The Pros And Cons Of Pushing Law

Jessica Dugan
MGMT
Marsland
November 10, 2015
Coogan Law
As recently as the 1930s it was not uncommon to see children in the work force, earning their own wages. It was not until 1908 that the National Child Labor Committee formed. President Roosevelt did not sign the Fair Labor Standards Act until 1938. (Tratner) Today, however, minors in the workforce have strict regulations in place for their protection. In fact before the age of fourteen, minors in the United States are not legally aloud to have a job at all. Nonetheless children under fourteen, some even as young as fifteen days old are working in entertainment. Should minors working in the entertainment industry be protected from potential squandering of their assets by the state and
(Goldfrap) The film became such a success that families in the 1920s knew Coogan’s name the way families knew the name Dakota Fanning or Macaulay Culkin. Jackie Coogan continued his career staring in more film successes such as Oliver Twist and the Rag Man. By the age of eighteen Coogan accumulated an estimated three to four million dollars. When he turned twenty-one he wanted the earnings from his early stardom back from his parents but they denied his request. His mother and stepfather had already spent most of the money Coogan had made and claimed they never agreed to give any of it to Jackie. Since at the time California law did little to govern the income of child entertainers, Coogan was only given half of what was left of his earnings, a total of about one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. Coogan later faced hard financial times. His financial troubles were preventable if his parents had not used his earnings on extravagant purchases, such as fur coats and collectable cars. (Goldfrap) Following Coogan’s case California passed the a law, referred to as Coogan Law, requiring that at least fifteen percent of their earnings be placed in a blocked trust fund protected by the state for any minor living in California, working with in California, or working with a corporation based in California. Additionally, the law allows for parents to sign a
Under these contracts actors were only able to work with that studio. However, the infancy law doctrine states that minors can not be bound by contracts they do not have the capacity to make, allowing child actors to sign studio contracts and void them when they wanted.(Kreig) Section 36 protects the entertainment industry since once the court approves the contract, the minor no longer has right to void the contract based on the argument that they did not have the capacity to make the contract in the first place. This section also is in place to ensure that minors are not entering into contracts that are not in their best