Under the Medicare Secondary Payer Act (MSPA), a Medicare Secondary Payer is the entity which has an obligation to pay medical expenses before Medicare. In the face of rising costs, legislation was passed in 1980 making Medicare a secondary payer to various primary plans in order to shift medical expenses to those Medicare believed should be the primary source of payment ...
The Copyright Office of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has invited comments and suggestions to amend the Copyright Act before November 30, 2020. Mid last year, the DPIIT proposed a set of amendments to the Indian Copyright Rules. While these amendments sought to increase transparency and provide clarity for right holders, many other essential modifications were overlooked ...
On 19 October 2020 the Federal Council's Cyber Committee adopted a report on the advancement of the 2018-2022 national strategy for the protection of Switzerland against cyber risks (2018-2022 NCS) and its gradual implementation. The report focuses mainly on the progress made in supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and promoting research and training ...
What will UK data protection look like after Brexit 2.0 on 31 December 2020? Regime 1: the 'UK GDPR': the UK's new bespoke version together with the Data Protection Act 2018 The UK GDPR will be the UK data protection regime based on the 'EU GDPR' (see below) ...
The HHS Office for the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology issued an interim final rule on October 29, 2020, extending the compliance date for the information blocking rule under the 21st Century Cures Act to April 5, 2021 ...
Mamo TCV Advocates is pleased to announce that it has recently become the exclusive member law-firm for Malta of the World Services Group network (WSG). WSG is the leading global network comprised of elite top-ranked global practice firms. With over 120 member firms in 150 jurisdictions and 23,000 individual members, the network provides a proprietary platform for members to create relationships, expertise and new business opportunities to better serve their practice and clients ...
While public attention focused on the federal and state elections, Michigan voters made an important decision—they adopted Proposal 20-2, which amended Michigan’s Constitution to extend its protection from unreasonable searches and seizures to electronic data and communications ...
The Sharjah Court of Appeal recently declined to apply the principle of separability of an arbitration clause, on the basis that the underlying agreement (i.e. in which the arbitration clause was contained) was not defective or argued to be invalid by the appellant. This judgment has potentially significant implications for parties who intend to rely on an agreement which contains an arbitration clause to assert claims in court ...
During recent years, we have been accumulating our experience of advising clients on data protection issues, that companies face when doing their business in Russia. Many of our clients do their business in other CIS countries as well and usually face quite similar issues there. However, the level of regulation and, more importantly, enforcement, in different jurisdictions of the post-Soviet Union territory, varies significantly ...
The 2020 election in California as pertains to national politics was never in doubt, but despite being a deeply blue state, Californians continued to show their divide on taxing businesses and making major changes to the statewide tax code. Several ballot initiatives, both at the state and municipal level, would have radically altered how businesses and executives are taxed ...
On November 5, 2020, the Washington Supreme Court altered a 60-year provision of Washington’s Minimum Wage Statute when it issued its decision in Martinez-Cuevas v. DeRuyter Brothers Dairy. The court held that the agricultural overtime exemption at RCW 49.46.130(2)(g), which exempted agricultural employers from paying overtime at a rate of 1.5 times the regularly hourly rate, violated article I, section 12 of the Washington State Constitution as applied to dairy workers ...
In this newsletter you will find a selection of the main legal news related to the fintech and digital banking market in Argentina. 3.0 transfers New open and interoperable model for instant payments As we anticipated in previous bulletins, the Central Bank (BCRA) completely updated the system of immediate electronic payments existing until now, taking it to a much more ambitious, interoperable and open model, which aims to interconnect bank accounts and accounts on an equal footing ...
A temporary work agency had, over a period of four years, hired out workers to an oil company that had a bonus scheme at company level for its employees. The Supreme Court found that the bonus scheme was a form of performance-related pay and thus covered by the term «pay» in section 14-12 a subsection 1 (f) of the Working Environment Act. The temporary work agency was thus obliged to pay a bonus to the two workers as if they had been permanently employed in the oil company ...
We have recently discovered growing interest in implementation of diversity and inclusion (“D&I”) programs by companies operating in Russia. D&I programs imply processing of new categories of employee personal data and new purpose of data processing. For this, Russian Labour laws do not provide for any requirement nor regulation for implementation of D&I programs ...
The Privacy Commissioners of Canada, Alberta and British Columbia issued a joint investigation report, finding that Cadillac Fairview did not obtain adequate consent for the collection of digital images of faces through facial recognition technology (Anonymous Video Analytics) installed in wayfinding directories in some of their Canadian shopping malls ...
The Coronavirus pandemic has caused a shift in the paradigm of modern-day workplaces. Companies across the globe have seen a rapid and widespread shift to remote work, making compliance with the GDPR harder than ever. The Federal Office of Information Security (BSI), in its recent report on the ‘State of IT Security in Germany 2020’, expressed its concern and indicated a ‘tense situation’ for data protection in the country ...
In Brown v. Morehouse College, a False Claims Act (FCA) retaliation action, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the case’s dismissal, agreeing with the district court that while the plaintiff’s ethics complaints may have led to retaliation against him by the College, the complaints did not allege FCA fraud and therefore were not protected by the statute. No. 19-13773, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 33444 (11th Cir. Oct. 23, 2020) ...
On 30 September 2020, the Royal Government of Cambodia (“RGC”) issued a press release and rolled out ‘Round 6’ of measures aimed at mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 on businesses and workers in Cambodia. These represent a combination of new and existing measures (that have been extended) ...
Balance has been tipping over from creditors to shareholders and the pandemic is only bringing this deepening fault line to the fore. Covid-19 slammed into the global consciousness this March and, as expected, immediately torpedoed the markets. But despite the worsening economic data hogging news headlines, exacerbated by intensifying US-China tensions, the markets have paradoxically strengthened since ...
Michigan has joined the majority of jurisdictions in holding that a general liability policy may provide coverage for claims for property damage allegedly caused by the defective work of a subcontractor ...
When crafting a liquidation or “pass-through” agreement for a subcontractor claim against the government, the key provision from the prime contractor’s perspective is a release from liability for the subcontractor’s claim with the exception of amounts recovered from the government related to that claim. If the release language is too broad, however, the agreement may provide the government a legal defense to the pass-through claim known as the Severin doctrine ...
On 25 September 2020 Parliament approved new regulations for Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).(1) The goal of this new legal framework is to further establish and increase Switzerland's reputation as a leading, innovative and sustainable location for fintech and DLT companies. DLT framework DLT allows shared data management and, in particular, shared accounting among participants that do not know or do not trust each other's identity ...
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on October 29, 2020 it reached a more than $9.2 million settlement with Medtronic USA Inc. to resolve allegations it violated the False Claims Act (FCA) and Open Payment Program.[1] Specifically, Medtronic agreed to pay $8.1 million to resolve FCA allegations it paid kickbacks to induce a South Dakota neurosurgeon to use its SynchroMed II intrathecal infusion pumps ...
