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CLU-Government-Building

Selecting a business partner, much like selecting a spouse, involves a great deal of trust in the other’s representations and conduct as the actions of one, for better or worse, can be attributed to the other. The intricacies and complications of these two relationships most recently clashed in Bartenwerfer v. Buckley, which has presumably settled the question of whether the debt resulting from the fraud of one legal partner/spouse can be imputed to the fraudster’s innocent wife in the bankruptcy context.…

Continue Reading Does the Left Hand Need to Know What the Right Is Doing: The Supreme Court Holds That Fraudulent Debts of One Partner Cannot Be Discharged by an Innocent Partner

HEAL-Boardroom

It has been four years since Congress enacted the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (“EKRA”), codified at 18 U.S.C. § 220. EKRA initially targeted patient brokering and kickback schemes within the addiction treatment and recovery spaces. However, since EKRA was expansively drafted to also apply to clinical laboratories (it applies to improper referrals for any “service”, regardless of the payor), public as well as private insurance plans and even self-pay patients fall within the reach of the statute.
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Continue Reading Four Years After Enactment – Clinical Laboratories Should Not Forget About EKRA

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On June 15, the Court decided five cases and dismissed a sixth. A case of great importance to health care lawyers, regarding the availability of judicial review of Medicare rates for pharmaceuticals, and another of great importance to labor and employment lawyers, holding that a significant portion of the California Private Attorneys General Act’s (PAGA’s) delegation of state enforcement power is preempted by federal law, lead the pack.…

Continue Reading Six Down, 24 to Go: An Important Day for Health Care and Employment Lawyers – SCOTUS Today

Trade-Secrets-non-competes

Many employers have granted their white collar workers increased flexibility to work remotely in response to the pandemic. As a result, some employees have moved away from the areas surrounding their offices and into places with lower costs or higher quality of living. In cases where an employee with a non-compete moves to a state such as California, which has a prohibition against any “contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind,” that can present potential problems for a Company. Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code. § 16600.
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Continue Reading Our Employee Moved to California During the Pandemic, Can We Enforce Their Non-Compete? Choice of Law Analysis Will Matter

Health-law-Medical-Payment

When hospitals and doctors treat patients who are injured in car accidents, the health care providers reasonably expect that their rights to be compensated for the care they provide will not be conditioned upon their willingness to participate in their patients’ personal injury lawsuits against allegedly negligent drivers. A common pleas Court in Ohio applied…

Three years ago, the United States Supreme Court confirmed in Cyan, Inc. v. Beaver County Employees Retirement Fund, 138 S. Ct. 1061 (2018) that claims brought under the Securities Act of 1933 (the “Securities Act”) are subject to “concurrent jurisdiction,” meaning they can be asserted either in federal or state court and that a…

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Creative and aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers are forever on the hunt for new theories under which to bring potentially lucrative class action lawsuits utilizing plaintiff-friendly state consumer protection statutes (with California being the most favored forum). The dietary supplement industry has been in the plaintiffs bar’s cross-hairs for more than a decade now. As the case…

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Richard Robinson was a truck driver who tried to sue his former employer for civil penalties pursuant to the California Private Attorney’s General Act (“PAGA”). Unfortunately for him, his employer settled another PAGA action while his case was still pending, and despite opting out of the other settlement, the Court of Appeals dismissed the case…

On July 8, 2020, the California Court of Appeals held that when an employee fails to initial a specific part of an arbitration agreement, but still signs it, the agreement is still enforceable.

Plaintiff Joseph Martinez brought a series of employment claims against his former employer, BaronHR, Inc., which moved to compel arbitration. Martinez opposed…

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On September 6, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California preliminarily approved a settlement in Harvey v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. The significance of the result is two-fold. First, substantively, it is a reminder to financial services firms of potential liability under California labor law when advisors are required…