The absolute priority rule is supposed to provide some measure of order and certainty in the world of Chapter 11. But bankruptcy practitioners know that the mere inclusion of the word "absolute" in the rule's name does not make it so.
The DOL issued its first major overhaul of the FMLA in November. These final regulations, which became effective Jan. 16, 2009, include provisions addressing military leave entitlements created in early 2008 by the National Defense Authorization Act ("NDAA"). The new regulations also update and clarify employer and employee rights and responsibilities under the FMLA. The following are the key changes and suggested steps employers should take to comply.
On June 4, the FTC announced a proposed consent agreement with Sears Holdings Management Corporation. The government makes note that the settlement is not final and does not include any finding of wrongdoing by SHMC, but that the working settlement sends a strong signal that the FTC will subject online tracking of consumer behavior to a stringent standard of disclosure.
Unlike an employer's internal e-mail system, which is generally understood to be under the ownership and control of the employer, personal Web-based accounts accessed at work raise new and unsettled questions about an employee's expectations of privacy.
Today's information-rich organizations must be prepared to quickly find and produce ESI that may be relevant to a given litigation matter or request for information. The trouble is, many organizations do not have a well-thought out response plan in place, which makes the timely production of relevant information difficult, time-consuming and potentially very costly.
Besides its changes to criminal law described in this issue, the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA), signed into law on May 20, 2009, significantly increases companies' exposure to civil lawsuits brought by the government and whistleblowers.
The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009 (FERA), enacted in May, was easy to miss. Yet this small piece of legislation makes a number of significant changes to the federal money laundering and criminal fraud statutes ' changes about which lawyers who represent clients accused of white-collar crimes will want to be aware.
Delivering a blow to bloggers' rights, a federal appeals court has ruled that a Washington state teacher's blog attacking co-workers, the union and the school district was not protected speech, and therefore she was not unlawfully demoted over it.
With bona fides now suitably established, is it possible to actively leverage the USVI's fiber and bandwidth assets to deliver greater competitive and stakeholder advantage to the enterprise? Yes it is; an economic development program chartered in law by the USVI government, sanctioned under U.S. Treasury regulations and managed by the University of the Virgin Islands Research and Technology Park ("RTPark"), may be of particular interest to e-commerce and other knowledge-based businesses.
A spate of billion- and hundred-million-dollar settlements with the Department of Justice (DOJ) illustrates how the investigation of off-label promotions of drugs and devices has emerged as a predominant theory in pharmaceutical and medical-device prosecutions.
