Non-compete clauses in employment agreements have been the source of much controversy over the years. Employers want them to protect their human capital and to prevent competitors from stealing their valued employees. Employees dislike them because they prevent mobility of employment. There are good arguments on both sides. Recently, there have been developments that seem to erode the enforceability of non-competes ...
Operating expenses (“OpEx”) and common area maintenance fees (“CAM”) are two important items in any commercial lease, but they are often overlooked after the decision is made on how to split up these fees. Typically, operating expenses are calculated and allocated based on a gross, modified gross, or triple net basis, with the tenant being responsible for a percentage of CAM based on the percentage of the total property they occupy ...
Lost for many in the avalanche of news about the midterms, voters in five states went to the polls last month to vote on proposals allowing adult-use cannabis, often referred to as recreational cannabis. We won't bury the lede: two states, Maryland and Missouri, voted to allow adult-use cannabis, while three others — Arkansas and the Dakotas — voted down the proposals ...
We summarize here what we believe are the top 5 Alabama tax cases decided in the past year that would interest our CPA readers. Not surprisingly, almost all are Alabama Tax Tribunal rulings, so in those instances we deleted that reference and simply list the date of the latest ruling. If you’d like a copy of or have a question about any of these rulings, please email one of us ...
If your organization operates or could be sued in New York, there has been recent activity on the legal and regulatory risk landscape that risk professionals should be prepared for. New York’s newly-enacted Comprehensive Insurance Disclosure Requirements legislation opens the door for defendants to request that organizations disclose the details of their commercial insurance programs that may apply to a judgment in the case ...
In 2022, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued six bid protest decisions worthy of particular note. ASRC Federal Data Solutions LLC ESimplicity Inc. v. U.S. Hydraulics International Inc. v. U.S. IAP Worldwide Services Inc. v. U.S. MP Solutions LLC Trace Systems Inc. This article by Aron C. Beezley, Patrick R. Quigley, Sarah Sutton Osborne, Lisa Markman, Nathaniel J. Greeson and Gabrielle A ...
Renewable energy developers and contractors have been anticipating the Treasury Department and IRS’s initial guidance on what is required to satisfy the prevailing wage and apprentice requirements under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) ...
Here’s the Scenario: After months of working with a new developer client (and providing hours of unreimbursed value engineering) and hard negotiations over the cost plus GMP contract (fighting over indemnity/escalation/savings/liquidated damage clauses), you have a deal. You pop a cork with all involved since the developer has said this is one of many future projects. Your very patient subcontractors have held their prices ...
There’s a common quip in Washington that federal employees leaving their jobs to work in the private sector are “going to the Dark Side.” However, what is not so funny for federal contractors and former executive branch employees is when the application process for — or the performance of work at — the new job runs afoul of ethics laws and regulations. For example, Oracle America Inc ...
Generally, an “accord and satisfaction” is an agreement between two or more contracting parties to accept an alternate agreement and performance in lieu of a preexisting contractual duty between the parties. The new agreement is the “accord,” and the subsequent performance of the new agreement is the “satisfaction ...
On Oct. 13, Mississippi's highest court ruled that a South Korean company, LG Chem Ltd., which manufactured a battery that powered a vaping device, could be sued in Mississippi, despite that company having no physical presence in Mississippi and not being registered to do business in the state ...
All eyes are on the U.S. Federal Reserve as it attempts what many are calling a tightrope walk: raising interest rates just enough to slow the economy without triggering a recession in the hope of achieving an economic soft landing. With the Fed doing everything in its power to make borrowing costlier, factors are facing a similar balancing act ...
The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued its annual bid protest report on Nov. 1.[1] This year's report is noteworthy because it shows that protesters received some form of relief from the procuring agency in more than half of the protests filed with the GAO in fiscal year 2022 ...
Under Notice 2022-33, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has extended the deadline for adopting amendments to qualified retirement plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to reflect certain changes made by the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (SECURE Act), the Bipartisan American Miners Act of 2019 (Miners Act), and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) ...
Last Wednesday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the CFPB's automatic funding structure violates the Constitution. Because the decision calls into question virtually all of the CFPB’s actions since its creation, it has wide-ranging potential implications for all financial services industries. Please join us for a lunch-time webinar as we unpack the Fifth Circuit’s decision and what it means for your business ...
Female attorneys are leaving the practice of law. Although this isn’t a new problem, it’s a problem that has plagued the legal profession for decades. Many departures go unexplained and leave legal employers reeling. While answers may be hard to come by, I suggest that legal employers look to an unlikely source for information: TikTok. TikTok is a social media networking platform that allows users to post short-form videos ranging from 15 seconds to several minutes ...
According to a 2017 report, more than half of the companies that have Black owners are turned down for loans—a rate twice as high as white business owners.[1] Even when Black business owners get approved for bank loans, their rate of failure to receive full financing is the highest among all categories by more than 10% ...
No employer wants to make decisions based on an employee's social media activity. Everyone tells employees to keep their private life private and don't let it affect the job — right? What happens when it is not the employee's social media conduct but a viral video of the employee that becomes the center of a social media firestorm? As with so many things in employment law, you can't make this stuff up ...
A Fourth Circuit ruling in a False Claims Act case has created a 4-4 circuit split over the issue of the act’s knowledge requirement, Bradley partner Elisha Kobre explains. This makes the issue ripe for the US Supreme Court, where a ruling on whether an objective or subjective standard should apply will resonate in FCA litigation for years, he says. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s en banc decision Sept ...
Introduction: Lawyers as Stewards of a Noble Profession In the final scenes of the movie “A Few Good Men” – one of the great classics of legal cinema – under dramatic, but extremely risky cross-examination by Lt. Daniel Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise), Col. Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) admitted to directing the kind of “Code Red” discipline which led to the unintentional death of a Marine stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ...
In a civil case, is it wiser for a business to try to persuade the counterparty to agree from the outset to arbitration—or potentially to place it's very solvency in the unpredictable hands of a judge and jury? Many "form" commercial contracts contain clauses mandating that any disputes that arise be resolved by binding arbitration rather than a jury or bench trial ...
Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Lisa Monaco delivered a shot across the bow to individuals responsible for corporate malfeasance, and the companies that protect them. On September 15, 2022, in a memorandum and in public remarks, she issued marching orders to federal prosecutors and a warning to corporate America. She made clear that the Department of Justice (DOJ) would seek and allocate significant resources to “prioritize and prosecute corporate crime ...
A ruling of the National Labor Relations Board in favor of an employee fired for using vulgar language on a company bulletin board was affirmed in August by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The ruling of both the NLRB and the court of appeals in Constellium Rolled Products v. NLRB regarding the employer's discipline for the comment is a perfect example of how confusing the protection of concerted activity under the National Labor Relations Act can be ...
The changes in the cannabis industry in Southeastern United States represent some of the most surprising and remarkable changes in the history of the industry. The South is well positioned to be a leader in the cannabis industry, and in some ways, it should be expected. The region has been instrumental in highly regulated industries, such as alcohol and tobacco, and the only federally sanctioned cannabis grow program has operated at the University of Mississippi since the 1960s ...
As we begin 2022, the renewable energy industry in the United States has much for which to be thankful: A strong demand for clean power, increasing recognition of the need for an accelerated energy transition, and a thriving, successful base of developers and contractors working toward this common goal ...
