Client Alerts

The COVID-19 outbreak is forcing employers to consider alternative workplace plans, and one common plan involves employees working from home. 

On March 11, 2020, President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation that suspends the entry into the U.S. of certain foreign nationals, who have been present within the Schengen Area in the 14 day period prior to their entry into the United States.

Nissan terminated a worker for absenteeism after he had difficulty recovering from a kidney transplant; his antirejection medication caused side effects that made it difficult for him to work in the same physically demanding way that he had for the 14 years before the transplant. The worker proposed accommodations, and Nissan initially worked with him. 

Current events are worrisome enough without having to be on the lookout for cybercriminals (and just plain bad actors) taking advantage of concerns over the spread of COVID-19. Yet, we must continue to be vigilant.

All of us have recently been inundated with information about the coronavirus, in particular, its impact on industries and companies, plans and procedures for dealing with it, and recommendations for preventing it from spreading. 

Business interruption and other losses due to the global spread of coronavirus are projected to total in the billions of dollars. Business interruption insurance, sometimes called income loss insurance, is intended to protect businesses against revenue losses sustained as a result of their operations.  

On February 14, 2020, an Illinois federal jury awarded Motorola Solutions, Inc., (“Motorola”) $764.6 million in a trade secret theft and copyright infringement case against its Chinese rival company, Hytera Communications, Corp., (“Hytera”).  

On March 6, 2020, the President signed into law the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020 (H.R. 6074, the “Act”), bi-partisan legislation that promotes telehealth services for Medicare patients and provides additional emergency funding for fiscal year 2020 to combat the ever-increasing spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) at the federal, state and local levels.

In November 2019, the Federal Circuit (the Court of Appeals for patent litigation cases) decided a case known as Columbia Sportswear N. Am. v. Seirus Innovative Access., Inc., 942 F.3d 1119 (Fed. Cir. 2019) in such a way that makes the analysis identifying design infringement in the fashion industry much more difficult.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) warned Americans last week that it is not a question of whether COVID-19 will spread in the United States, but when it will spread. The CDC followed up the warning with a tweet advising Americans to start preparing for the spread of COVID-19.  Just as individuals, families, schools, communities, and hospitals must prepare, employers must also prepare.

The outbreak of Covid-19 (“coronavirus”) in China has interrupted global supply chains. Factory lockdowns, labor quarantines, and transportation suspensions are impacting downstream commerce. 

The hopes of many steel and aluminum importers of a judicial termination of President Trump’s broad authority to impose tariffs were diminished on Friday, February 28, 2020.

For some time, Michigan’s robust aerospace and defense industry has been somewhat under the general public’s radar, at least in comparison to the auto industry. That’s changing, and fast, as the local A&D community has been commanding attention of late.

Chinese state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. and Taiwanese United Microelectronics Corp. face criminal prosecution in a California federal court for trade secret theft. See U.S. v. United Microelectronics Corporation, Inc., et al., No 18-CR-465 (N.D. Cal.). The victim of the alleged crime is Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. According to Micron, the two defendant companies conspired to steal $8 billion dollars-worth of Micron’s trade secrets underpinning its dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip technology.

Non-Compete agreements have received a great deal of attention recently. Lawmakers at the state and local level have analyzed, discussed, and debated whether they should be permitted, when they should be permitted, and what exceptions or parameters should be placed on them. State Attorneys General have investigated their use (and, some would say, their abuse).  Even federal administrative bodies have studied the issue and taken comments on it.

Whether or not one believes tariffs are the fix to a national security issue – the basis for Section 232 Tariffs – it is clear that tariffs are having an effect on the US economy (some say positively, others say negatively).

A contract for the sale of goods that said “Buyer promises to purchase its requirements for the goods from Seller and Seller promises to supply Buyer’s requirements” is an enforceable “requirements contract” (often referred to in the automotive supply industry as a “blanket order”) under Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which governs contracts for the sale of goods. 

Attorneys often have to correct common misunderstandings that clients have about certain legal principles. For example, whether attorney fees are recoverable in litigation and what is and is not covered by insurance. In the area of construction law, a common misconception for both construction professionals (e.g. construction companies, homebuilders, etc.) and non-construction professionals (e.g. property owners, homeowners, etc.) is the concept that exposure for all construction-related claims ends after the one-year warranty often found in construction contracts.  

On February 19, 2020, the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (the “SBRA”) becomes effective. A small business debtor under the US Bankruptcy Code is a person or entity, other than the owner of a single asset real estate, that is engaged in commercial or business activities that has aggregate noncontingent liquidated secured and unsecured debt of not more than $2,725,625 (subject to periodic adjustment). The objective of the SBRA is to make it easier and less expensive for small businesses, considered by Congress to be the backbone of the American economy,  to reorganize and remain in business under Chapter 11. The SBRA makes a number of changes to the Bankruptcy Code that will decrease the costs of reorganizations and enable small business owners to retain control over their businesses.

At both the federal level and in Michigan, public policy favors enforcement of arbitration clauses. Arbitration is perceived as a faster, more flexible, less expensive way of having subject-matter experts resolve disputes, with limited appellate rights to promote finality. So, when your company contracts for these benefits, it important that your business agreements make it clear for the court just which disputes you intend to be arbitrated—some of them, those arising from events in the past, present, or future, or all of them.