Insights
Insights
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- There are many internet forums on which disgruntled parties are initiating online reputation and brand attacks. This includes people publishing false and defamatory blog posts, which typically involves them creating a free blog through Google, WordPress or another easy-to-use blog-publishing platform for the sole purpose of disparaging other parties.
- Last year, the Sixth Circuit opened the floodgates on telecommuting as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In EEOC v. Ford Motor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Ford under the ADA for failing to accommodate Jane Harris’ (a former employee) irritable bowel syndrome by refusing her request to telecommute as-needed up to four days a week.
- Increasingly today, “extortionists” – given the significance of online reviews – are threatening businesses with potential harmful reviews or posting other damaging content online. For instance, if a business does not give that person a refund, produce replacement, or discount, he or she could make good on a promise to harm the company online.
- Jackie Ford, a partner in the Vorys Houston and Columbus offices, authored an article for the National Law Journal titled “What Clinton's Email Troubles Can Teach Employers.”
- California courts have made it notoriously difficult to enforce noncompete agreements against former employees in California. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just made it even harder.
- On April 7, 2015, USEPA proposed a zero discharge Clean Water Act pretreatment standard for wastewater from existing or new Unconventional Oil and Gas Extraction facilities discharged to a Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW).
- The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently announced the results of a 2014 enforcement initiative that focused on the oil and gas industry in New Mexico and west Texas. According to the DOL, it recovered more than $1.3 million owed to some 1,300 employees as a result of this investigation. This is not the first DOL foray into wage-and-hour practices within the oil and gas industry. In December 2014, the DOL announced that employers engaged in natural gas extraction in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania and West Virginia agreed to pay $4,498,547 in back wages to 5,310 employees.
- Despite serious concerns by the industry, as announced on March 19, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has opted to publish “personal narratives” in conjunction with complaints against banking institutions. The CFPB website will carry unverified, unsubstantiated and uninvestigated narratives, in the words of the customer, describing their purported issues with a named institution.
- On March 25, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted amendments to Regulation A, which provides an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933 (Securities Act) for smaller securities offerings by private (non-SEC reporting) companies.
- The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio recently certified an important question of law concerning the deduction of post-production costs to the Supreme Court of Ohio: Does Ohio follow the “at the well” rule (which permits the deduction of post-production costs) or does it follow some version of the “marketable product” rule (which limits the deduction of post-production costs under certain circumstances)?
- The National Labor Relations Board has determined that confidentiality statements used in internal investigations are unlawful. Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has weighed in on employee confidentiality agreements.
- On March 18, 2015, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced that those engaged in crude petroleum and natural gas extraction, drilling, and related support activities are engaged in “high hazard” activities and will be subject to OSHA’s Severe Violator Enforcement Program. The program has been in effect since 2010, when it replaced the prior Enhanced Enforcement Program. When the program started, OSHA placed its national emphasis on the “high-hazard” industries that involved fall hazards and hazards from amputations; combustible dust, crystalline silica; excavation and/or trenching; lead; and shipbreaking. This announcement is an expansion of the program’s “high hazard” activities. This is important for the oil and gas industry because OSHA concentrates the majority of its resources to inspecting employers from “high-hazard” industries.
- Underscoring a national trend, Virginia joined 18 states (Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin) limiting employer access to the social media accounts of job applicants and employees.
- On March 25, 2015, the Supreme Court announced its long-awaited decision in Young v. United Parcel Service regarding the scope of required accommodations under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). The case involves a former driver for UPS who claimed that UPS violated the PDA by not offering her light duty when she was pregnant and subject to a 20-pound lifting restriction, despite accommodating nonpregnant drivers with the same lifting restriction.
- On March 24, 2015, the Ohio Supreme Court decided the Fairfield County v. Nally (former Ohio EPA Director) case. This was a challenge brought by Fairfield County to a Clean Water Act (CWA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit limit, which was based on a total maximum daily load (TMDL) report prepared by Ohio EPA to limit phosphorus discharges from the county’s wastewater treatment plant.
- On March 18, 2015, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) general counsel released a report addressing “problematic” employee handbook provisions that could be “reasonably construed” as having a chilling effect on employees’ Section 7 activity under the National Labor Relations Act (basically, the right to engage in “concerted activities” for collective bargaining or “other mutual aid and protection”).
- As 2015 gets under way, bank compensation committees are tasked with setting the bank’s executive compensation strategy for the year and effectively communicating that compensation structure to shareholders. Compensation committees need to strike a balance between a compensation program that attracts and retains employees and encourages those employees to take appropriate business risks while advancing the bank’s growth strategies and discouraging inappropriate risks.
- Maybe at one time your company was reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and your company’s stock was listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market (NASDAQ). You were relieved when the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act allowed you to terminate your SEC registration, even though it meant that your stock could no longer be listed on NASDAQ.
- During the past three years, a significant number of community banks and their holding companies (collectively, banks) throughout the United States elected to “go dark” by taking advantage of a provision in The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act). These banks were able to suspend their reporting obligations under Section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act) and deregister with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) because they had fewer than 1,200 shareholders of record.
- In December 2014, Congress modified portions of Dodd-Frank to provide additional opportunities to reduce the regulatory burden on community banks. In response to this legislation, on January 29, 2015 the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) requested comment on several related proposals (and an interim rule) focused primarily on increasing the number of holding companies eligible for the reduced reporting and other requirements under the “small” holding company exclusion.
April
Jackie FordMarch
Jennifer Bibart Dunsizer
Elizabeth Howard
Anthony D. Weis
Jeffery E. SmithInsights
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