Class Action 30633-05-18 Smuelitz v. Korean Air Co., Ltd Our firm successfully represented Korean Air in a motion to certify a class action suit alleging a failure to refund airport taxes on unused flight tickets. As part of its motion, the plaintiffs requested that Korean Air automatically reimburse airport taxes for unused flight tickets, and pay substantial monetary compensation, for failure to reimburse ...
SVW has, across its offices, been giving guidance to clients both under English and Norwegian law as to the Coronavirus impact on shipping contracts, including on force majeure and similar exceptions clauses, and contract frustration. Read our recent publication, touching upon these issues. The Covid19 Virus Only two months have passed since the novel coronavirus was detected in Wuhan, China ...
A lot has been written about the Scottish case where William Grant sued the budget supermarket chain Lidl for trade mark infringement. The issue Lidl is selling a gin that one imagines was intended to look rather a lot like the well-established Hendricks gin. This Lidl gin is called Hampstead, although the similarity between the two products relates as much to get-up as to the (surely not coincidental) choice by Lidl of a nine-letter name that starts with the letter H ...
As it is known, the second paragraph of Article 5 of the New Constitutional Procedure Code (Law 31307) provides that "In constitutional proceedings against judicial decisions, judges or magistrates of the Judiciary are not notified or summoned with the lawsuit". In this regard, the Constitutional Court (TC) in the order issued in Case No ...
The federal agency now well-known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The CFPB is a uniquely independent agency, shielded from the executive branch in a way that other agencies are not. Doing away with that independence has the potential to significantly alter the CFPB and its regulatory work ...
Investors were awarded compensation under a bilateral investment treaty, but under EU law, payment of the award constitutes unlawful State aid. This Catch-22 situation is at the heart of a long-running case across jurisdictions. In the latest development, the European Commission has decided to refer the United Kingdom to the European Court of Justice in relation to a judgement of the UK’s Supreme Court to lift the stay of enforcement of an ICSID arbitration award against Romania ...
Having a strategy when negotiating or participating in mediation is essential to a successful outcome that results in an agreement between the parties. Mediators see various levels of preparation and strategy by the parties participating in the process, and the party who approaches the mediation with a plan often achieves a more successful outcome. One effective strategy is anchoring: an effort to establish a reference point from which a party will make adjustments in negotiating ...
In the context of a dispute between a Turkish agent and a Belgian principal, the Commercial Court of Ghent (Belgium) referred a request to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) concerning the legal protection of a Turkish agent under Belgian/EU law. The agent and principal had expressly agreed that their agency agreement was subject to Belgian law ...
One more lengthy battle in a legal saga has just come to an end. Indeed, on June 4, 2008, the Court, comprised of Quebec’s Chief Justice, Michel Robert, and Justices Jacques Chamberland and Louis Rochette, rendered a unanimous judgment.(1)To set the stage, consider a salmonella outbreak in Abitibi, some premature deaths, dozens of persons poisoned, three producing farms.. ...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded the definition of close contact to now evaluate exposure cumulatively over a 24-hour period such that “15 cumulative minutes of exposure at a distance of 6 feet or less can be used as an operational definition for contact investigation,”[1] Because the newly expanded definition is not limited, it impacts many different industries (inclu
On October 21, 2020, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) published a new guidance for use by contact tracers that clarifies what had been a somewhat fuzzy definition of “close contact.” The new definition increases the number of individuals presumed to have an exposure to COVID-19, and will significantly affect schools and workplaces since those presumptively exposed individuals will be asked to isolate for a period of 14 days ...
When the wording of a construction-related guarantee is ambiguous, the intention of the parties involved is key in determining its true nature. This was highlighted in a recent Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”) judgment, which found that the best way to determine the parties’ intention was to look at all relevant facts ...
In an opinion written in under 1,000 words, Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal put foreclosure cases across Florida in jeopardy in Desbrunes v. U.S. Bank National Association in February ...
Key Points: California Court of Appeal issues two landmark local government finance decisions. Propositions 13 and 218 do not require two-thirds voter approval for special taxes proposed by initiative. A toll is not a tax. The California Court of Appeal in San Francisco has issued two blockbuster decisions in the last week impacting local government finance ...
Is a defeated patentee atInter PartesReview an embittered citizen whose private rights were taken without due process by a government agency lacking requisite Article III guarantees of impartiality? Or is the public getting a sweet deal when the Patent Trials and Appeals Board (PTAB) eliminates or revokes a public right that was wrongfully granted in the first place? The Supreme Court wrestled with the constitutionality ofInter PartesReview during oral argument on Monday morning, and the
On Wednesday, April 26, 2017, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Sandoz Inc. v. Amgen Inc. et al., a landmark case that many hope will provide clarity and guidance for consumers and the pharmaceutical industry on the regulatory approval pathway for biosimilar drugs under the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (“BPCIA” or “Biosimilars Act”) ...
On 18 January 2023, the Belgian Competition Authority (“BCA”) reimposed a fine of EUR 859,310 on three undertakings of the Caudalie group for imposing retail prices and restricting active and passive sales ...
In its priorities note for 2023, the Belgian Competition Authority (“BCA”) listed the pharmaceutical and health care sector as one of it major interests. It noted that “in the coming months, the BCA will also devote additional attention and resources to the continued consolidation in the hospital sector ...
Over the last 4 years, the Belgian Competition Authority (“BCA”) has increasingly scrutinised anticompetitive restraints in vertical agreements and assessed these restraints under Article IV.1 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law and Article 101 TFEU ...
After a sustained legislative marketing activity that started earlier this year, Government Emergency Ordinance 45/2018 amending and supplementing certain regulatory acts with impact on public procurement was published in the Official Gazette no. 459 ...
On 7 April 2023, the Belgian Cour de Cassation reversed its long standing case law and decided that (from now on) disputes concerning the termination of exclusive distribution agreements are eligible to be settled by arbitration. 1. The legal background The Belgian Economic Code (previously known as the 1961 Distributorship Act – the “Act”) provides special protection against the unwarranted termination of an exclusive distribution agreement ...
In its recent judgment of 21 December 2016, the Tournai Commercial Court (‘Court’) declared it did not have jurisdiction to deal with a dispute concerning the termination of an exclusive distributorship that the parties had agreed to submit to arbitration. This judgment was based on the new definition of arbitrability in the Belgian Judicial Code, which entered into force in 2013, and marks a new era for the arbitrability of Belgian distributorship law disputes ...
On March 25, 2020, Governor Jim Justice signed into law House Bill 4497, which shall be known as The Alex Miller Law. The Alex Miller Law will take effect June 5, 2020, but the mandated requirements do not take effect until the 2021-2022 school year. Alex Miller, was a Roane County football player who collapsed and died during a high school football game. The Alex Miller Law (W. Va. Code 18-5-25c) requires defibrillators (AED devices) at certain events by the 2021-2022 school year ...
The quality of one’s life is determined by the quality of the questions one asks oneself every day, and the realization that this truth applies equally to lawyering. Our theory, borne of experience, is that a lawyer conditioned to ask an empowering question when adversity strikes, such as: “How can I use this?” is a better and more effective advocate. You might one day owe your life to an accident. Literally ...
