The Maryland Senate earlier this week approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would raise the minimum threshold for a right to a jury trial in Maryland from $15,000 to $30,000. The measure now goes to the Maryland House of Delegates for a vote there.

The second case where a federal court has ruled in favor of restaurant owners in their claims made pursuant to their business interruption insurance policies is In Re Society Insurance Co. However, in Society, the Court merely denied summary judgment to the insurer and did not rule, at the early motions stage, that coverage existed.

Since the beginning of 2021, two federal courts have ruled in favor of restaurant owners in their claims made pursuant to their business interruption insurance policies. While most courts have ruled against insureds in these business interruption cases, the tide seems to be turning just a bit.

The District of Columbia Council recently passed an Act banning most non-competition agreements entered into after the Act’s enactment.  This is the latest in a trend among states and localities to significantly restrict non-competition agreements for most employees.  The Act now goes to the Mayor, although it passed with a veto-proof majority.

Tucked away in the lengthy National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA) is the little-known Corporate Transparency Act. The Act affects certain limited liability companies and corporations (especially those that are closely held) and requires disclosure of certain beneficial owners of the entities.

A trade group made up of commercial general contractors recently filed a lawsuit in federal court calling into question the Small Business Administration's questionnaires used to aid in determining whether loans made under the PPP are subject to forgiveness. The lawsuit seeks to disallow any examination of the borrower’s financial condition after applying for the PPP loan because the required certification is limited to the time the certification was executed.

While non-competition, non-solicitation and trade secret litigation seems to be at the forefront in today's mobile gig economy, employers need to remember that they cannot go after an employee under an existing employment contract unless the contract itself provides a way out for the employee.  While employers may argue that it is all just healthy business competition, inducing a breach is often wrongful in and of itself. Moreover, a potential new employer should take very seriously any letter received from the former employer’s attorney and seek to resolve these issues before allowing the new employee to begin work.  Once the employer knows of possible wrongful conduct, it might find itself on the hook for damages, as well.   

A recent case from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals demonstrates, once again, the risks assumed by a commercial landlord when it seeks to evict a tenant itself as opposed to going through the judicial process. Although the landlord ultimately prevailed, the case offers a stark reminder of the significant damages that a tenant may recover if the landlord’s self-help actions are ultimately determined to be improper.

As I previously wrote about, California had pushed to make Uber, Lyft and other app-based drivers employees, with all the attendant employee protections and benefits. However, California voters rejected the efforts and passed Proposition 22, which defines these drivers as independent contractors. It appears that Uber and Lyft are safe for now in California.

OSHA recently updated its reporting guidance for work-related confirmed hospitalizations due to COVID-19, as well as work-related COVID-19 fatalities.

Uber and Lyft recently suffered another set-back in California as a result of an appeals court there upholding a preliminary injunction requiring them to classify their drivers as employees.

When an employee believes that he or she has not been paid wages due to him or her, one of the most important questions is who is the “employer” under the various federal, state, and local laws. The employee may have several “employers” under these laws and against whom he or she can impose liability - especially important if the corporate employer is insolvent.

A case from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals recently addressed this issue but so with a twist. The Court utilized the well-known “economic reality test” from the FLSA, but in the context of corporate veil piercing, which allows a court to disregard entity-level protections and impute liability to the business’s owners. Piercing the corporate veil is difficult in Maryland, and a court will only disregard the corporate entity to prevent fraud or for a paramount equity.

Earlier this month, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) assessed an $80 million civil penalty, and ordered certain remedial actions, against Capital One Bank “based on the bank's failure to establish effective risk assessment” prior to migrating information technology operations to the cloud. Specifically, the bank violated 12 C.F.R. Part 30, Appendix B, “Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards,” which addresses administrative, technical and physical safeguards to protect the security and confidentiality of customer information.

Tesla recently sued a competitor and former employees for violations of state trade secret laws, breach of contract and interference with contract. This case is a bit different because in addition to claiming that the departing employees took technical data related to the production of Tesla's electric vehicles, the lawsuit also alleges that the employees took recruiting and employment data.

For those who do business or litigate in Virginia, you should be aware of two noteworthy laws that take effect July 1, 2020. With the first, Virginia becomes the latest state to ban covenants not to compete for low wage employees . The second law creates a private cause of action for misclassified workers if their employers had knowledge of the misclassification.

In a recent case from the Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the court addressed the tenant’s argument for relief under the lease’s force majeure clause, and ruled that the Governor's order suspending on-site operations prevented the tenant from partially performing under the lease.

It is not every day that a court throws out a defamation claim because the plaintiff’s reputation is “so badly tarnished that he cannot be further injured by the allegedly false statements on that subject.”  But that is what happened by a New York state court in response to a lawsuit filed by retired baseball player Len Dykstra against another former ball player, Ron Darling Jr.

A recent post discussed a copyright case from the federal court in the Southern District of New York brought by a professional photographer who uploaded an image on her public Instagram page. The Court dismissed the photographer’s copyright claims, ruling that when an individual uploads a picture to his or her public Instagram page, he or she grants Instagram the right to grant sublicenses of the picture. The Court has now revised its decision and allowed the lawsuit to proceed, ruling that Instagram’s terms of service are insufficiently clear to warrant dismissal.

The Supreme Court recently resolved a split among the circuits and ruled that willfulness is not a prerequisite to a profits damage award in Lanham Act cases based on false or misleading use of a trademark.

When an individual uploads a picture to his or her public Instagram page, he or she grants Instagram a license to display it and, importantly, the right for Instagram to grant sublicenses of the picture. By operation of Instagram’s terms and conditions, Instagram granted a third-party website a valid sublicense to embed a photo on its site through Instagram’s API and, thus, the website did not violate the photographer’s rights.