During this turbulent period, now is the time to evaluate your facility's admission procedures and paperwork, especially your arbitration agreement. You want to make sure that in the event of litigation they will withstand strict scrutiny by the court. Failure to do so may have dire consequences that will leave your facility vulnerable. If your admission procedures and paperwork are not sufficiently robust, a court will not enforce your facility's arbitration agreement ...
One of the essential components of organizing sport events is the ticketing system. Usually implemented by the Organizing Committees (OC), it is not unusual that these agreements contravene EC Law. In the Italy 1990 World Cup, the OC entered into a worldwide exclusive agreement of ground entrance tickets with a single tour travel agency for the purpose of putting together package tours for the event ...
Just weeks into the new Administration, perhaps the only certain thing is that there will be uncertainty as the Administration makes its mark and works to fulfill campaign promises. Meanwhile, restaurant chains and food companies are trying to allocate resources to best address business priorities and hot legal issues ...
Twenty months in, Covid-19 continues to demand that we exercise flexibility and adaptation as it identifies winners and losers. The pandemic has had a significant impact on the practice of law and businesses that are involved in, or contemplating, litigation. Those who have been involved in litigation know that it can be expensive in “normal” times. Here are three ways the pandemic has impacted the costs associated with litigation. Time to trial ...
Celebrity chef restaurants, locally inspired food and beverage offerings, communal social spaces, and in-room and hotel-led fitness options–these trends represent a transformation of the traditional hotel model. Amenity preferences, particularly for authentic, one-of-a-kind social experiences, continue to segment the hospitality industry. Many of the large hotel chains have countered with a series of new boutique-style brands that cater to individuality of the customer and locale ...
Much of the media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two months has focused on the loss of business sustained by restaurants, hotels and retail. Little attention has been paid to healthcare providers—at least those who are not valiantly staffing emergency rooms and intensive care units treating those patients stricken by the coronavirus ...
Coming to Grips with Hospital Price Transparency – DC Circuit Rejects American Hospital Association’s Effort to Invalidate Price Transparency Requirements Rule Since 2010, Section 2718(e) of the Public Health Service Act has required hospitals to establish and publish annually “a list of the hospital’s standard charges for items and services provided by the hospital ...
The Affordable Care Act ("ACA") is alive and well, despite renewed legal challenges and the elimination of the “individual mandate” beginning next year. While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the tax penalty for individuals who don’t have health coverage to $0, effective for 2019, employers continue to be subject to penalties for failing to comply with certain ACA rules ...
Yesterday, in Romag Fasteners, Inc. v. Fossil, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that a plaintiff in a trademark infringement suit is not required to show that the infringing defendant acted “willfully” to avail itself of the Lanham Act’s disgorgement remedy ...
Do social media users have a fair choice between giving up their privacy and paying a subscription fee? The European Data Protection Board has given its opinion on what’s fair for large platforms in the latest shake up of personalised online advertising. When it comes to justifying processing personal data for targeted advertising under EU data protection laws, Meta (along with other online platforms) has been feeling the squeeze ...
THREE KEY THINGS IN HEALTH CAREFrom the Health Care Practice of Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP HCA Healthcare’s announcement that it will be returning $1.6 billion in Provider Relief Funds illustrates the challenges facing providers in accounting for PRFs under shifting guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ...
Congress reached agreement on the third round of coronavirus-related relief measures (totaling approximately $900 Billion) as this issue was being written. The relevant statutory language is part of the massive Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (the “Act”) and was released on December 21, 2020. Passage by the House and Senate was swift, and approval by the President is expected ...
Over the past year, the Tribunal administratif du Québec (TAQ) has issued several rulings dealing with oversight of the medical practice of professionals working in health and social services institutions. Several of these rulings will be of interest to institutions since they set out principles that tend to confirm the existence of a form of management rights over physicians, despite the lack of the traditional relationship of subordination between such institutions and their physicians ...
Medical Cannabis approvals in the City have been the subject of intense negotiations, hearings, and appeals in the last two months. First, our law firm assisted the Apothecarium - Sunset (an additional location in the Sunset District for the medical cannabis dispensary called The Apothecarium currently near the Castro), in obtaining an approval at the Planning Commission ...
Individuals who participated in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (“CMS”) Quality Payment Program Merit-based Incentive Payment System (“MIPS”) in 2019 may request a Targeted Review of their performance feedback, including their MIPS final score and payment adjustment factor at the Quality Payment Program website. In July, CMS released the MIPS Performance Feedback and scores for eligible providers ...
On September 20, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced settlements with three Boston hospitals for disclosing Protected Health Information (PHI) to ABC News documentary filmcrews.[i] In total, the hospitals paid OCR $999,000 to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule ...
Lavery is closely monitoring developments in consumer class actions and, in order to keep the business sector informed on the subject, publishes regular newsletters on recent case law and legislative changes that are likely to affect, if not transform, business practices. INTRODUCTION In Fortin v. Mazda Canada Inc ...
Just before Americans sat down to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends, with many of them probably choosing to overlook the total calorie count of those meals, the FDA released the long awaited rule on nutritional labeling applicable to chain restaurants and other venues serving restaurant type food (79 FR 71156). The FDA’s final menu labeling rule implements certain amendments to the Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act ("FD&C Act") that were part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 ...
The COVID-19 Public Inquiry presents a key growth area for litigation in the medium to long term. Here, Matthew MacLachlan considers key litigation risks, potential parties and emerging themes ...
On 12 May 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed to holding a Public Inquiry into COVID-19 that will place "the state's actions under the microscope". Demonstrating that it is independent, objective and fair is fundamental to an Inquiry’s purpose. We take a look at the extent to which the State can effectively examine itself in a Public Inquiry when it has ultimate responsibility for determining the remit, and therefore inevitably the scope of any conclusions ...
From Dominic Cummings to Nicola Sturgeon, 2023 was a noisy, headline-grabbing year for the UK’s public inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic. What’s coming in 2024? And what does it mean for businesses? In terms of media exposure, the first full year in the life of the UK’s official Covid-19 Inquiry was a resounding success ...
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry (“the Inquiry”) opened its third Module on 8 November 2022, along with the application process for Core Participant (“CP”) status. Module 3 will consider the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the healthcare sector in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland ...
Since March 2020, the United States and Canada have agreed upon mutually reciprocal COVID-19 related travel restrictions. U.S. and Canadian officials mutually determined that “non-essential” travel between the U.S. and Canada “poses additional risk of transmission and spread of the virus associated with COVID-19 and places the populace of both nations at increased risk of contracting the virus associated with COVID-19 ...
