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 ...
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 ...
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (“ENDA”) is federal legislation that would prohibit employers from discriminating against potential or actual employees during hiring and employment based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Act defines sexual orientation as “homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality ...
On Oct. 22, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) violated the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by granting a right of way for the Ruby Pipeline project. Center for Biological Diversity v. Bureau of Land Management, No. 10-72356 (9th Cir. Oct. 22, 2012) ...
As described in our earlierclient alert, dated September 13, 2016, under certain specific circumstances, section 1129 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) permits a bankruptcy court to confirm a Chapter 11 plan and rewrite the terms of a debt instrument (including mortgage debt or mezzanine debt), including the interest, amortization, and maturity ...
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 ...
A recent decision by a New Jersey bankruptcy court scrambles the law regarding rejected trademark licenses.1 Crumbs was a multi-location bakery that also licensed its trademarks and trade secrets to third parties. In July of 2014 Crumbs filed a Chapter 11 reorganization case and in August of 2014 the court entered an order selling substantially all of the assets of Crumbs to LFAC2 free and clear of liens, claims, encumbrances, and interests ...
What is litigation funding and why is it attractive? Also known as legal finance or litigation finance, third party funding – historically – was considered an improper or corrupting influence on litigation. These old offences of champerty and maintenance were first decriminalised in England in 1967 ...
On December 27, 2020, President Trump signed the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021” into law. Most referred to this as the Coronavirus Relief Bill and thought that it only contained a stimulus package. However, within it, were also changes to intellectual property law ...
When the 2019-2020 legislative session began, no one could have predicted what challenges Pennsylvania and the General Assembly would encounter with the outbreak of COVID-19. The rules changed to permit remote voting, and the plan for the session shifted to a focus on the response to COVID-19. The 12-month budget was replaced with a five-month budget to allow additional time to assess the financial damage ...
Houston Business Journal Internal Revenue Code section 179 contains an important benefit for small businesses—the ability to completely expense the costs of certain assets. In general, businesses who purchase assets with a useful life of greater than one year are required to depreciate the cost of the property over a number of years. Section 179, however, allows a business to fully expense the cost of certain qualifying property in the year it is purchased ...
Recognizing that our country -- our “team,” if you will -- is stronger when all our players are on the field and playing to their full potential, our federal and some state governments have developed programs to help disadvantaged entrepreneurs get started on the path of business ownership. In the last issue of The Construct we talked about the Historically Underutilized Business (“HUBZone”) Program ...
On December 24, 2015 Mexico’s Energy Transition Act was published in the Federal Gazette. The Act’s purpose is to regulate: The sustainable use of energy,The obligations of power companies in the area of clean energies, andThe reductions of the polluting emissions of the electric power industry, ensuring the competitiveness of the productive sectors. To read the full alert, click here ...
In February 2020, just prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (Subchapter V) took effect.[1] Subchapter V amends Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code to allow certain individuals and businesses with debts of less than $2,725,625 to file a streamlined Chapter 11 case with the goal to make small business bankruptcies faster and cheaper ...
Pennsylvania law suggests construction defects generally are not considered an "occurrence" under most CGL insurance policies because defects are not true accidents, e.g., a fortuitous event. However, an exception generally exists for products-related claims as opposed to pure defect claims ...
Law firms periodically receive requests for advice from CPAs regarding a client’s need to come into compliance with the relatively new and sometimes confusing “economic nexus” or “Wayfair” rules for selling goods or providing services to customers in another state ...
The B-1 temporary visa category is intended to allow foreign nationals to visit the U.S. for temporary business purposes that do not rise to the level of gainful employment. Given the relative ease of obtaining a B-1 visa compared to other visa categories, some U.S. employers have encouraged or assisted foreign nationals in using the B-1 visa category for activities beyond its intended purpose ...
The purpose of this alert is to provide victims of the Napa/Sonoma fires a checklist to use when seeking recovery from their insurance companies. Property Insurance policies may provide coverage for damage to both your property and your business. Business losses can result from a variety of causes, all of which may be covered under a property policy ...
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 its most basic form, the guaranty is an agreement (importantly it is the guarantor’s separate contract with lender) by one party to be responsible for the debt or obligations of someone else. We all know it and love it – it is the lender’s friend. But like so many friendships, when it is built on a fundamental misunderstanding or problem, a train wreck ensues and we feel the pain ...
On October 20th, the federal government released a final rule and other companion releases relating to Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) under the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), a key component of the Affordable Care Act enacted in March 2010. The proposed rule, issued in March 2011, generated extensive comment from the healthcare industry ...
CMS recently announced yet another delay to the full implementation of “two midnight rule,” which revises its longstanding guidance to hospitals and physicians relating to when hospital inpatient admissions are deemed to be reasonable and necessary for payment under Medicare Part A. Specifically, this latest “delay” is the result of CMS’s extension of the “Probe & Educate Period,” a period of partial non-enforcement for the two midnight rule requirements, until September 30, 2014 ...
