About a year ago, on Nov. 20, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued two final rules implementing sweeping changes to the Physician Self-Referral Law (Stark Law) and the Anti-Kickback Statute regulations. For the most part, those new rules went into effect on Jan. 19, 2021 ...
[!<CDATA[ Moratoriums on foreclosures due to COVID-19 ended this summer, prompting concerns of a shock similar to the 2008 housing crisis. While there are numerous differences between today and the previous recession, financial service providers can stay a step ahead by arming themselves with a few lessons learned ...
Over the past couple decades, building codes have responded to disasters, rather than averting them. Resilience is now an essential design element needed to withstand our changing climate. In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, “the times, they are a-changin’.” Intensified and more frequent hurricanes on the East and Gulf Coasts, more devastating wildfires on the West Coast and more frequent, powerful tornados in the heartland ...
At the recent Scotland Development Conference hosted by Built Environment Networking, major residential developers and housebuilders, social housing providers and leadership from the housing sector joined a panel discussion to share details of the biggest housing projects currently planned for Scotland and how the sector can ensure a focus on creating community is retained, as well as the push for an increase in the rate, volume and affordability of housebuilding ...
Two recent articles in The Times and The Sunday Times highlighted the attractiveness of the affordable housing sector to investors keen to promote their ESG credentials. During the pandemic, ESG has gone from being a niche term used mainly by private equity funds and their investors to being a mainstream term used across a range of sectors and industries ...
As with other parts of the UK, the last 18 months have seen a period of exceptional market activity in the living sector in Northern Ireland, despite the economic challenges of Covid. Much of that activity has in fact been driven by the societal challenges and behavioural shifts brought about by the pandemic ...
Dinsmore construction partner Jim Boyers and commercial litigation clerk Mary-Kate Hetzel were published in The Indiana Lawyer this week discussing how building material price increases have created logistical and legal challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. An excerpt is below ...
The draft bill to implement the government’s ground rent changes finally reached the House of Lords in May 2021. This legislation had been long awaited and, largely, the provisions were as expected following the earlier consultations and government announcements and discussions. Despite the fact that legislation is still only in draft, the living sector is already pivoting in many respects to comply with the legislation ...
Kudun and Partners represented Thammasat University with the preparation of the licensing agreement with Antitoxin GmbH, a German company founded in 1966 and specializes in the development of certified blood typing reagents for automated and manual applications ...
Whether you are a property professional or otherwise, you would have had to have lived in a hole to have missed the EWS1 saga. In the four years following the tragic Grenfell disaster, the industry and the government have been grappling with how to deal with a generation of potentially defective tall buildings ...
In our previous article, we reported that the court had refused to frustrate a tenancy agreement due to the COVID-19 pandemic and social disruption: The Center (76) Limited v Victory Serviced Office (HK) Limited HCA 1020/2020; [2020] HKCFI 2881. In this article, we will discuss several recent decisions on the same subject. The tenants’ arguments in all of these cases, that their payment obligations were discharged/suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, failed ...
The Tenant Farming Commissioner’s Code of Practice on the Conduct of Rent Reviews contains a useful summary of the law applicable to rent reviews and provides recommended steps for the conduct of the rent review itself. If the rent can’t be agreed by simple discussion or exchange of letters then the Code of Practice sets out a timetable that the parties should follow unless both parties have agreed otherwise ...
The Technology and Construction Court (TCC) in Quadro Services Ltd v Creagh Concrete Products Ltd [2021] EWHC 2637 (TCC) held that a claim referred to adjudication with three separate payment applications was still considered a single dispute for the purposes of adjudication. The adjudicator therefore did have jurisdiction to consider all three payment applications to determine the sum due, and the adjudicator’s decision was enforced ...
As projects become more and more complicated, owners often look to simplify the building process by hiring a single firm to handle both design and construction. This is perfectly legal and commonly known as the “design-build” delivery method. A design-build project has many advantages. There is only one point of contact for the owner to manage ...
Housing Highlights Throughout California, most single-family zoned parcels may now be split into two lots, with up to four primary residences. Density bonus applications may no longer be rejected if a proposed waiver of development standards will cause specific adverse impacts on the physical environment. Developers’ ability to lock in development standards under SB 330 and the Housing Accountability Act has been extended from 2025 to 2030 ...
Key Points Skilled nursing facilities must ensure their medical directors are certified within five years of the date of hire or by January 1, 2027, for medical directors already working in a SNF SNFs must report medical director certification status to CDPH by June 30, 2022 SNFs must report medical director changes to CDPH within 10 days of the change Effective January 1, 2022, a skilled nursing facility (SNF) will be prohibited from contracting with a medical director unless
Two articles (Newsweek and Fierce Biotech) describe the new lawsuit by the Henrietta Lacks Estate surrounding the HeLa cell line. The claim is "unjust enrichment," a difficult claim to win, but one that seems to fit this case, if any does. If you don't know this story, I recommend The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. It is the true story of an apparently wonderful woman, Ms ...
The only thing crystal clear about health care price transparency requirements at the moment is that the government will continue implementing new price transparency laws, regulations, and rules ...
Our homes have evolved in the last 18 months. They have become a bit more “mixed use” - school, office, gym, doctors’ surgery and even kitchen disco. The enforced focus on the use of our homes during the pandemic - particularly their inadequacies, together with the flexibility that working from anywhere has brought - has created unprecedented demand to move house and / or relocate ...
Twenty months in, Covid-19 continues to demand that we exercise flexibility and adaptation as it identifies winners and losers. The pandemic has had a significant impact on the practice of law and businesses that are involved in, or contemplating, litigation. Those who have been involved in litigation know that it can be expensive in “normal” times. Here are three ways the pandemic has impacted the costs associated with litigation. Time to trial ...
In our fourth article on whistleblowing claims we focus on the need, in sensitive situations where concerns of serious (and perhaps even criminal) wrongdoing are raised, for the complaint to be dealt with confidentially and/or anonymously where possible ...
Toppan Holdings Limited and Abbey Healthcare (Mill Hill) Limited v Simply Construct (UK) LLP In the case of Toppan Holdings Limited (“Toppan”) and Abbey Healthcare (Mill Hill) Limited (“Abbey”) v Simply Construct (UK) LLP (“Simply”) the TCC held that a collateral warranty between Abbey and Simply was not a construction contract and therefore Abbey could not enforce an adjudication between the parties ...
It is apparent that the Covid-19 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on every business sector. Above all, the hospitality industry has taken the hardest hit, as tourism is its primary source of revenue. Due to a lack of financial liquidity and growing expenditure, it is not an overstatement to predict that real estate owners in the hospitality sector would be compelled to sell their operating assets potentially at an unfavorable price in order to survive during this challenging time ...
Key Points Governor Newsom vetoed AB 339. AB 361 will continue to operate as currently construed. On October 7, 2021, Governor Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill (AB) 339 (Lee), a bill aimed at addressing Brown Act teleconferencing requirements for large public entities. AB 339 sought to add special rules for meetings of city councils or county board of supervisors that govern jurisdictions containing at least 250,000 people ...
The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council (CAAC) have both issued new Class Deviations from the FARs that implement Executive Order 14042, Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors (i.e., the federal contractor vaccine mandate) ...
