Alerts & Newsletters

Executives and in-house counsel should be aware that traveling with sensitive data can lead to its seizure—with potentially severe consequences worldwide. Recently, Parliament in the United Kingdom seized from a traveling executive a USB drive containing data that had been produced in a United States lawsuit between Six4Three, a software company, and Facebook. Put simply, that data was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As in previous years, the California legislature kept  busy in 2018. As a result, a number of new and noteworthy employment laws will go into effect on January 1, 2019, and beyond.

In the third quarter, Dykema closed eight transactions, totaling $145 million in deal volume. Year-to-date, that puts us at 31 closed deals for more than $805 million in deal volume. The fourth quarter is normally our strongest quarter for deal closings, so we expect this momentum to continue.

With the new Democratic House majority and Republicans maintaining control of the Senate, Washington, D.C., now enters a period of divided government in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. We will no doubt see a politically-charged and highly partisan environment where both parties will be turning out messaging in preparation for 2020, not only in the form of legislation, but also through committee hearings and investigations in the House. 

On October 12, 2018, Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski spoke at the NYU School of Law where he announced new guidelines regarding the procedures governing corporate compliance and monitorships. While most of the attention has been on the new criteria for selecting corporate monitors, AAG Benczkowski also announced that the DOJ will not be hiring new corporate compliance counsel within the Criminal Division, a break from the practices of the previous administration.

The Veterans Administration (VA) maintains the Vendor Information Pages (VIP) database of Veteran-owned small businesses (VOSB) and service-disabled Veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSB). The VetBiz database is managed by VA’s Center for Veterans Enterprise (CVE) who determines whether an offeror is eligible to be listed on the database.

In a June 2018 decision, 1002 E. 87th St. LLC v. Midway Broad. Corp., an Illinois Appellate Court upheld a lower court’s decision holding that a landlord has no standing to sue a tenant for past due rent accruing before the landlord purchased the property. The court stated that as a general rule, the conveyance of property by warranty deed conveys any lease for the property, as well as the right to receive unaccrued rent (giving the new landlord standing to sue for unpaid rent that accrues while acting as landlord); however, a new landlord has no right to recover rent due from before the landlord owned the property, as such right remains with the original landlord.

After various court battles, two ballot initiatives were set to be on the November ballot for voter consideration. If passed, one would have increased the state minimum wage and the other would have required employers provide sick leave to employees.

On June 21, 2018, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the matter of Lucia v. SEC, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), which held that administrative law judges of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are considered Inferior Officers of the United States, therefore subject to the Appointments Clause (Article II, Sec. 2) of the U.S. Constitution.

With the ever changing developments regarding trade policy, we wanted to take this opportunity to provide some clarity regarding the Administration's actions under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, regarding products imported from China.

This morning, the San Antonio City Council approved a new city ordinance that requires employers to provide paid sick leave to employees who work at least 80 hours within the City of San Antonio per year. Employers with more than 15 employees must allow employees to earn up to one hour of paid sick leave per 30 hours worked, up to a cap of 64 hours of paid sick leave per year; employers with 15 or fewer employees must allow employees to similarly accrue paid sick leave up to a cap of 48 hours of paid sick leave per year.

The 2017 tax act (Pub. L. No. 115-97) introduced a new program designed to encourage investments in low-income communities throughout the country that have been designated as qualified opportunity zones (“Opportunity Zones”). Each state and U.S. territory was allowed to designate up to 25 percent of eligible low-income communities as Opportunity Zones. At this time, each state has submitted to the Treasury Department its list of proposed Opportunity Zones, and Treasury has approved designated Opportunity Zones across the nation.

During the second quarter, Dykema closed nine transactions with an average deal size of $40,500,000, representing the buyer in six of these transactions and representing the seller in three of them. Two of these transactions were cross-border in nature. 

The Communications Decency Act (CDA)—the law Congress enacted in 1996 and confirmed this past year to shield online publishers from responsibility for the speech of others—gives internet platforms the right to publish the ideas and opinions of third-party users without being held liable for that content or being forced to remove it. In the closely watched case of Hassell v. Bird, earlier this week the California Supreme Court, in a split 4-3 decision, applied the CDA’s immunity to on-line platforms, namely the ever-popular Yelp review website, which allows people to freely share their consumer thoughts on businesses, small and large.

Last month, in an effort to clarify what types of employee handbook rules are lawful under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued new Guidance on the topic.

After not disturbing the Third-Party Doctrine for more than 40 years, the Supreme Court created a significant exception to it in Carpenter v. United States. Slip Op., 16-402 (Jun. 22, 2018). Under the Third-Party Doctrine, individuals who voluntarily provide personal information to third parties are deemed to relinquish their legitimate reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.

While U.S. companies focused on the imposition of burdensome data protection laws being implemented overseas, California was hard at work on revamping its own laws. As of June 25, 2018, the home of big technology, Silicon Valley, Facebook, and Google, was prepared to consider the California Consumer Personal Information Disclosure and Sale Initiative (“Initiative”) on the November 2018 ballot.

On June 22, 2018, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of Texas settled a conflict in appellate court rulings by holding there is no cause of action in Texas for intentional interference with inheritance. Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, writing for the majority, reasoned that existing remedies in probate law, such as claims of undue influence, duress, restitution through the imposition of a constructive trust, and evidentiary rules and procedures were adequate to protect the interests of a prospective beneficiary.

On June 21, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court released its much-anticipated opinion in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., in which it held that physical presence within a State is no longer a prerequisite to the imposition of liability on out-of-state sellers to collect and remit sales taxes.

In Lagos v. United States, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that limits the ability of corporate victims of fraud to seek reimbursement of legal fees for internal investigations. The case began when GE Capital discovered that Sergio Lagos falsified numerous invoices for his company, which he used as collateral to obtain tens of millions of dollars in loans from GE Capital.