Client Alerts

As competition within the global marketplace continues to intensify, there has never been a time when protecting your company’s trade secrets has been more important. Recent legal developments underscore that point.

Despite the passage of laws in Michigan and 45 other states that have permitted or decriminalized the use of cannabis-related products for medical or recreational use or both, there remains an 800-pound gorilla known as the federal government that makes it a crime to manufacture, sell or possess marijuana.

On October 31, 2018, a jury in a Colorado federal civil action returned a verdict against a real property owner on its RICO claim against an adjacent cannabis grow operation, concluding that the plaintiff failed to prove financial loss caused from odors emitted from the defendant’s grow operation.

On November 6, 2018, Michigan voters passed a referendum which will make the recreational use and possession of marihuana legal under Michigan law.  The law will take effect 10 days after the official election results are certified, which should occur sometime in early December 2018.  The legalization of recreational use and possession of marihuana raises a number of practical and legal questions, but we will focus here on questions employers may have.

Yesterday, the Michigan Court of Appeals held that the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) storm water drainage fee is permissible and not a tax subject to voter approval under the Headlee Amendment.

After much debate, Michigan voters have voted to permit recreational use of marijuana.  As the first Midwest state to legalize recreational marijuana, other states will be closely tracking how Michigan implements this new law. 

The Internal Revenue Service has recently announced cost-of-living adjustments applicable to dollar limitations for retirement plans (and other items) for 2019. 

On Tuesday, November 6th, 2018, Michigan voters will decide whether to legalize recreational marijuana. If approved, Proposal 1 will brand Michigan the first state in the Midwest to legalize the possession and use of recreational marijuana for adults.

At 12:00 AM on October 17, 2018, Green was a “GO” in Newfoundland Canada. From there, every hour, legalized marijuana went into effect across each province and territory. The Cannabis Act allows for all people 18 or older (in Quebec and Alberta, and 19 or older everywhere else) to possess up to 30 grams of legal marijuana, or “equivalent non-dried form.” 

Iconic American retailer, Sears Holding Company, which operates both the Sears and K-Mart brand locations (including Big-K, Sears Automotive Centers and other related companies) filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York.

With the election around the corner, nonprofit organizations – especially charities should review the rules about public policy, lobbying, and political activities. Tax exempt nonprofit organizations must be careful about the types of public and political activities they undertake, but charities and other nonprofit organizations don’t have to give up the ability to take positions on public issues or to take action to influence public policy merely because of its exempt status. Federal tax limits on the political activities of tax-exempt organizations are, in fact, often narrower than many people think. Tax-exempt organizations have the right to engage in public debate and make their positions on important issues known, and even 501(c)(3) charities, which are the most heavily regulated, may engage in some political activities that further their tax-exempt, charitable purposes.

On October 4, 2018, the U.S. Department of Transportation released the long-awaited Autonomous Vehicles 3.0 Preparing for the Future of Transportation guidelines (“AV 3.0”). These guidelines build upon the voluntary guidance issued in Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety and incorporate comments from many stakeholders including manufacturers, suppliers, state and local governments, and infrastructure owners and operators.

On October 1^st the United States reached a deal with Canada and announced the newly minted United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement or “USMCA”. The U.S auto industry, including the UAW and analysts had a mixed initial reaction to the White House announcement of the deal, which it says will make it easier for automakers and suppliers to expand domestic plants by making it more expensive to produce outside the U.S. The newly announced pact is over 100 pages long, and all parties agree needs significant further review to understand how all the details will impact the various sectors.  

This Client alert is to inform of changes in the processing of the “Premium Processing” option for Petitions for Employment Based immigration cases. Where appropriate, employers have sought to sponsor or petition future or existing foreign national employees to meet the demands of their business. These Employment Based Petitions are filed and adjudicated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (“USCIS”). Employers may seek to have their Petitions handled as a “Premium Processing” matter when timing is a concern for an employer’s sponsorship of a foreign national employee by completing Form I-907 and paying the appropriate “Premium Processing fee.

The Trump Administration announced Monday evening that it will impose 10% Section 301 tariffs on $200 billion of goods imported from China beginning next week.  The tariffs, which go into effect September 24, will rise to 25% on January 1, 2019.  In his statement at the White House, President Trump added that “if China takes retaliatory action against our farmers or other industries, we will immediately pursue phase three, which is tariffs on approximately $267 billion of additional imports.” 

Soon, avid readers of the Federal Register will see “updates” to the 232 Steel and Aluminum tariff exclusion process that the Department of Commerce says is based on feedback from public comment. There are changes in the proposed final rule, dubbed the “second interim final rule", and the changes will clearly help future filers. But, for those 38,000 filed comments, the next question is, how are already-filed applications going to be treated under the new rules?

On Wednesday, August 29, President Trump issued additional Section 232 steel and aluminum proclamations to update and modify earlier proclamations. President Trump had earlier exempted certain countries, namely, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Korea from the 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum and in most cases (except Australia) quotas were imposed rather than tariffs.  This new action is apparently in response to the realization that these quotas have adversely affected some U.S companies that couldn’t source sufficient quantities of steel and aluminum domestically and the quotas were filled from these previously exempted countries. It simply supplements an existing exclusion process and extends it to the case of exempted countries which had quotas which are now filled or close to filled.

On August 27, 2018, President Trump’s and Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto congratulated each other in a conference call for reaching “preliminary agreement in principle” in regards to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

This new agreement is intended to replace the 24-year-old NAFTA agreement with modern provisions addressing the new technological realities of doing business. It also intends to give a solution to the Administration’s priority to re-shore manufacturing to the United States. 

As a follow up to the prior alert on the 2019 proposed Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program from CMS, attention should be given to the significant changes in reimbursement for remote patient management and store and forward telehealth.  Comments to the proposed rules as noted in the prior Health Alert are due by September 10, 2018 with a final ruling expected in November. 

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced on August 8th that the U.S. would begin imposing 25% tariffs on a second tranche of Chinese products valued at approximately $16B on August 23rd.   Tariffs on a first list of products valued at approximately $34B as a result of the USTR’s Section 301 investigation took effect July 6th.