On April 11 2013, the Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue issued Revenue Regulations No 6-2013 (RR 6-2013) amending certain provisions of Revenue Regulations No 6- 2008, which provides for, among other things, therules involving the determination of the fair market value of shares of stock not listed and traded in the local stock exchanges ...
After the Netherlands, Slovakia, and the UK, it is now France’s turn to impose Sunshine-like obligations on the pharmaceutical industry. Soon, similar obligations will apply to all EU countries, after EFPIA, the European trade association for the pharmaceutical industry, adopts a code of conduct on disclosure of transfers of value between pharmaceutical companies and health care professionals or institutions ...
The Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI) has recently introduced a raft of legislation to enhance its existing comprehensive anti-money laundering regime. The provisions largely follow the “Review of Financial Regulation in the Caribbean Overseas Territories and Bermuda” recently conducted for the British Government by KPMG (generally known as “the KPMG Report”) ...
The Budget. The 83rd Texas Legislative Session convened on January 8th with news of a better-than-anticipated revenue estimate, an unusually high number of new and second-term legislators, and less controversy and fanfare than observers have come to expect at the start of the biennial, 140-day process. In mid-March, only days before the bill became due, lawmakers passed and the Governor signed legislation to fill the $4 ...
Earlier this month, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed a suit against Vitas Hospice Services, L.L.C. and its subsidiary entities (“Vitas”) alleging that Vitas submitted false claims for hospice services which were excessive, unnecessary, or not provided, and also alleging that Vitas admitted patients to hospice who were not terminally ill ...
Canada’s new anti-spam law (the CASL) is expected to come into force later this year. This Act is designed to create a safer online environment for individuals and businesses in Canada. From a business perspective, it will change how some routine daily activities – such as distributing commercial electronic messages (CEM) to customers – are executed. Currently, a majority of businesses rely on implied consent when they send CEM to customers ...
Last week, a federal jury in South Carolina found that Tuomey Healthcare System, Inc. violated the Stark Law and the False Claims Act by submitting false claims for reimbursement to the United States, resulting in $39 million in damages to the government. United States ex rel. Drakeford v. Tuomey Healthcare Sys., Inc., No. 3:05-2858-MBS (D.S.C. May 8, 2013) ...
It is expected that Canada's new Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) will come into force later this year, and with it will come significant changes for how businesses and individuals may send people "commercial electronic messages" (CEM), including emails or text messages.CASL aims to create a safer online environment by targeting issues relating to spam, such as unsolicited commercial messages, phishing and unauthorized installation of software ...
Following a month-long retrial, a South Carolina jury has concluded that Tuomey Healthcare System, Inc. (Tuomey) violated the Stark Law and the False Claims Act by illegally paying referring physicians. The jury found that Tuomey’s compensation arrangements with referring physicians were impermissible under the Stark Law, resulting in almost 22,000 false claims and more than $39 million in overpayments ...
Today the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued an Updated Special Advisory Opinion addressing the recommended scope and frequency of exclusion checks of employees and contractors. The Advisory Opinion provides important and practical guidance to assist healthcare providers seeking to protect their businesses against the risk of employing or contracting with excluded individuals and entities ...
It is undeniable that technology and globalization are changing the way lawyers practice law. Technology has not just made people, places, and things much more accessible to us – it has impacted the way we store information and documents, the way we communicate with and advise clients, how we conduct investigations, and how we participate in discovery ...
Here are select February 2013 rulings of the Supreme Court of the Philippines on civil law: Civil Code-Common Carrier; requisite before presumption of negligence arises; bill of lading; interpretation thereof; inherent nature of the subject shipment or its packaging as ground for exempting common carrier from liability; failure to prove negligence does not entitle claimant for damages ...
A jury in the Northern District of California has convicted David Nosal of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) by accessing his former employer’s computer network without authorization to obtain confidential information for use in a competing business. The business community has followed this case closely because it has far-reaching implications for the future application of the CFAA and, more importantly, for companies’ ability to protect their sensitive proprietary data ...
This week, the Ralph Lauren Corporation became the first company to obtain a non-prosecution agreement from the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) investigation. Ralph Lauren also obtained a non-prosecution agreement from the Department of Justice in connection with its investigation of the same FCPA violations ...
On April 17, 2013, the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) released an Updated Provider Self-Disclosure Protocol (SDP), which replaces the original SDP published in 1998. The SDP is used by providers and suppliers to voluntarily disclose violations of the fraud and abuse laws. According to the OIG, it has received more than 800 disclosures since the SDP’s inception, resulting in more than $280 million in recoveries ...
The First Circuit recently reinstated part of a False Claims Act complaint against a drug-testing laboratory, and in so doing, may have limited the reach of the FCA’s public disclosure bar. In U.S. ex rel. Cunningham v. Millennium Labs. of Cal., Inc., 2013 WL 1490435 (1st Cir. April 12, 2013), the First Circuit held that the district court erred in dismissing the entire FCA complaint merely because the action was based in part on prior public disclosures ...
The computer hacking trial of David Nosal is under way in federal district court in California. The trial is being followed with interest in the business community because it is the latest development in a case that highlights an important split in the interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) that has far-reaching ramifications with respect to liability–and protection for companies’ proprietary information ...
The decision of the Indian Supreme Court to deny Novartis’s application for patent protection for an improved version of its patented Glivec drug – the culmination of a seven-year battle - has certainly made the headlines. There are a number of reasons for this. First, Glivec is a well-known drug – described by some as a ‘wonder drug’ – that’s used to combat cancer, including leukaemia and gastro-intestinal cancer ...
You are general counsel of a publicly-traded medical device company. Your company’s Board has identified a publicly-held X-ray and CT scan component manufacturer that it would like to acquire. The target is a Delaware corporation based in California, with additional manufacturing facilities in Utah and Kentucky; within the past three years, it has sold two mothballed manufacturing facilities ...
On March 26, 2013, in the case of Teed v. Thomas & Betts Power Solutions, L.L.C.,1 the Seventh Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Posner, joined at least one other circuit court and a multitude of district courts across the country in extending the federal common law standard for evaluating successor liability to suits brought under the Federal Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) ...
Last week the Delaware Supreme Court held in Pyott v. Louisiana Municipal Police Employees’ Retirement System, ___ A.3d ___, 2013 WL 1364695 (Del. 2013), that a Delaware derivative complaint should have been dismissed after a California federal court entered a judgment dismissing essentially the same complaint brought by different stockholders for failure to plead demand futility ...
On 3 March 2013, the Swiss electorate approved the Minder Initiative, which will fundamentally change the legal framework on executive compensation and other corporate governance matters for Swiss public companies. The implementation of the Minder Initiative will be the task of the Federal Council and the Swiss Parliament ...
Since the announcement of the investigation by the SEC of the CEO of Netflix, Inc. for a July 2012 Facebook post celebrating a company milestone, there has been considerable uncertainty as to whether companies can use social media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, to communicate with investors without violating Regulation Fair Disclosure (“Regulation FD”) ...
