A month after nixing the “objectively reasonable interpretation” (Safeco) defense under the False Claims Act, the Supreme Court has vacated and remanded two other cases for further consideration of the defendant’s subjective state of mind when it filed payment claims with the government. The Fourth Circuit in Sheldon and the Eleventh Circuit in Olhausen will provide the first tests of the High Court’s newly minted FCA intent standard ...
The key issue before the formal body of advisers to the UK sovereign was whether the trustee of a settlement “exercised for a proper purpose” an express power contained in the trust deed to add and exclude discretionary objects, having added a purpose trust as an object and removed all family members comprising the entire class of objects. The Background The trust settlors were two brothers who founded Formosa Plastics Group, one of the largest business conglomerates in Taiwan ...
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. University of North Carolina (collectively “SFFA”) that Harvard and the University of North Carolina (“UNC”) violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by impermissibly considering race when making undergraduate admissions decisions ...
Labour party donor and entrepreneur, Dale Vince, has put the spotlight back on the controversy surrounding the tax treatment of carried interest received by private equity fund managers, by instructing The Good Law Project to serve a “pre-action protocol” letter on HMRC seeking judicial review of its practice of taxing such carried interest as capital gains as opposed to income ...
At the end of its 2023 term, the United States Supreme Court handed down several buzz-worthy decisions. Two opinions may have substantial and lasting impacts on employers and their efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. In Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, the Court addressed religious accommodation and clarified the parameters of its “undue burden” standard set forth in its prior decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U. S. 63 (1977). 2023 U.S. LEXIS 2790 ...
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its much-anticipated decision in Abitron Austria GmbH, et al. (“Abitron et al.”) v. Hetronic International, Inc. (“Hetronic”) regarding the extraterritorial reach of the Lanham Act, the comprehensive trademark statute in the United States ...
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was enacted in 1996 to provide websites with immunity from liability arising from posting third-party content. For a service provider to be immune, however, the information at issue must be provided by another information content provider. This begs the question of whether website operators provide the content on their platforms or act solely as intermediaries for third-party content ...
SyCipLaw’sTax Department has prepared Tax Issues and Practical Solutions(T.I.P.S.) for May. Please read the full text hereor via this link.SyCipLaw’s Tax Department has prepared Tax Issues and Practical Solutions (T.I.P.S ...
In its second major False Claims Act decision in as many weeks, the Supreme Court sided with the Department of Justice in U.S. ex rel. Polansky v. Executive Health Resources, Inc., holding that the government may move to dismiss actions over the objections of the relator (whistleblower) even in cases where the government initially declined to intervene ...
The Supreme Court of the United States has denied a plea[i] to resolve a 20-year circuit split regarding the extent to which the Copyright Act preempts private contracts involving a promise not to copy digital content. The case stemmed from the petitioner Genius’s allegation that Google copied song lyrics from Genius’s website without permission and used them in connection with Google’s competing website ...
Joseph Raczynski joins Paul Caddy to discuss horizon-gazing and what the future might hold. Joseph is a leading technologist and futurist. He speaks globally on subjects like blockchain, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, the Metaverse, NFTs and cybersecurity. Joseph hosts Technology Snippets Today a video podcast series which explores cutting edge technology and innovation ...
The Supreme Court (“Hof van Cassatie/Court of Cassation”) overruled on 26 May 2023 a decision that determined that Article 1722 (old) Civil Code (a partial or total “destruction” of the leased premises) does not apply for the tenant that can not operate its premises due to the measures taken by the Belgian Government in order to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, because there was only a temporary impossibility and thus only a temporary loss of enjoyment ...
More than a month after the G7 meeting in Hiroshima, the EU has reached an agreement on the 11th sanctions package against Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The key focus in the novel sanctions package is the mitigation of diversion and circumvention risks. The 11th sanctions package has been much anticipated since the G7 meeting at the end of May 2023 ...
Krysta Gumbiner is a litigation partner at Dinsmore. She co-wrote this article for DRI's June issue of For The Defense. A surety may allow its bond principal to negotiate settlements with claimants after the surety has received a payment or performance bond claim ...
In Dubin v. United States, the Supreme Court gave a narrowing construction to a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1028A. This statute provides that whomever, “during and in relation to any [predicate offense], knowingly transfers, possesses, or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person” is a guilty of a crime ...
In October 2022, the Virginia Supreme Court decided the case of Hawkins v. Town of South Hill (view the opinion here), which fundamentally alters 40 years of precedent in the Commonwealth concerning what is considered confidential and not subject to production in response to a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request. Earlier this month, the Circuit Court issued its decision on remand in light of the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision in Hawkins ...
While employers cannot police all employee conduct outside the workplace, employee interactions outside of work can – and do – impact the work environment. Indeed, under certain circumstances, inappropriate conduct by an employee outside the workplace may still subject an employer to liability. What constitutes actionable discrimination or harassment, triggering potential employer liability, is often a murky question ...
The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections (SO) to Google over abusive practices in online advertising technology. Uniquely it seems, the Commission has identified in the press release that to remedy the situation the Commission is of the preliminary view that divestment by Google is required. This would be the first example of a proposed break-up of a tech business by the EU under market dominance rules ...
