On February 8, 2011, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion that will have a major impact on Chapter 11 plan confirmation. In consolidated appeals stemming from the In re DBSD North America, Inc ...
As many creditors have unfortunately discovered, the Bankruptcy Code allows a debtor to sue the creditor for certain payments – called preferences – that the creditor received from the debtor prior to the bankruptcy ...
Whether you are interested in purchasing assets or a going concern, bankruptcy court can be a land of opportunity. Assets may be sold by a trustee, or someone the trustee retains, in a Chapter 7 liquidation, or by a Debtor-in-Possession (a “DIP”) in a Chapter 11 reorganization case. In either case, you should expect a competitive bidding process ...
When TS Eliot wrote in 1922 that “April is the cruellest month” he likely never envisaged extreme weather of the proportions experienced in the UAE on the 16th of April 2024 ...
Congratulations! You won your case in court and all the expense and hard work of the past few months, or years (not to mention the broken business relationships and sleepless nights along the way) might just have been worth it to experience this moment of jubilation ...
Nope, we’re not referring to Elvis Presley’s Suspicious Minds but rather in relation to the perils consumers have been facing when falling into subscription traps set by traders ...
The term “joint and several” basis means that any of the parties involved could be sued for the full amount if a warranty claim arises. Management teams often come under pressure from equity investors to give warranties under an investment agreement on such a basis. Whether the team accepts it really depends on the bargaining position of the parties ...
Later this year, the Supreme Court of the United States will address the enforceability of class action waivers in employment arbitration agreements in Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris ...
After 115 years under the old regime, the new Water Sustainability Act received Royal Assent on Friday May 20, 2014: an historic occasion to celebrate? Not quite yet, perhaps. The fact is the vast majority of the new statute will not have the force of law until authorized by the Lieutenant Governor in Council at an unspecified future date (section 219). With new water regulations not expected until the spring of 2015, it seems that the new Act will not be binding until that time ...
In yet another indication of the increasing prominence of water use issues in BC, the Supreme Court of British Columbia recently upheld the practice of the BC Oil and Gas Commission to grant recurrent short-term water approvals for oil and gas activities under the Water Act ...
On 29 September 2021, the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed a bill to reform the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) (PDPO) by introducing a two-tier offence to criminalise doxxing acts, conferring new enforcement powers on the Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner to prosecute doxxing offences and issue cessation notices with extra-territorial effect to demand the removal of doxxing contents by both Hong Kong persons and non-Hong Kong service providers ...
With its increasing population and urbanization, Thailand cannot escape from the mountains of solid waste generated in households and in communities across the country. The inappropriate disposal of solid wastes will cause serious ramifications which would be a national nightmare, such as air pollution, water pollution and contagious diseases. All of these issues are harmful not only in the environmental scale, but also in respect of the public health of each domestic sector ...
On November 12, 2020, the Washington Supreme Court extended corporate attorney-client privilege protection to appropriate ex parte communications between defendant hospitals and their non-employee agents. The court’s decision in Hermanson v. MultiCare Health Sys., Inc ...
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 ...
We previously provided an update regarding the enactment of a capital gains tax (the “Tax”) in the State of Washington (read about it here). In that article, we noted the Tax was subject to at least one lawsuit in Washington. That lawsuit resulted in the trial court striking down the Tax, which caused an appeal to the Washington State Supreme Court (the “Court”) ...
April 2, 2024 By: Leah Lively and Alexandra Shulman On June 6, 2024, new amendments to Washington State’s noncompetition statute (RCW 49.62) will go into effect, which place further limitations on the use of noncompetition agreements in Washington. Substitute Senate Bill 5935 introduces several modifications to RCW 49.62 that Washington employers (and employers with Washington employees) should be aware of: Broader definition of “noncompetition covenant ...
According to the recent insurance broker's Transactional Risk Insurance Claims Study1, the number of W&I claims have increased by 293% between 2016 and 2018 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (the EMEA-region). One explanation is of course the triple increase W&I policies issued over the same period. The W&I market have become more mature than what it was just some few years back ...
A summary of the decision in Allay (UK) Limited v S Gehlen and a reminder to employers to keep equal opportunities training up to date to be able to rely on the all reasonable steps defence under s 109 (4) of the Equality Act 2010. It is common for employers to provide employees with equal opportunities training, to underpin workplace culture as well as to prevent discrimination from taking place. A recent case, however, provides a salutary reminder to keep such training up to date ...
As seen in the National Law Review: Attorney General Jeff Sessions has caused chaos in the marijuana industry and is forcing those who have made efforts to create legalized businesses in compliance with state laws to ponder whether their anticipated profits will go up in smoke. In a memo to all U.S. attorneys, Sessions rescinded Obama-era decrees that restrained prosecutors from enforcing federal drug laws in states that acted to legalize marijuana under their own laws ...
For far too long, Africa has been plagued by the demon of conflict minerals, which have played a key role in fuelling conflict and extensive human rights violations. The terrible scenes in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remain vivid in the mind. In the history of conflict minerals, diamonds occupy the highest spot. They are valuable, portable and easily tradeable ...
In May 2013, US store Wal-Mart pleaded guilty to dumping hazardous waste in California and Missouri over a number of years. It has agreed to pay almost $82m (£54m) in civil and criminal charges. As far back as 2003 there were reported incidents where Wal-Mart staff improperly disposed of products such as bleach and fertilizer in waste bins and local sewer systems, when they should have been dealt with as hazardous waste ...
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 ...
Recent enforcement actions initiated by the Bureau of Industry and Security’s (“BIS”) Office of Antiboycott Compliance (“OAC”) serve as a warning to U.S. persons (including U.S. companies) with business interests in and around the Middle East. It is easy for the complacent to run afoul of OAC’s Antiboycott Regulations when evaluating and responding to otherwise routine documents such as a letters of credit, shipping certificates, or purchase orders ...