On Monday, August 3, 2020, a New York federal judge issued a decision invalidating portions of the DOL’s regulations implementing the Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (“FFCRA”). The decision’s impact changes the legal landscape employers confront as they strive to comply with the FFCRA—a landscape that is unstable as the DOL and the courts sort out the legality of the disputed regulations ...
In the shadow of COVID-19, company directors are having to take decisions at speed across a range of issues. The government is encouraging companies to help re-open the economy by bringing staff back to their work places. This challenge, alongside others that directors face, must be met against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, the end of the furlough scheme and planning for the repayment of government loans ...
How Wirecard skirted regulatory scrutiny by jurisdiction-shopping and canny intra-group structuring. It would have been the quintessential business success story. Founded in Munich in 1999, this small payment processor for online gambling and pornography sites grew so massive that, by 2018, it had displaced Commerzbank from Germany’s prestigious Dax 30 index. At its peak, the juggernaut was valued at more than €24 billion (S$38.6 billion) ...
The High Court has left the door open for a negligence claim to be pursued against a UK company on behalf of a shipyard worker who fell to his death dismantling an oil tanker at a Bangladeshi yard.1 The vessel had been sold to a buyer on terms requiring it to be scrapped in an environmentally sound manner and in accordance with good health and safety practices ...
On Monday July 27th, Law No. 21,247 which establishes special benefits for some parents and children’s guardians (the “Law”) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, was published on the Official Gazette. The main aspects regulated by the Law, are the following: I. Preventive parental leave It consists in the granting of preventive leave for taking care of children whose parents were making use of the parental postnatal leave ...
On July 24, 2020, the California Department of Public Health issued a new guidance document for all employers within California, entitled “COVID-19 Employer Playbook For a Safe Reopening ...
Key Points Small employers (with fewer than 500 employees) and governmental employers who are required to provide employees with paid sick and expanded family leave related to COVID-19 are required to report the amounts paid on Form W-2. IRS guidance provides information about how to report paid leave on employees’ Forms W-2 ...
International Filings via Madrid ProtocolOn 27 December 2019, Malaysia acceded to the Madrid Protocol, opening Malaysia up to the international trademark filing system. Parallel to the accession, as many are aware, the new Trademarks Act 2019 also came into force on the same date, establishing, amongst others, the law and practical guidelines for the international filing system.With over 1 ...
The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world in an unprecedented manner and, in just a few months, it has had such a profound impact on the world of work. As a result, physical office premises were shut down and many employees were forced to work from home with little or no security policy in place or a viable data backup and recovery plan ...
This is a briefing on the CIAC Memorandum Circular No. 01-2020 dated June 10, 2020,1 a COVID-19 related issuance. A. Authority to Hold Virtual Proceedings B. No Change in the Deadline for the Issuance of Final Awards C. In-Person Proceedings D. Conduct of Virtual Proceedings ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ CIAC’s Memorandum Circular No ...
The pandemic revealed a great need to remotely execute acts and contracts, avoiding the need to meet to sign the documents or appear before a notary. This increased the doubts about the regulation on electronic signatures, especially in order to understand under what circumstances they can be used and when not ...
The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) recently released streamlined forms employers may use to coordinate leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ...
In March, due to the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) the Ministry of Health established that an employee required to quarantine at home in accordance with Ministry of Health guidelines would automatically receive a sick leave certificate which could present to the employer and receive sick pay for the quarantine period ...
Cyber frauds, in particular email scams, have become a common trend of crime in Hong Kong in recent years. Fraudsters use various means to deceive the victims into transferring money to unauthorised bank accounts. Upon discovery of the fraud and based on information obtained from the bank, the victim may apply for an injunction from the court to freeze the recipients’ bank accounts and if the victim is lucky enough, there will be some credit balance left to recover ...
As workplaces continue to reopen, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued additional guidance addressing various return to work issues and leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA). The new DOL guidance, summarized below, appears on the DOL’s FFCRA Questions and Answers page ...
With federal privacy legislation stalled and indefinitely delayed, states have moved forward to push an impressive number of privacy laws forward over the last several years. Some of these laws are still relatively obscure, but are being increasingly enforced by state regulators and through litigation ...
As we have outlined in Part 1 and Part 2 of our blog series, ‘Returning the Workplace to Safe Operation’, employers have a duty to reduce the risk of COVID-19 in the workplace as much as reasonably practical. Consequently, employers may determine it is appropriate to conduct certain active screening, such as questionnaires, temperature screening, and testing ...
In the rush to seek relief under force majeure clauses following the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is likely that some claims were made incorrectly, albeit in good faith. Particularly in circumstances where force majeure relief is linked to a purported termination, the party seeking to terminate needs to comply with any contractual requirements and ensure that the event relied upon is capable of being caught by the force majeure clause ...
As organisations start planning their post COVID-19 workforce arrangements, leaders need to consider how these new and amended work practices will help or hinder their efforts to strengthen their risk culture. While having a distributed workforce increases some challenges to improving risk culture, it also provides opportunities which need to be embraced. It is becoming increasingly clear that the post COVID-19 workplace will be very different to what it was before the pandemic ...
On 22 July 2020, data protection authorities from Australia, Canada, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Switzerland and United Kingdom (together the Authorities), issued an open letter (Letter) on global privacy expectations of video teleconferencing companies (VTC companies)[1]. Why there is such a Letter? As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Authorities have witnessed an increasing use of VTC tools, both in social and business contexts ...
In two recent Awards of the Industrial Court involving the retrenchment of 7 Claimants, Mizman Bin Ngadinan & Others v City Facilities Management Sdn Bhd (Award 989 of 2020) and Roslan Bin Mohd Tahir & Others v City Facilities Management Sdn Bhd (Award 990 of 2020), the Industrial Court found that the LIFO principle was inapplicable where the selection criteria and process adopted by the Company involving specialised skills sets and the competency of the employees was upheld ...
The Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (the "CEWS") Is a key component of the Government of Canada's COVID-19 economic response plan. The purpose of the CEWS, adopted on April 11, 2020, is to help Canadians keep their jobs during the crisis and help companies maintain an employment relationship with their employees in order to recover more quickly when the economy returns to normal ...
