflicts that do arise, explain the legal framework, and then guide the group in developing a plan that works for everyone. Often, facilitating the growth of an open and trusting relationship among parties will be far more important than lobbying for favorable contract terms for a single party.

At the same time, when the stakes are high, giving attention to individual interests will be essential. To this end, sharing law has much to learn from “Collaborative Law,” which has been applied primarily to divorce cases, and sometimes to the preparation of prenuptial agreements. In the collaborative model, each party is represented by an attorney, and thus has an advocate helping to assert that party’s interests. Typically, however, the attorneys are also trained mediators, and the parties come to the negotiating table in an open and cooperative spirit. In the same way that the collaborative approach has been used in negotiating prenuptial agreements, it could be applied also to co-ownership agreements, partnership agreements, and other situations where parties must balance concern for their own interests with the desire to come together and collaborate.

Lawyers Can Also Create More Square Holes

Trying to legally categorize cutting edge transactions will sometimes be like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. As such, lawyers working in this field will be in a good position to call for more square holes in our legal system. In other words, innovation and policy reform will also play a key role in the work of community transactional lawyers.

In the course of their work, sharing lawyers will recognize how a state law or local zoning ordinance could be improved to encourage sharing, to incentivize urban agriculture, or to enable new forms of co-ownership. Lawyers can also be proactive architects of new kinds of organizations, new legal structures for sharing, and mechanisms for protecting the commons. In this same vein, for example, Creative Commons has already created a new licensing structure for the sharing of ideas and creative works.

Greasing the Wheels of a More Sharing World

In small pockets around the country, lawyers are beginning this work. Recently, Oakland-based attorney Jenny Kassan and I co-founded the Sustainable Economies Law Center, an organization that creates a space for this new field to develop, generates tools and resources for the public, and provides learning opportunities for law students.

With any luck, law schools will start offering classes and clinics focused on these cutting-edge transactions. Soon, a new generation of “sharing lawyers” or “community transactional lawyers” will be able to enjoy rewarding work, interesting clients, and a field of practice that deviates, refreshingly, from the usual big-firm and government career paths.

Years ago, I read a cynical article complaining that lawyers do nothing more than “grease the wheels of big business.” It’s unfortunate to the extent that it has been true, but I liked the phrase and I think we should simply roll it in a new direction. Now, our work is to grease the wheels of a more sharing, cooperative, and sustainable society.

This article was written with input from attorneys Jenny Kassan and Emily Doskow.

[i] Thank you to Morgan Gerard for using – and possibly coining – the phrase “living off the traditional financial services grid.”

By Emily Doskow

Q: In the past, whenever I have tried to share with others there has been tension over some part of the arrangement, and sometimes things have ended badly. Any advice for preventing that?

A: Sharing is such a positive, fun thing to do and such a powerful force for change, that it’s hard to believe how many sharing arrangements have foundered on the shores of communication problems.

But sharing does have its challenges, and many of them seem to be related to communication—or put another way, to people being people. It’s even been said that sharing would be great if it weren’t for the people. (Okay, we might have said that. But it’s kind of true.)

In most cases, problems come up because sharers failed to set clear expectations, anticipate obstacles, or agree on a way to resolve conflict. The good news is that all of these things are easily done, and once you’ve done them you are well on your way to a successful, harmonious sharing relationship.

Setting Expectations

In even the simplest sharing arrangement, it’s crucial that you and your sharing partner(s) have the same understanding of what’s going to happen.

Let’s take a simple meal-sharing arrangement as an example. Imagine that you and your friendly neighbor decide that once each week, you’ll make dinner for each other, thus saving each of you one night of cooking per week. You’ll cook on Monday, and the neighbor will cook on Wednesday. You give each other a list of food likes and dislikes and you’re good to go, right? Sure, until you realize that your neighbor’s idea of dinner time is 7:30, while you like to eat much earlier—so on the first Monday, you bring the food at 5:30 and find your neighbor isn’t even home yet, and on Wednesday, you sit waiting until you’re hungry and irritable. Furthermore, your neighbor brought enough food for you to have four meals, while you only cooked enough for one serving.

So now you and your neighbor are both a little bit frustrated—you because you didn’t get your food at a comfortable time, and your neighbor because the arrangement didn’t feel fully reciprocal. Not a good start to a sharing arrangement that should generate the good feelings that usually arise from cooking for and sharing food with others.

Yes, you can go back and talk over these issues, but how about avoiding them in the first place? A short sit-down over a cup of tea would likely have brought you to the right questions about timing, delivery methods, serving sizes, how to communicate if you especially like or don’t like something the other person has cooked, and other details.

Other examples abound. A car-sharing arrangement requires you to consider how you want to pay for fuel, maintenance, and repairs, as well as how you’ll schedule use and how tidy you expect the car to be when you use it. A neighborhood work group means planning a yearly schedule, establishing parameters for projects, and setting a bar for how much participation is required to stay in the group. If you’re setting up a babysitting cooperative, you must decide how you’ll keep records, whether multiple-child care situations are worth more time in trade, how members will join and leave the coop, how leadership will be handled, and how you’ll deal with things like snacks, television, and other rules.

Anticipating Obstacles

Imagining the problems that might arise in a sharing arrangement is probably the thing that sharers resist most fervently. At the start of any relationship, we mainly see the positive aspects of our partners and the potential up sides of the connection.

But it’s absolutely necessary to imagine your worst-case scenarios: What happens if we both want to use the car at the same time? Who’s responsible if someone has an accident in the car? What if your food makes me sick? Am I on the hook if someone falls off a ladder while helping to work on my house? What if someone wants to leave the child care coop when they still owe a lot of time to others? And so on.

It’s tempting to agree that if something bad happens, you’ll just work it out at the time. After all, you’re people of good will, right? Well, you will surely be full of good will at the start, but when your vacuum cleaner comes back with a broken hose you may not feel so friendly. What’s more, you might feel uncomfortable talking about it. If you have an agreement about repairs, however, there’s no conflict—you simply put it into action.

Agreeing on How to Resolve Conflict

When people say they’re anxious about sharing because they’re afraid something will go wrong and it will mess up their relationship with a friend or neighbor, what they’re really saying is that they don’t have confidence in their own ability to resolve conflict. And that’s natural, because most of us prefer to avoid conflict when we can, so we don’t have the skills needed to achieve a resolution.

There are two pieces of good news about that. One is that you don’t necessarily have to do it yourself; you can ask a neutral friend or a trained mediator to help you. The other is that you can learn the skills needed to communicate effectively in ways that will help you avoid conflict and, if it does arise, manage it.

At this point you’re probably wondering exactly how to go about doing all of this. That’s where the 20 questions come in. The first step in any sharing arrangement should be to sit down with your fellow sharers and together answer the questions that will help you to set expectations, anticipate obstacles, and plan for dealing with conflict. Here are the 20 basic questions, adapted from my book, The Sharing Solution:

1. Why are we sharing?

2. What are we sharing?

3. Whom are we sharing with?

4. How many people are we sharing with?

5. How will the timing of our arrangement work?

6. Who owns the shared items?

7. Should we form a separate legal entity?

8. What should we call ourselves?

9. What do we get to do?

10. How will we make decisions?

11. What responsibilities will each of us have?

12. What are the rules for using our shared property or meeting our shared responsibilities?

13. How will we handle administrative matters like scheduling, communication, and record-keeping?

14. How will we divide expenses? 15. How will we manage risk and liability?

16. Are there legal requirements we need to follow?

17. How will we resolve conflicts or disputes?

18. How will we bring new people into the group?

19. How can a member leave the group?

20. How do we end the sharing arrangement?

These questions are broad and designed to get you thinking about the major issues that arise in sharing situations. Depending on what you are sharing, you may need to expand on these or add other questions specific to your arrangement.

The next step is to learn more about effective communication methods. There are some very simple ways to improve your communication skills, including reading some of the excellent books on the subject or taking a short class in something like Powerful Non-Defensive Communication or Non-Violent Communication. If you have a long-term, relatively complex sharing arrangement like co-housing, you might all agree to take a class together, so that you have a common understanding about how you want to relate to one another.

Whether you take a class, read a book, or just make agreements with your sharing partners about how you want to relate to one another, the first rule of good communication is to always give the other person the benefit of the doubt. Your reasons for sharing are probably grounded in common values and a desire for a kinder, more connected world. You can manifest that in how you act toward your fellow sharers, just as sharing itself manifests human connection and caring. By always offering the benefit of the doubt, and with just a small amount of effort, you can have a sharing arrangement that is harmonious and rewarding.

This article was first published on Shareable.net: When the Sharing Hits the Fan

Sample Car Sharing Agreement

Share a car with a friend or neighbor! Click here for a sample agreement you can use to manage the terms of your co-ownership and shared use.

Sample Ride Sharing Agreement

Here’s an agreement you can use to make sure that members of your carpool group are on the same page about responsibilities, shared costs, insurance, and so on.

Sample Yard Sharing Agreement

If you have a good relationship with your neighbor and you both own your homes (or have the blessing of your landlords), you can expand your yard space by taking down the fence between your yard and your neighbor’s.  Here’s a sample agreement you can use for your yard sharing arrangement.

Sample Office Sharing Agreement

Many small businesses and entrepreneurs use commercial space to house their operations, and sharing these work spaces is often a smart business decision.  And, once you start sharing space with others, it will be much easier to start other types of sharing, like tools, storage space, subscriptions, or employees.

Sample Babysitting Cooperative Agreement

A community babysitting cooperative often refers to an arrangement in which families share child care without any money changing hands. Instead, the care itself is the currency of exchange. For example, in many babysitting cooperatives, families earn points for providing care and spend points on care for their own kids. Points are typically assigned to each half hour or hour of care.

Anyone with a mature fruit tree is familiar with the annual quandaries: How do you get all that fruit out of the tree and what do you do with 500 plums? If you’ve ever tried to preserve, freeze, and eat it all yourself, you probably got plum tired! Most fruit trees produce a lot of fruit – 300 peaches, 400 apples, and more lemons than most people know what to do with.

This is where sharing saves the day. Cooperating with others to harvest, preserve, distribute, and eat the fruit can be a fun and fruitful activity. And, it saves you from trying to use up all that fruit through “creative” recipes, fruit-only diets, and strong-arming neighbors and friends to take some off your hands, which brings to mind Garrison Keillor‘s joke: “Why do the inhabitants of Lake Wobegon lock their cars in the month of August? So their neighbors won’t leave bags of zucchini on the back seat.”

Here are the steps you’ll need to take to start a neighborhood fruit tree harvest.

• Go door-to-door to find volunteers and do an inventory of neighborhood trees and berry bushes.
• If tree owners want help harvesting, have them sign a harvest agreement (see below). Find out when their fruit is in season.
• Schedule some fruit picking days. For example, you might plan to have volunteers meet at a designated spot every other Saturday (or even weekly), then begin the neighborhood rounds. Be sure tree-owners know when you’ll be visiting their house.
• Get some extension fruit-pickers (long poles with hooks and baskets at the end) or borrow a sturdy ladder or two. A tarp is also useful for catching fruit shaken off a tree.
• Decide what to do with the fruit. You should give some to the neighbors who own the tree, if they want it. The rest can be delivered to other neighbors, donated to charity, preserved, frozen, or used for a pie-baking party.
• During the off-season, organize a neighborhood fruit-tree pruning project. The tree will show its appreciation by giving healthy and plentiful fruit. If everyone takes part, it’ll be quick, easy, and fun.

Liability Concerns

Homeowners may be concerned about the risk they could be taking in letting someone harvest their fruit. What if a fruit harvester is injured or someone gets sick from eating the fruit? There isn’t a simple answer to the question of who will be liable for injuries like these. In part, it depends on how the person is injured.

One way to significantly reduce the risk is to use extension fruit pickers rather than ladders. Homeowners should also take care to eliminate all hazards in the yard, such as holes, sharp objects, biting dogs, and so on. And, if there are any unavoidable risks, like a rickety fence or a sharply sloping hillside, the owner should let the harvesters know up front.

Homeowners who donate all of their fruit to non-profits are probably protected from liability from injuries that befall fruit pickers on their property, and for illness stemming from eating the fruit. Every state has a Good Samaritan Food Donation law protecting people from liability for donating apparently wholesome food to a nonprofit, unless the injury involved gross negligence on the part of the donor. A “nonprofit organization,” for the purpose of this law, is a group that operates for religious, charitable, or educational purposes, and does not provide net earnings to, or operate in any other manner that inures to the benefit of, any officer, employee, or shareholder of the organization. The nonprofit doesn’t have to be a registered corporation. It could be an unincorporated group, as long as the group is picking the fruit for charitable purposes, not to provide significant benefit to themselves. In other words, it could be your group.

Whether or not you believe that your group meets the above definition of a nonprofit organization, a liability waiver is always a good idea. The waiver won’t always guarantee that the homeowner will avoid legal responsibility for injuries arising from the harvest, but it will likely provide the homeowner with some level of protection.

Fruit Harvest Agreement

It’s a good idea to use a written agreement to harvest fruit from someone’s property. The agreement should set some ground rules, specify dates and times for harvesting, and address liability concerns. Here’s an agreement that could be used for a fruit harvest.

Fruit Harvest Agreement

This agreement is between the Neighborhood Fruit Harvest Group (“Harvesters”) and __________________________ (“Owner”). We enter into this agreement to allow Harvesters to pick fruit from Owner’s fruit tree(s) and bushes.

1. On the following dates and times, Harvesters will pick the following fruit:

[Date]_____________________: Harvesters will pick ______________________.

[Date]_____________________: Harvesters will pick ______________________

[Date]_____________________: Harvesters will pick ______________________.

2. Check one of the following:

____ It is ok for Harvesters to enter the yard when Owner is not home. If owner is not home, Harvesters should _____________________ [Describe procedures, such as “close the gate behind them.”]

____ Harvesters should enter the yard only when Owner is at home.

3. Harvesters will follow these rules when in Owner’s yard:

_______________________________________________

________________________________________________________ [Describe rules, such as “Harvesters will not smoke;” “Harvesters will not make unnecessary noise while in the yard;” “Harvesters will take care to not damage flower beds or break any branches of the fruit trees.”]

4. Harvesters will pick all fruit that appears ready to be picked and leave less mature fruit on the tree.

5. Harvesters will take care to avoid damaging the tree or breaking branches.

6. Harvesters will give ________________ [amount] of fruit to Owner.

7. Harvesters may do the following with the remainder of the fruit. (Check all that apply.)

____ Give fruit to other neighbors

____ Donate fruit to a food bank or other charity

____ Consume the fruit

____ Preserve or prepare the fruit, to eat or share.

8. Harvesters will take reasonable steps to ensure that the fruit is not wasted.

9. Harvesters will use all proper care and safety precautions when climbing trees and ladders. (Or: Harvesters will not climb the trees or use ladders. Harvesters will use extension fruit pickers, which they will provide.)

10. Owner does not ask for any compensation.

11. Harvesters, as consideration for the right to harvest fruit from Owner’s tree(s), agree not to make a claim against or sue Owner for injury, loss, or damage that occurs during fruit harvest and/or consumption of Owner’s fruit, including injury, loss, or damage arising from the negligence of Owner. Harvesters agree to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend Owner from all claims, liability, or demands that Harvesters or any third party may have or in the future make against Owner for injury, loss, or damage arising from harvesting and/or consuming fruit from Owner’s trees, including from food borne illness.

[Production: please insert lines for dates and signatures of parties.]

HARVESTERS:

Name:

Signature:
On behalf of Neighborhood Fruit Harvest Group

Date:

OWNER(S):

Name:

Signature:

Date:

Name:

Signature:

Date:

This post has is adapted from: The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community, by Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow (Nolo 2009)

Sharing Solution co-author Janelle Orsi has published a new book:

Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies (ABA Books 2012)

What People are Saying

“This monumental treatise defines, legitimates, and elaborates the key legal challenges facing U.S. new economy advocates, and in terms that even non-lawyers can understand.  Whatever your angle – cooperatives, cohousing, alternative currencies, CSAs, social enterprise, crowdfunding – this book belongs front and center on your desk.”

-  Michael Shuman, JD, author of Local Dollars, Local Sense and The Small-Mart Revolution

“Every once in a while someone sees the emerging pattern of a new order of things and is able to bring conceptual clarity and useful tools to it, thus defining a new field. That is what Janelle Orsi has done in her remarkable book on the sharing economy.”

- James Gustave Speth, JD, author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy (Yale Press, 2012)

“A unique and indispensable handbook for anyone working in the field of alternative ownership design. We’ve long needed this book, and at last it’s here.”

- Marjorie Kelly, Fellow, Tellus Institute, and Director of Ownership Strategy, Cutting Edge Capital; author of Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution

“As Orsi notes in this invaluable book, lawyers often ‘work for firms that grease the wheels of the very economic system that is causing the widespread ecological and social distress.’  But this does not have to be the case!  In Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy, she and her contributing co-authors provide an impressive roadmap to a range of innovative legal forms that can help communities build wealth and create the building blocks of a new economy.”

- Gar Alperovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalism, and Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy, University of Maryland

“This is a book for those who have hoped and dreamed of a way to practice law that was good for lawyers, clients and the planet.”

- J. Kim Wright, JD,  Founder of Cutting Edge Law & Author of Lawyers as Peacemakers, Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law

“This book contains a wealth of substantive information and practical advice for any lawyer interested in participating in and creating more collaborative communities and a more sharing world.”

 - Emily Doskow, JD, co-author of Making It Legal: A Guide to Same-Sex Marriage, Domestic Partnership & Civil Unions, and The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Building Community

“Janelle Orsi is a visionary.  Practicing Law in a Sharing Economy is an eye-opening work and an outstanding resource that belongs on the bookshelves of every attorney and law student who wants to become part of the growing movement to build sustainable, collaborative economies.”

- Don De Leon, JD, www.GrassrootsLawyers.com

“Can a sharing economy emerge from and transform capitalism?  Janelle Orsi’s brilliant exegesis argues it can.  Her book is a welcome clarion call to lawyers to learn and apply the rules that can support new forms of sharing and cooperation and to identify and change the rules that could inhibit or even endanger their continued growth.”

- David Morris, co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, author of Self Reliant Cities: Energy and the Transformation of Urban America, and Seeing the Light: Regaining Control of Our Electricity System

About the Book

To most law students and lawyers, practicing transactional law isn’t an obvious path to saving the world. But as the world’s economic and ecological meltdowns demand that we redesign our livelihoods, our enterprises, our communities, our organizations, our food system, our housing, and much more, transactional lawyers are needed, en masse, to aid in an epic reinvention of our economic system.

This reinvention is referred to by many names—the “sharing economy,” the “grassroots economy,” the “new economy.” This new economy facilitates community ownership, localized production, sharing, cooperation, small scale enterprise, and the regeneration of economic and natural abundance. Sharing economy lawyers make the exploding numbers of social enterprises, cooperatives, urban farms, cohousing communities, time banks, local currencies, and the vast array of unique organizations arising from the sharing economy possible and legal.

There are nine primary areas of work that sharing economy lawyers should become familiar with, and each is addressed in a chapter of Practicing Law in the Sharing Economy:

• Designing and Drafting Agreements
• Choosing, Forming, and Structuring Entities
• Advising on the Legalities and Taxation of Exchange
• Navigating Securities Regulations
• Navigating Employment Regulations
• Navigating Regulations on Production and Commerce
• Managing Relationships with and Use of Land
• Managing Intellectual Property
• Managing Risk

The work of lawyers helping to build the sharing economy will often be challenging, but will always be interesting and demand creativity. Perhaps best of all, these lawyers will contribute greatly to the creation of a world in which innumerable people have now decided they want to live.

Additional Contributors

• Jenny Kassan, CEO of Cutting Edge Capital, on securities law, entities/organizations, and barter exchanges
• Inder Comar, on intellectual property
• Linda Barrera, Attorney at Law, on community energy
• Edgar S. Cahn, on time banking
• Marjorie Kelly, on entity design
• Brian Howe, Attorney at Law, on Washington social enterprise entities
• Daniel Fireside, Capital Coordinator for Equal Exchange, on corporate social responsibility
• Janelle J. Smith, on community-owned enterprise and local currencies
• Brendan Conley, on law collectives
• Christen Lee, on 501(c)(3) law firms
• Loren Rodgers, Executive Director of the National Center for Employee Ownership, on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
• Clementine Blazy, on social enterprise in France
• Mike Leung, on the proposed Worker Cooperative Federal Credit Union (unchartered)
• Wesley Roe, William G. Sommers, and Marjorie Lakin Erickson, on the Permaculture Credit Union
• Tree Bressen, on consensus policies
• Gaya Erlandson, on sociocracy/dynamic governance
• Gordon Ng, on local currencies
• Julie Pennington, on zoning and shared housing

If you start a neighborhood stuff sharing group, it’s a good idea to have a written member agreement, to make sure that everyone understands how the arrangement works. The agreement below also clarifies what will happen if property is damaged or a member is injured. Because group members will probably come and go, having a written agreement encourages consistency and continuity in how your group operates.

Form: Stuff to Lend and Borrow

Name:___________________________________________________

Address: _________________________________________________

Phone:___________________________________________________

Email: ___________________________________________________

Please list all items you are willing to lend, as well as items you would be interested in obtaining by sharing or borrowing them from others. If an item cannot be moved, but you are willing to let people use it in your house or yard, please list this in the second column. For items that you would be willing to lend, please note any limitations. For example, if you will lend your vacuum cleaner only for an hour at a time, or if you will lend your ceramics wheel only to experienced users, please note this.

Sample “Stuff” Sharing Group Member Agreement

This agreement is between all members of the East Lilburn Stuff Share Group (“the Group”). By signing this Agreement, each member agrees to the terms of this Agreement, as follows:

1. PURPOSE: We have formed this Group to help neighborhood residents save money, meet their household needs, and consume less by providing an easy way for people to share household goods, otherwise known as “stuff.”
2. DEFINITION OF “STUFF:” “Stuff” includes many kinds of useful items, including appliances, clothes, books, tools, electronics, toys, and so on.
3. SHARED PROPERTY: The shared stuff is described in the attached Stuff Master List and on the Group’s password-protected website. Upon joining the Group, each member will fill out the “Personal Stuff List,” where the member will list all items that member is willing to share, any limitations related to borrowing or using item, and items that member is interested in borrowing or acquiring with others.
4. OWNERSHIP: All stuff is and will remain the separate property of its owner. No items will be owned collectively by the Group, unless it is specifically given to the Group or acquired by the Group for the purpose of collective ownership.
5. MEMBER QUALIFICATIONS: Membership is open to anyone who is at least 13 years old and lives within the section ofEast Lilburnbordered on the north byPrecita Avenue, on the south byWard Road, on the east byClemonsville Roadand on the west byAbby Road. This encompasses approximately 80 households. At our annual meeting, we may consider whether to expand.
6. STRUCTURE: We are an unincorporated association. We do not intend to enter into a partnership or form an incorporated entity.
7. DECISIONS: We will hold an annual meeting and block party in the summer. All members will be invited to the meeting, to be held during the hour prior to the start of the block party. At each annual meeting, members present will elect a Stuff Share Board of five members. Major decisions regarding the structure and size of the Group will be thoroughly discussed and decided by a majority vote of the membership. Decisions about minor and day-to-day issues, such as how to organize stuff, will be made by the Board.
8. STUFF SHARE BOARD MEMBER RESPONSIBILITIES: Members of the Stuff Share Board will be responsible for recruiting new members, processing Member Agreements and Personal Stuff Lists, and updating the Stuff Master List and website at least once every three months. Board members will also be responsible for planning the annual party.
9. MEMBER RESPONSIBILITIES: Members are responsible for updating their Personal Stuff Lists as necessary and treating borrowed stuff with care.
10. PROCEDURES: To borrow an item, the borrowing member should find the item on the Stuff List and contact the member that is offering the item. The borrowing member should describe how the item will be used. The offering member may agree to or decline the loan. The borrowing and offering members may decide together the length of the loan and any other terms of the loan, including appropriate and inappropriate uses of the item.
11. COSTS: There is no cost to join the Group, although members may be asked to make a small contribution to pay for the party. Members do not enter into this agreement with the intent to profit. As a general rule, members will not charge for the use of items they lend. However, if use of an item will entail an expense for the owner (such as gasoline for the leafblower), the borrower and lender may agree on a way to compensate the lender.
12. DAMAGED OR LOST ITEMS: In the event than an item is lost or damaged while in possession by a borrower, the borrower and lender will decide together on an appropriate remedy or compensation. As a general rule, borrowers should be expected to compensate lenders for the value of the item lost or damaged, not necessarily the replacement value.
13. INDEMNIFICATION AND RELEASE OF LIABILITY: All borrowing members, as consideration for borrowing an item from an offering member, agree not to make a claim against or sue an offering member for injury, loss, or damage that results from borrowing and/or using the item, including injury, loss, or damage arising from the negligence of the offering member. Borrowing members agree to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend offering members from all claims, liability, or demands that the borrowing member or any third party may have or in the future make against the offering member for injury, loss, or damage arising from the borrowing member’s use of the offering member’s property.
14. DISPUTE RESOLUTION: If a conflict or dispute arises between members and they are unable to resolve it through discussion, members agree to use mediation to attempt to resolve the dispute. All mediation services will be paid for by the members involved in the dispute.
15. PROCEDURE FOR WITHDRAWING FROM THE GROUP OR EXPELLING MEMBERS: Anyone can withdraw from the Group at any time by providing written or email notice to the Board. Within a reasonable amount of time, Board members will remove that member’s name from the member list and will remove that member’s items from the Stuff Master List. Members may be involuntarily removed from the group by a 3/4 vote of membership.
16. DISSOLVING THE GROUP: The Group will remain in operation as long as there are members interested in keeping it going. We may decide to dissolve the Group by a unanimous vote of active members or by a unanimous minus one vote. If, at the time of dissolution, the Group owns items collectively, we will decide how to distribute those items. We may decide to sell these items and split the proceeds, or simply give those items to individual members, if at least 2/3 of the Group agrees.

This post has is adapted from: The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community, by Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow (Nolo 2009)

□   1. Why are we sharing?

• What are our personal, practical, financial, or environmental goals?
• What do we each need or want to get out of the sharing arrangement?

□   2. What are we sharing?

• And for that matter, what are we not sharing?

□   3. Whom are we sharing with?

• Do our cosharers need to meet any particular qualifications?

□   4. How many people are we sharing with?

• What are the pros and cons of having a large or small sharing group?

□   5. How will the timing of our arrangement work?

• When will it stop and start?
• Will it happen in phases?

□   6. Who owns the shared item(s)?

• Will one person own it and let others use it?
• Will we each own specific items or parts of the property?
• Will we each own a percentage share of the whole property?  If so, in what proportions?

□   7. Should we form a separate legal entity, such as a nonprofit organization?

□   8. Should our group have a name, and what should we call ourselves?

□   9. What do we get to do?

• What benefits or services to we get from this sharing arrangement?
• How much can we use the shared item(s) or services?

□   10. How will we make decisions?

• Will we all take part in decision-making or delegate decisions to a small group?
• Do we all have equal decision making power?
• Must all decisions be unanimous or made by majority vote?

□   11. What responsibilities will each of us have?

• Will we assign roles and tasks?
• Will we rotate responsibilities?
• Will anyone receive extra benefits in return for extra responsibilities?

□   12. What are the rules for using our shared property or meeting our shared responsibilities?

□   13. How will we handle administrative matters like scheduling, communication, and record

keeping?

□   14. How will we divide expenses?

• Will there be initial buy-in or start-up contributions? Will we need any loans?
• How will we divide overhead and variable costs?
• How will we collect money? Through regular dues or by reckoning expenses in some other way?  Will we start a bank account?
• What kinds of unexpected costs could arise and how will we prepare for them?
• Who will keep track of our money?
• What happens if a member cannot pay?

□   15. How will we manage risk and liability?

• What risks are involved in our sharing arrangement and how can we reduce them?
• How is the risk distributed (i.e., who could suffer loss or be liable for damages)?
• Do we want to redistribute risk by making agreements with each other or purchasing insurance?

□   16. Are there legal requirements we need to follow?

• Are there any required licenses or permits?
• Will this bring up any tax or employment law questions?
• Are there any legal roadblocks arising from zoning laws or private land covenants?
• What steps must we take to become a legal entity?

□   17. How will we resolve conflicts or disputes?

□   18. How will we bring new people into the group?

• What procedures will new members follow?
• How will new members be oriented?
• What is our policy on guests?

□   19. How can a member leave the group?

• What steps must be taken when a member leaves voluntarily?
• Under what circumstances can a member be asked to leave the group?

□   20. How do we end the sharing arrangement?

This post has is adapted from: The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community, by Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow (Nolo 2009)