Member Articles

Charles Arrand considers the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, with a focus on both the potential business and human costs of failing to discharge obligations under the Order. Fire safety is regulated by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the Order), which applies to almost all buildings, places and structures other than individual private homes ...

What follows is a cautionary tale for anyone involved who fails to follow a natural disaster preparedness plan. Taking short cuts and failing to follow agreed upon emergency preparedness plans are a recipe for disaster. While the litigation we analyze in this article stems from bridge construction in Florida, the lessons learned from this real situation are applicable all across the country ...

Local authorities will be given rights to let vacant high street premises under new powers contained in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. Background The government wants to regenerate local high streets as part of its levelling up agenda. A key element of its proposals is to give local authorities the right to let vacant premises on their high streets following a rental auction process ...

In the light of the current geopolitical situation, including severe counter sanctions and restrictions imposed by the Russian Government, we would like to provide you with an update on the current IP regulation in Russia. Partial legalization of parallel imports On 29th March, the Russian government issued a Decree No ...

A summary of the key takeaways from a recent webinar on reducing scope 3 transportation and distribution emissions. Shoosmiths is delighted to be sponsoring United Nation Global Compact Network (UNGC) UK’s series of webinars on ‘Reducing Scope 3 Emissions’ ...

By: Gwenneth O’Hara, Nora Sheriff, Jonathan Kendrick, and Lillian Rafii After extensive collaboration with other state agencies and nearly a year’s worth of public workshops on scoping plan topics and modeling, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released its Draft 2022 Scoping Plan Update (Draft Scoping Plan) on May 10, 2022 ...

While architects and engineers take responsibility for the safety of the buildings they ‎design, they usually are not responsible for protecting the property or the people on-site during ‎construction. If a finished building falls because of improper design, the architects and engineers ‎who stamped the drawings will be the prime suspects for the failure ...

On February 4, 2022, President Biden issued Executive Order 14063, which requires federal agencies engaging in “large scale” federal construction contracts to include in their solicitation and construction contracts a provision requiring the prime federal contractor (and their subcontractors) to negotiate project labor agreements (PLAs) with local unions as a condition of receiving the contract ...

The COVID-19 Public Inquiry presents a key growth area for litigation in the medium to long term. Here, Matthew MacLachlan considers key litigation risks, potential parties and emerging themes ...

Dan Stowers, Partner and Lauren Bowkett, Principal Associate in the Regulation, Business Crime and Compliance Division explore the powers enacted under the new Economic Crime Act 2022 and what this means for those involved ...

INTRODUCTION Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is fast becoming popular as a relatively easier method of resolving disputes across the world and intellectual property (“IP”) is not an exception. This is apparent from the rising number of disputes handled by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Centre over the past few years, from 136 cases in 2017, to 155 in 2018, 178 in 2019 and 182 in 2020 ...