The drastic changes in the media landscape made over the past years continue to rock the traditional TV sector. Family TV is being replaced rapidly by content online, on demand and on different mobile devices. The global internet video share by consumers is expected to increase from 64% in 2014 to 80% by 2019 (according to Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2016–2021) ...
On July 11, 2018, then-U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb made a public statement about the agency’s efforts to advance the development of gene therapies.[1] Gottlieb pointed out that the FDA has approved three separate gene therapy products and the agency has issued six scientific guidance documents intended to serve as building blocks of a modern, comprehensive framework for how the FDA can advance the field of gene therapy ...
The Affordable Care Act ("ACA") is alive and well, despite renewed legal challenges and the elimination of the “individual mandate” beginning next year. While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the tax penalty for individuals who don’t have health coverage to $0, effective for 2019, employers continue to be subject to penalties for failing to comply with certain ACA rules ...
In a recent judgement the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) concluded that an administrator of a Facebook fan page has independent obligations under European data protection law, and will be considered joint controller with Facebook for some processing activities ...
In recent months a Customs Destination Certificate (CDA, in its Spanish acronym) will be required for medical devices1that do not have a sanitary registration to be imported into Chile. The CDA must be requested and obtained by the importer through the Institute of Public Health’s (ISP, id.) GICONA 2.0 electronic platform, and will require the payment of an official fee corresponding to the service code 4111027, “Customs Destination Certificate, law 18,164” ...
On June 28, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex M. Azar III announced the ninth year of the national health care fraud takedown. The takedown resulted in the largest government action against health care fraud, which involved more than 600 defendants from over 50 federal districts. The targeted fraud schemes accounted for more than $2 billion in false billings ...
As rapid technological changes in the 21st century continue to expand the types and volume of private electronic information, the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections are evolving. Originally, “Fourth Amendment jurisprudence was tied to common-law trespass” and provided protections against searches of property. See, United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400, 405 (2012) ...
Employers may continue to rely on rounding systems that are neutral in policy and in practice. On June 25, 2018, the California Court of Appeal issued its decision in AHMC Healthcare, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County (Letona), finding legal an employer's use of a payroll system that automatically rounds employee time up or down to the nearest quarter hour ...
Artificial intelligence technologies are extremely promising in healthcare.1 By examining, cross-referencing and comparing a phenomenal amount of data.2 AI lets researchers work more quickly at a lower cost3 and facilitates doctors’ decision-making with regard to diagnosis, treatment and choice of prescription. The integration of AI into the healthcare field can take various forms:4 Management of electronic medical records (e.g ...
This week, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued final rules to expand access to “Association Health Plans” for small businesses that are unaffiliated, but are in the same line of business or geographic area. An “Association Health Plan” or “AHP” is a group health plan adopted by members of an employer group or association to provide health coverage for their employees ...
The rule in the case of Royal British Bank v Turquand 1 is commonly known as Turquand’s Rule or the indoor management rule. It stipulates that an “outsider” dealing with a company in good faith is entitled to assume that there has been compliance with the Articles of Association. You can also assume compliance with the by laws of the company and that the “outsider” need not question the formalities of the internal proceedings of a company ...
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 June 5, I wrote about the suspension of the California End of Life Option Act (“EOLOA”) in the wake of Ahn v. Hestrin and several related court proceedings in May. On Friday, June 15, the Fourth District Court of Appeal determined that the EOLOA will in fact remain enforceable pending further proceedings. Thus, eligible Californians who have requested end-of-life drugs in accordance with the EOLOA may continue with the process described in that law ...
Despite its coming into force in 2001, the courts have frequently avoided commenting on the application and interpretation of the Act to Establish a Legal Framework for Information Technologies1 (hereafter the “LFIT Act”), preferring instead to rely on the provisions in the Civil Code of Québec2. In the decision of Benisty v. Kloda3, judge Jacques J ...
On June 1, 2018, the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted a Defendant’s Motion to Compel Individual Arbitrations of the two Plaintiffs’ wage claims, dismissed the class claims and stayed the action with regard to the remaining Private Attorney Generals Act (PAGA) claim. The Court, in Navarrete v. Louis Vuitton, Case No ...
On June 1, 2018, the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted a Defendant’s Motion to Compel Individual Arbitrations of the two Plaintiffs’ wage claims, dismissed the class claims and stayed the action with regard to the remaining Private Attorney Generals Act (PAGA) claim. The Court, in Navarrete v. Louis Vuitton, Case No ...
In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court recently addressed the standard to determine whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee in wage and hour disputes under California’s Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) wage orders. In Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v ...
In 2016, West Virginia had the highest death rate in the country from drug overdoses—primarily caused by opioids—at 52.0 for every 100,000 people.[1] The state was on track to exceed that number in 2017.[2] Seeking to enact policies that not only curb but reverse this upward trend, the West Virginia Legislature introduced a number of bills during the 2018 Regular Legislative Session that sought to address this disturbing epidemic. One of these, S.B ...
A New Development on the Subject (Update as of June 15th) Click Here to Read » A flurry of rulings during the last two weeks of May has generated enormous confusion regarding the status of California's two-year-old End of Life Option Act ("EOLOA"), the law that allows a terminally ill adult with a six-month prognosis to obtain aid-in-dying drugs from a physician, subject to numerous safeguards ...
This article will focus on the experience in practice and the evolution of privatizations of state and socially owned companies in Serbia in the period of transition and will assess the boundaries of arbitrability of disputes that arise out of the termination of privatization agreements. The term arbitrability will be analysed from a broader perspective, as opposed to the traditional and commonly used meaning of this term - whether a certain dispute is suitable for arbitration ...
In the decision in Rustenburg Platinum Mine and SAEWA obo Meyer Bester and Others, the Constitutional Court dealt with the question of whether an employee referring to a colleague as a “swart man” (“black man”), within the facts set out below, constituted misconduct justifying dismissal.The adjacent large 4x4 vehiclesThe employee in this matter, Mr Bester, was employed by the Rustenburg Platinum Mine (the “employer”) ...
“The framework agreement is an agreement whereby the contracting parties define and establish the main rules and conditions that will govern future agreements that will be concluded between them and that are called agreements “for the application” or “for the enforcement” of the framework agreement.” (High Court of Cassation and Justice Decision n0 ...
In Praxair Distrib., Inc. v. Mallinckrodt Hosp. Prods. IP Ltd., 2016-2616, -2656, in a decision authored by Judge Lourie, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the printed matter doctrine is properly applied during claim construction and can include not just printed matter, but also mental steps ...
On May 21, 2018, the United States Supreme Court issued its 5-4 decision in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, No. 16-285; Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris, No. 16-300; and NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc., No. 16-307 holding that an employer may require its employees to sign a dispute resolution arbitration agreement that includes an employee’s waiving the right to bring a claim on a class or collective action basis ...
