On June 19, 2019, the New York State Senate and Assembly passed legislation that would, if signed into law, broaden the scope of last year’s ban on clauses requiring employees to arbitrate sexual harassment claims so as to prohibit such clauses with respect to all types of discrimination claims. As reported on this blog, this ban on mandatory arbitration clauses was deemed invalid, as contrary to federal law, by the June 26, 2019 decision of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Latif v. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, et al. (S.D.N.Y. No. 18-11528). It is too early, however, to declare the death of New York’s ban on mandatory arbitration clauses in harassment and discrimination claims. Absent diversity of citizenship, plaintiffs’ counsel may choose to assert only state-law claims in an effort to eliminate federal court jurisdiction over an employer’s petition to compel arbitration. As motions to compel arbitration will continue to be decided by New York state courts, employers should be mindful of the relevant New York decisions when drafting arbitration agreements and dispute resolution programs.
Today, I’m bringing you a guest post on a topic near and dear to my heart – collaboration. Gareth Stephenson, of Top3Legal has a different take on it, from his experience, which may be useful as you engage further in your own collaborative efforts.
Cyber threats are simply a business reality in the modern age, but with the right knowledge and tools, we can protect our businesses, employees and customers. Davis Malm’s Robert Munnelly outlines five actions companies can take to maximize long-term cyber safety.
A will is an important document, that must be drafted by a person capable of expressing directions without any undue influence, otherwise its validity could be challenged before the courts. When such a dispute occurs, the party attacking the validity of the will has to adduce evidence supporting that claim on a balance of probabilities: the party must demonstrate that the invalidity of the will is more likely than its validity.
On 19 June 2019, the High Court delivered its judgment in one of the most hotly anticipated insolvency judgments this year, the Amerind appeal: Carter Holt Harvey Woodproducts Australia Pty Ltd v The Commonwealth.1
One of the questions I am asked most often is about how to manage relationships when we’re all so busy – and we are ALL so busy these days!
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection supervisory authority, today announced that it has provisionally determined that British Airways (BA) must pay a substantive fine for breach of the GDPR, in relation to a data breach that BA suffered in June 2018. The reports state that the incident in part involved user traffic to the BA website being diverted to a fraudulent site, as a result of which customer details were harvested by the attackers. Personal data of approximately 500,000 customers were compromised in this incident.
Epstein Becker Green (EBG) has been recognized again this year in Law360’s Diversity Snapshot as one of the top 25 law firms for minorities among law firms of its size.
After a brief, two-month hiatus, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (“WHD”) has issued another round of opinion letters answering various questions submitted by the public. Specifically, these opinion letters address the calculation of overtime pay for nondiscretionary bonuses, the application of the highly compensated employee exemption to paralegals, and rounding hours worked under the Service Contract Act (“SCA”). This guidance marks the first issued by the new Wage and Hour Administrator Cheryl Stanton, who has been in the seat since April.
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