The president of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) has declared war on sellers unfairly raising prices of products during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the instruments proposed by the regulator in combating this pathology is establishment by the Ministry of Development of maximum prices and margins on products essential from the perspective of consumers’ interests (a change included in the recent amendment to the Anti-Crisis Act) ...
On Monday, April 6, 2020, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced the Pennsylvania Manufacturing Call to Action Portal, which allows businesses to help their bottom line while also helping Pennsylvania fight back against COVID-19 ...
On Monday, April 6, 2020, in an Emergency Meeting to address issues arising from the COVID-19 Crisis, the Judicial Council enacted emergency rules that protect tenants and borrowers by temporarily preventing California courts from processing unlawful detainer and judicial foreclosure actions, with limited exceptions. The emergency rules apply to both residential and commercial tenants and borrowers, and govern all California State Courts ...
With the recent and rapid spread of COVID-19 in the U.S., government contractors have already started experiencing contract performance delays, which inevitably will have a significant financial impact ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed and lowered revenues, creating an unprecedented period of fiscal uncertainty for borrowers of tax-exempt debt. Borrowers forced to navigate these conditions may request lenders defer scheduled debt payments to help weather the storm. Borrowers and lenders of tax-exempt debt must be mindful that a deferral of scheduled payments may endanger the debt’s tax-exempt status ...
On April 1, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a temporary rule regarding the implementation of the emergency paid sick leave and Expanded Family and Medical Leave (“EFMLA”) requirements established by the recently enacted Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”). The DOL temporary rule covers significant ground in terms of delineating workers’ and employers’ rights and responsibilities under the FFCRA ...
The Novel Coronavirus continues to disrupt nearly every industry, including our own. In response to this and the various hardships and logistical headaches it has created, the SEC has issued certain exemptions affecting filing and delivery deadlines. For more information on this, see SEC Corona Virus Response. However, on April 2, the SEC announced that is not planning any similar actions regarding the implementation of Regulation Best Interest or Form CRS ...
On April 2, 2020, Governor Newson issued Executive Order N-42-20 ("Executive Order") in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This order restricts the ability of water service providers to shut off water to certain customers for non-payment. All Residential Water Service Providers Affected All water service providers providing residential water service, regardless of size, are affected by this Executive Order ...
Integrated projects are pointing to the future of land use in increasingly crowded Singapore, but will they become white elephants as technology brings us (virtually) closer together than before? As an Alpha+ world city, Singapore sits alongside commercial powerhouses like Beijing, Paris and Sydney as one of the world’s most globalised cities ...
This memorandum is intended to provide information on measures undertaken by the Icelandic government in response to disruption of businesses on account of the SARSCoV2 virus. The memo will be updated as the occasion arises. Status as on Tuesday 31 March 2020 On 31 March 2020, the Icelandic Parliament (Althingi) passed amendments to various laws in order to implement the government´s announced measures in response to COVID-19 ...
With national governments scrambling to take measures in order to counter the Covid-19 pandemic, we are again confronted with the fact that a EU common policy in the healthcare field is quasi inexistent. This is equally so in respect of the pricing and reimbursement of medicines ...
On March 30, 2020, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services ("Secretary") announced a blanket waiver ("Waiver") of sanctions for violations of Section 1877 of the Social Security Act, also known as the physician self-referral law or Stark law ("Stark Law") ...
Telehealth is not a new concept, but it has been accelerated to the forefront recently by government mandated social distancing. While all of the "stay-at-home" orders issued across the country to date have included exceptions that permit individuals to leave their homes to seek medical treatment, providers may feel an obligation to offer telehealth services to protect not only their patients, but also the provider's staff, and to support the national effort to "flatten the curve ...
The West Virginia Legislature adjourned its 60-day Regular Session sine die on March 7, 2020. By the time the clock struck midnight, 356 bills ultimately completed the legislative process and were sent to Governor Justice for his approval. Under the West Virginia Constitution, the Governor had until midnight on March 25, 2020 to take action on those bills. The Governor signed all but five of the bills passed during the regular session ...
In times of emergency, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (the "Secretary") has authority to issue temporary waivers or modifications of certain Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and HIPAA requirements. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ("CMS") has released a substantial number of waivers in response to the coronavirus national emergency ...
On March 17, 2020, the Trump administration announced an expansion of Medicare coverage for virtual health services. The Medicare expansion is intended to make medical offices more available to people who need to be seen in-person and to mitigate the spread of the novel Coronavirus. Medicare can now pay for office, hospital, and other visits furnished via virtual services across the country, including a patient’s place of residence, starting March 6, 2020 ...
Over the weekend, Governor Justice signed two new executive orders—Order 20-20 and Order 21-20—that further limit permissible activities in six West Virginia counties: Berkeley, Harrison, Jefferson, Kanawha, Monongalia, and Morgan. Under these orders, outdoor activities are further restricted to a maximum of five people and essential business and operations are directed, to the maximum extent possible, to order their employees and contractors to work remotely ...
In its continuing efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, on April 3, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) recommended that the general public wear, on a voluntary basis, “cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission” of coronavirus ...
Garrigues analyzes the measures introduced by Royal Decree-Law 11/2020, from every angle of business law: corporate/commercial contracts, tax, labor and employment, restructuring and insolvency, procedures and administrative law ...
In our previous legal alert we informed that Act on Employment Services[1]was amended so that allowances to maintain job positions and to maintain employees during the emergency situation, state of emergency and state of distress (the “State of Crisis”) can be provided to a broader group of employers compared to the currently available options under the Act on Employment Services ...
