Client Alerts
Client Alerts
1487 items, 20 items per page
- The NLRB dealt a blow to employers yesterday, releasing its long-awaited decision in Browning-Ferris Industries. In a 3-2 decision, the NLRB rolled back nearly 30 years of case law to “restate” its joint employer standard. The result: a far more expansive test that is centered firmly on the question of control -- even indirect or potential control -- over a work force.
- In November 2015, Ohio voters will determine whether to ensconce the use of recreational and medical marijuana in the Ohio Constitution.
- Recently, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania granted preliminary approval to a $6 million class and collective action settlement between Calfrac Well Services Corp. and a class of about 1,300 fracturing, cement, and coil operators. The plaintiffs worked as field operators in Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota, and Arkansas and were paid according to a complicated formula that included a salary, bonuses, and overtime. The case centered on how the operators’ regular rate of pay (the rate which provides the basis for the time-and-a-half overtime premium) should be calculated.
- According to a recent survey, more consumers are reading online reviews, they are forming opinions based on those reviews quicker, they are paying close attention to star ratings, and – in general – they are highly trusting of online reviews.
- In companion decisions released on August 20, 2015, the Supreme Court of Kentucky confirmed that Kentucky follows the “at the well” rule with respect to post-production costs, but held that the payment of severance taxes must be borne solely by the producer.
- On Thursday, August 13, Secretary of State John Husted issued a decision finding that the proposed charter petitions for Athens, Fulton and Medina counties are invalid. The secretary’s decision tracked analysis provided by Vorys’ attorneys Jonathan Airey, Gregory Russell, Lisa Babish Forbes and Aaron Williams in an amicus brief submitted on behalf of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association and the Ohio Gas Association.
- On Tuesday, August 11, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit released a decision upholding an assertion of privilege by Kellogg Brown and Root, Inc. (KBR) over internal investigation documents in a FCA suit alleging kickbacks and overbilling on Iraq war subcontracts.
- Following Oregon’s recently enacted state-wide paid sick leave law, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are the latest locales to require that employers provide paid sick leave to their employees. This further complicates the growing patchwork quilt of federal, state and local leave laws that employers have to contend with.
- On August 5, 2015, the SEC voted 3-2 to adopt the final pay ratio disclosure rules imple¬menting Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd-Frank Act).
- Since 1990, Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has required places of public accommodation to meet certain standards for accessibility by persons with disabilities. The traditional definition of “places of public accommodation” – stores, schools, offices, etc. – has largely remained unchanged since the ADA’s enactment. In April 2016, however, a long-awaited change could see an entirely new frontier fall under the scope of the ADA: websites.
- Pursuant to recently enacted legislation, filing deadlines for federal partnership information returns (Form 1065), S corporation information returns (Form 1120S) and C corporation income tax returns (Form 1120) have been changed.
- On July 22, 2015, the United States Department of Defense issued a final rule implementing the Military Lending Act (the MLA), a federal law that provides various protections to active-duty service members in consumer credit transactions. The MLA imposes various restrictions and disclosure requirements on a creditor who extends consumer credit to active-duty service members, their spouses and their dependents.
- A decision last week in an FCA case in Pennsylvania confirms that the FCA’s first-to-file bar has been weakened. See U.S. ex rel. Boise v. Cephalon, Inc., No. 08-CV-287 (E.D. Pa.). The court in the Cephalon case confirmed that the Supreme Court’s decision in Kellogg Brown & Root Servs., Inc. v. United States ex rel. Carter means that the first-to-file bar does not apply when a previously filed case is no longer pending.
- Democrats in Congress recently introduced the Schedules that Work Act to control how employers schedule their employees’ to work. The bill would apply to employers of 15 or more employees.
- Oregon is now the fourth state, after Connecticut, California, and Massachusetts, to mandate that employers provide their employees with sick leave benefits. Oregon’s new sick leave law goes into effect on January 1, 2016, applies to all private- and public-sector employees, and in most cases, requires that the sick leave be paid.
- The Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in U.S. ex rel. Hartpence v. Kinetic Concepts, Inc., 2015 U.S. App. Lexis 11643 (9th. Cir. July 7, 2015), overruled existing Ninth Circuit precedent regarding the requirements for meeting the public disclosure rule’s original source exception, weakening the public disclosure bar in the Ninth Circuit and opening the door for increased qui tam activity within that jurisdiction.
- A recent opinion from the federal district court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania determined that drivers who transported water to drilling rigs were not exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or Pennsylvania law.
- Ohio’s one-time sales tax holiday starts on Friday, August 7, 2015 at 12:01 a.m. and ends on Sunday, August 9, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. Vendor compliance with this holiday is mandatory.
- Today, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued an Administrator’s Interpretation discussing the misclassification of employees as independent contractors. In this guidance, the DOL takes the position that “most workers are employees under the FLSA’s broad definitions.”
- On June 30th Governor Kasich signed Ohio’s 2016-2017 biennial budget. Amended Substitute House Bill 64 (HB 64) contains a few noteworthy tax reforms. That said, HB 64 is more noteworthy for the tax reforms the General Assembly considered but ultimately discarded -- a commercial activity tax (CAT) rate increase, severance tax reform, sales tax rate increase, and sales tax base expansion.