Last week upon final passage by Congress, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA or Act) into law.[1] The $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill provides a comprehensive package of available funds to qualifying individuals and businesses in the form of direct payments, industry-specific grants, and tax credits ...
I. Introduction and overview of the issues Many lawsuits involve both covered and uncovered losses. In nearly every state, if a complaint alleges both covered and uncovered claims, the insurer is obligated to defend the entire suit. E.g., Liberty Mut. Fire Ins. Co. v. Copart of Conn., Inc., 75 F.4th 522, 529 (5th Cir. 2023) (Texas law); Buss v. Superior Court, 16 Cal.4th 35, 48, 939 P.2d 766 (1997); General Agents Ins. Co. of America, Inc. v. Midwest Sporting Goods Co., 215 Ill ...
From optimizing revenue to refining strategy and decision-making and safeguarding data – AI's potential benefits for businesses and their management are enormous. However, businesses and their corporate fiduciaries face an immense Goldilocks problem: too little reliance on AI can leave a company behind its competitors and breach standards of care ...
Employers in Kentucky are now expressly permitted to require an employee or prospective employee to agree to arbitrate or engage in some form of alternative dispute resolution as a condition of employment. On March 25, 2019, Gov. Matt Bevin signed a statutory amendment authorizing this change to KRS § 336.700. This law applies retroactively to agreements that have already been executed by employees before March 25, 2019. This amended statute does a number of things ...
In order to accomplish this important task, the following are steps to follow: A. Make a list of other sides’ interest. It will help your remember them and stimulate ideas for how to meet such needs B. Communicate your interests when they are in conflict. Help the other side to see just how important and legitimate your interests are. Be specific and objective. Convince them they would feel the same in your shoes and recognize how you might feel in their shoes ...
On Dec. 18, 2019, the Fifth Circuit in Texas, et al. v. United States, et al. declared the Affordable Care Act’s1 (ACA’s) individual mandate unconstitutional. This decision is contrary to the controlling precedent established by the United States Supreme Court in NFIB v. Sebelius2, which upheld the ACA’s individual mandate as a permissible tax ...
The 2019 proxy season marked a year of continued changing voting behavior. Though patterns and trends of the past season do not seem to indicate changes beyond marginal impact, the 2019 season can serve to set expectations for the 2020 proxy season ...
Now that the holidays are in the rearview and business as usual has begun to pick up where it left off, it’s time for public companies to do a deep download of key securities law updates and business developments of the past year so they are positioned for success in 2019. Below is a review of the 2018 proxy season, along with a summary of new and anticipated changes that may impact reporting and disclosure requirements for the 2019 proxy season ...
With a new proxy season fast approaching, it’s time for public companies to do a deep download of key securities law updates and business developments of the past year so the company is positioned for success in 2018. Below is a review of the 2017 proxy season, along with a summary of new and anticipated changes that may impact reporting and disclosure requirements for the upcoming 2018 proxy season ...
Summary The 2022 proxy season will continue to be affected by the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, and will be predominantly shaped by the landmark events of the 2021 proxy season, where ESG matters moved from unconventional to mainstream, and women held a historic amount of board seats of the Russell 3000 companies ...
This is a summary of the Annual Report. Click here to access the full guide. The 2020 proxy season shareholder proposals were already submitted before the COVID-19 shadow loomed large over the season; however, such shadow likely impacted how shareholders voted on the proposals themselves, impacted business throughout 2020, and continues to jolt 2021 and the forthcoming 2021 proxy season ...
In FanDuel, Inc., v. Interactive Games LLC, No. 2019-1393 (Fed. Cir. July 29, 2020), the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) did not violate the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by rejecting the prior-art combination on which it instituted inter parties review (IPR). The relevant patent claims related to a method of gambling on a mobile device ...
Many businesses rely upon restrictive covenants with their employees. These include noncompete agreements, nonsolicitation agreements and confidentiality agreements. These agreements are intended to ensure that the investment a business makes in its employees, its customer relationships and confidential information are adequately protected. Recently, multiple new rules have been proposed that could see many of these agreements ruled unlawful and unenforceable in the United States ...
In M&K Holdings, Inc., v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., 2020-1160 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 1, 2021), the Federal Circuit found that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by finding a patent claim unpatentable using a “markedly” different theory from the one the patent challenger presented. In this case, the patent challenger (i.e ...
Clients unfamiliar with patent prosecution are often surprised to learn that few patent applications receive a first-action allowance, or FAA. There are even rankings of law firms that receive the most FAAs each year. But what does an FAA signify? Is it a cause to celebrate, or to conduct a post-mortem? The answer is, of course, “it depends ...
In United States v. United States ex rel. Thrower, No. 18-16408, on November 14, a panel of the Ninth Circuit gave a skeptical reception to the Department of Justice (DOJ) argument that the district court’s denial of the government’s motion to dismiss a False Claims Act (FCA) qui tam complaint against Academy Mortgage Corporation (Academy) invaded the government’s “prosecutorial discretion ...
As seen in Property Casualty 360: 1. Policies & procedures The methods employees utilize to steal from their employers are fairly common. Some examples include falsifying expenses, inflating expenses, double billing expenses, misusing petty cash accounts, using the company credit card for personal expenses, routing money to fictitious vendors, fabricating invoices, and putting friends and family on the payroll ...
Hiring an employee is exciting — it’s an opportunity for both employer and prospective employee to develop a mutually beneficial and profitable relationship. However, when done incorrectly, hiring can create liability. To avoid turning a potentially promising encounter into a problematic one, VARs and MSPs need to adhere to a few best practices. Ask the right questions. Candidates should be asked similar questions geared toward determining if they can perform the job ...
On June 15, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States released its long-awaited decision in American Hospital Association v. Becerra in which it unanimously held that the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) overstepped its statutory authority by cutting 340B-related reimbursement to hospitals ...
On April 1, 2019, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) launched a secure website that lists the maximum price drug manufacturers may charge 340B-covered entities for 340B-eligible drug purchases (the 340B Ceiling Price Site). Drug manufacturers and 340B-covered entities may access the 340B Ceiling Price Site through their HRSA Office of Pharmacy Affairs information system (the 340B OPAIS) account here: https://340bopais.hrsa ...
As U.S. hospitals and health clinics continue preparing for novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patient surges, federal regulatory agencies are developing resources to help health care providers comply with myriad regulatory requirements. In this context, the U.S ...
This week, I caught up with patent attorneys Jonathan D’Silva and Bryan Walker of MacDonald Illig Jones & Britton, LLP to hear their perspectives on some key strategic intellectual property (IP) legal issues ...
The False Claims Act (FCA) was enacted to punish and deter fraud against the United States, and to recover moneys obtained through such fraud. Whether an alleged fraud was actually against the United States is a threshold question not posed in the typical FCA case, where allegations usually involve claims for payment submitted to the Army, Navy, Medicare, or other entity clearly part of the federal government. But some cases are not so clear ...
Fintech companies and their partners are on alert as a flurry of new state and federal cybersecurity requirements take effect. The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) both recently finalized changes that will create additional compliance obligations, expand existing regulations to new entities and mandate that banks and fintech firms move quickly to update their cybersecurity policies and incident-response capabilities ...
In some ways, the 2023 proxy season might be met with a sigh of relief as some extraneous factors impacting United States capital markets—such as the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict—have stabilized in terms of their increased effect. In that same vein, some changes that may have once been viewed as “trends” in disclosure are very much here to stay ...
