After 16 public hearings over a five year period lasting through the tenure of three mayors, the largest San Francisco rezoning plan in ten years received a unanimous Planning Commission approval on May 10, 2018. On Monday of this week, the Land Use Committee of the Board of Supervisors had a first hearing to listen to testimony about plan ...
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) ...
The Prakas No 087 essentially defines the terms of land development, conditions and procedures to obtain and issue approvals on land development, the competent authority, rights and obligations of land development, conditions on state land development, land development complaints and penalties for conducting land development without required approvals ...
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 ...
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) ...
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 ...
Many companies use so-called tracking tools on their website to analyze the use of the website by their visitors, and possibly also to carry out advertising activities on the basis of user profiles created with the tracking tools. These tracking tools mainly use cookies, i.e. small files that can identify a user of a website and that are deposited on the respective user's computer ...
On May 7, 2018, Michigan’s version of the Uniform Commercial Real Estate Receivership Act (the “Act”) will go into effect—bringing long-overdue clarity to the laws surrounding receivers and receiver-managed properties. For decades, lenders, borrowers, owners, property managers, and other parties in business (or litigation) with receiver-managed properties in Michigan have had to rely upon a patchwork of case law and the limited guidance offered by MCR 2 ...
The Philippine National Privacy Commission (NPC), which administers the country’s Data Privacy Act (DPA), has recently made available to the public copies of its advisory opinions. These opinions had been issued in response to various queries regarding the proper application and interpretation of the provisions of the DPA and its implementing rules and regulations. Issue of consent Advisory Opinion No ...
Over the past 1-2 years, a great deal of information concerning the revolutionary technology that is “blockchain” has been published on many business, legal and technology news sources, and innumerable self-proclaimed authorities on the subject have emerged to contribute articles and presentations (ourselves among them) ...
Artificial intelligence is a burning topic in many sectors today and the legal industry is no exception. Recently, at the World Services Group's annual employment law conference held in February, AI was heavily debated along with its' impact not only on the legal profession, lawyers, clients, the way business is done, but also our traditional understanding of concepts such as "law" or "justice" ...
In Texas, tenants who are obligated to reimburse property owners for property taxes have a right to protest the appraised value of the property if the property owner does not file a protest relating to the property. To facilitate this right, the Texas legislature enacted a law (Section 41.413 of the Tax Code) that requires the property owner to give all such tenants a copy of the notice of appraised value received by the property owner within 10 days of receiving the notice ...
On January 3, 2018, San Francisco’s State Senator Scott Wiener introduced a bill (SB 827) that would all but abolish the city’s famously strict land use controls—and those of virtually all California’s urban neighborhoods. It is considered the most radical of all the pro-housing legislation introduced during the last year in California ...
The Finance (No 2) Act 2017(“FA”) received royal assent on 27 December 2017 and was introduced to amend theIncome Tax Act 1967, the Real Property Gains Tax Act 1976 (“RPGTA”), the Goods and Services Tax Act 2014and the Finance Act 2013. This article will discuss the amendments to the RPGTA as provided in sections 16, 17 and 18 of the FA. The amendments to the RPGTA came into operation on 1 January 2018 ...
The 2018 West Virginia legislative session was a busy one regarding consumer finance law. Legislators focused on the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act and the West Virginia Safe Mortgage Licensing Act. The West Virginia Legislature passed at least three bills this past session that affect consumers or financial transactions ...
By one account, “the cost of global ransomware attacks will exceed $11.5 billion annually by 2019, up from $5 billion last year and $325 million in 2015” – a 35X increase in just four years.1Relative to other cyber crime, ransomware is an equal opportunity enterprise—striking individuals as well as businesses of all kinds ...
In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission expanded the reach of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in several respects. Petitioners appealed Declaratory Ruling 15-72 challenging four findings that turned TCPA law on its head. On March 16, 2018, the DC Circuit issued a decision on that petition in ACA International v. FCC, et. al, setting aside two major FCC rulings and upholding two others ...
As described in our earlier client alerts, since 1993, a central tenet in the structure of senior real estate lending documentation is the prevention of what is commonly referred to as “cram down ...
With collective sales on the rise again, it is timely to examine factors that challenge such deals in the current cycle. It was a saga worthy of a soap opera. In 2007, Horizon Towers was on the verge of breaking the then en bloc price record when, over a period of more than two years and several flip-flopping court and Strata Titles Board (STB) decisions, minority owners eventually blocked the transaction ...
Given the housing crisis, the city has enacted regulations that attempt to force a property owner to legalize an illegal unit, unless the owner can prove certain things to the satisfaction of San Francisco Planning Staff or the San Francisco Planning Commission. Long gone are the days in which an unhappy tenant or neighbor will report an illegal unit to the city and the city will fine the owner unless the illegal unit is removed ...
The GDPR contains rules on when it is mandatory for controllers and processors to designate a data protection officer. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (WP29) issued guidelines on the data protection officers (DPOs) interpreting the respective provisions of the GDPR (Articles 37-39 and Recitals 77 and 97). The Data Protection Officer (DPO) The GDPR contains rules on when it is mandatory for controllers and processors to designate a data protection officer ...
As we described in our client alert dated September 14, 2016, in the aftermath of the real estate downturn from 1989 to 1993, when real estate mortgage lenders began to contemplate making new mortgage loans, they sought to create new legal structures to prevent their prospective borrowers from filing for Chapter 11, and to ameliorate the adverse consequences, if such a filing were to occur. One such structure is a device commonly referred to as the “Golden Share ...
Since not only individual people, but also the overall project, are being presented, online presentation can be divided into two main parts. First is the management of personal social media. Avoid any disrespectful or offensive discourse, as well as any ambiguous posts and photos. Or as a minimum , do not display them publicly. Secondly, visual communication is absolutely crucial to protect the name of a reliable project ...
The recent end of the value-added tax (“VAT”) relief period for property developers in South Africa, who temporarily let their residential units, may have a significant impact on their cash flow. BackgroundOrdinarily, property developers acquire or develop fixed property (including residential properties) for the purpose of resale ...
