On September 25, 2008, former President George W. Bush signed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (the “ADAAA” or the “Act”) into law, broadening the definition of “disability” under the Americans with Disability Act (“ADA”). The ADAAA makes it easier for people to establish that they are protected by the ADA and overturns holdings in several well-known Supreme Court decisions, which had previously narrowed the “disability” definition ...
On March 22, 2011, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (“USERRA”) does not support a cause of action for hostile work environment. This is the first ruling from any Circuit Court regarding the issue. USERRA, a federal statute that establishes rights for members of the National Guard and Reserve, applies to all public and private employers, regardless of size ...
On April 18, 2011, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began the attestation phase under its $27 billion Medicare EHR Incentive Program. Incentive payments for the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR) will begin in May 2011 and will continue over the next several years. Eligible professionals (i.e ...
Starting April 6, 2011 the Social Security Administration (SSA) resumed sending its “no-match” letters (or “decentralized correspondence (DECOR) letters”) to advise employers of reported social security numbers that do not coincide with SSA’s records. In 2007, SSA stopped sending DECOR letters due to federal litigation focused on an insert that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) wanted to include with the letters ...
All businesses possess confidential information - trade secrets, customer lists, staff records - which could mean loss of business, reputational damage, or give competitors an advantage if leaked, whether deliberately or accidentally.Depending on the type of information disclosed and the type of organisation, there are potential consequences regarding public policy and data protection ...
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — so they say. Boosters in Wellington, New Zealand, call themselves “Silicon Welly.” And Texas Gov. Rick Perry said somewhere in America “Silicon Valley will be replicated. I want it to be in Austin” — even though central Texas dubbed itself “Silicon Hills” long ago. There’s also the Silicon Forest, Prairies, Alleys and other Valleys. Not to mention the No. 1 Silicon Alley — in New York City ...
A former GlaxoSmithKline attorney, Lauren Stevens, was acquitted on May 10 of all criminal charges stemming from her response to an FDA investigation. The acquittal, ordered by U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus, is a stunning defeat for the government’s anti-fraud enforcement measures. The judge also severely rebuked the government’s efforts in the matter, stating the case should never have been prosecuted. Had she been convicted, Stevens would have faced a prison term of up to 60 years ...
Southwest Health Alliance (“Southwest”), an independent practice association with approximately 900 member-physicians, has agreed to a proposed order recently entered by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) settling charges that it engaged in anticompetitive conduct in its dealings with insurers and other payors for the provision of physician services (collectively, “insurers” or “payors”) ...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the creation of so-called “Pioneer ACOs” on May 17 in an attempt to blunt heavy criticism over the draft regulations on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) issued on March 31, 2011 (the “Draft Regulations”).1 The Draft Regulations have been criticized due to their burdensome data collection requirements, large start-up costs, uncertain savings, possible losses and troublesome governance mandates ...
The Social Network did not just tell the fascinating story of Facebook's rise to a social media power house. It showed how society is increasingly using social platforms as one of its primary channels for communication. Social media is broader than social networking sites such as Facebook or Linked-In ...
Financial pressures often prompt an employer to review the benefits provided to employees and former employees in order to determine whether changes can be made that would decrease the cost of those benefits. Other times an employer will make changes to the benefits it offers in order to attract new employees or to better respond to the demographics of its workforce ...
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently provided additional support for calculating unpaid overtime compensationunder the Fair Labor Standard Act (“FLSA”) by paying damages to misclassified employees at 50% of the regular rate ...
On May 25, 2011, the en banc Federal Circuit announced its decision in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson & Company regarding the appropriate standards for succeeding with an inequitable conduct defense ...
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Health and Human Services today proposed an expansion of the rights of individuals to obtain reports from health providers and insurers about how their protected health information (PHI) is used.1 The draft regulations will require health providers and insurers (called “Covered Entities”) to provide more data faster and in a variety of formats as requested by individuals ...
On May 26, 2011, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America v. Whitingin which petitioners had challenged a 2007 Arizona law imposing sanctions on businesses that hire unauthorized aliens. Petitioners claimed that the Arizona law, the Legal Arizona Workers Act, was expressly, or alternatively, impliedly preempted by the Federal Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) ...
In an effort to cope with the void left by the federal government’s failure to curb illegal immigration, Tennessee has joined the ranks of 15 other states that have enacted “get tough” immigration-related legislation aimed at stricter enforcement of immigration laws within their state borders by requiring public and private employers to enroll and participate in the E-Verify program to verify the employment eligibility of newly hired employees ...
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that the Bayh-Dole Act does not automatically vest title to federally funded inventions in federal contractors in Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University v. Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., et al. The Bayh-Dole Act generally enables non-profit organizations, such as universities, to obtain title to inventions made under federally funded research programs while reserving march-in rights to the federal agency providing the funding ...
A bipartisan U.S. Senate committee has asked both the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to study the proliferation of physician owned distributorships (PODs), citing a lack of regulatory guidance on how these arrangements square with existing federal law ...
Recent cases in which employers have successfully defended their decisions to enforce dress and diversity policies against Christian employees have led to comments by Christian campaigners that there is "disproportionate animosity" towards the Christian faith in the UK courts ...
The Court of Appeal has confirmed that a failure by the transferor to provide the information required by Regulation 13 of TUPE does not render the transfer ineffective (Marcroft v Heartland). The underlying dispute in this case concerned the enforcement of restrictive covenants in Mr Marcroft's contract. He had been employed by PMI in its commercial insurance business ...
In Watson v University of Strathclyde, the Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the inclusion of a particular member of staff on a panel to hear an appeal against a grievance amounted to a fundamental breach of contract, so that the employee who had brought the grievance was constructively dismissed ...
It is well established that an employer who provides a reference owes the employee who is the subject of the reference a duty to take reasonable care in preparing the reference ...
The Court of Appeal has ruled that career-long compensation will only be awarded in cases where an employee has little to no prospect of ever finding an equivalent job. (Wardle v Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank). Mr Wardle, aged 44, brought a race discrimination claim against his employers, the French bank Credit Agricole, when a French candidate was awarded a promotion ahead of him ...
In a welcome decision for employers, the Employment Appeal Tribunal has considered the extent to which employment tribunals should investigate the employer's marking and scoring process in a redundancy procedure and held that detailed judicial scrutiny of the scores awarded in a redundancy process is inappropriate (Dabson v David Cover & Sons Ltd). Mr Dabson argued that he had been dismissed unfairly for redundancy ...
The Empoyment Appeal Tribunal has held, in the case of Burns v Santander UK plc, that an employee who is remanded in custody for 6 months while awaiting trial was not entitled to claim wages for that period. Mr Burns was arrested and charged with various criminal offences. He remained in custody for 6 months until his trial. Santander wrote to him to say that he would not be paid while he was in custody ...
