As businesses begin to reopen, defamation-related questions await both employers and employees. Can a claim for defamation be successfully brought against an employee falsely claiming another employee has contracted Covid-19? How about if an employee falsely alleges that an employer did not take adequate measures to protect its employees from...
This is the latest in a series of non-legal articles on the city we work in and love. On a hot New York City Sunday in July 1854, a 24-year-old African-American woman named Elizabeth Jennings was trying to get to church. She boarded a horse-drawn streetcar at the corner of...
Yesterday, the Supreme Court held in Bostock v. Clayton County that an employer who fires an individual for being gay or transgender violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law regulating discrimination in employment. Accompanying the relief and celebration of LGBTQ advocates and allies was...
Bankruptcy filings are on the rise, and retailers across the country are having to make decisions about how to best move forward as we continue to combat the coronavirus. Business Insurance published an article on June 1 discussing the impacts, specifically highlighting that which retailers survive will likely come down...
RPJ attorneys Liz Stork and Ethan Krasnoo are participating in a program providing free consultations to workers referred by the Legal Network for Gender Equity who have been denied paid sick time or paid leave under the newly enacted Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The Act grants certain workers up...
On Friday, June 5, President Trump signed the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Flexibility Act of 2020 (HR 7010) into law, loosening restrictions on PPP loans made to businesses struggling in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The new law makes the following key adjustments to the PPP loan forgiveness requirements:...
As colleges and universities across the country make decisions about whether to return to in-person classes in the fall, and what that will look like, they face numerous obstacles and liability concerns. The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on May 29 illuminating the many issues, featuring quotes and...
COVID-19 has introduced tensions into the contractual relationship between vegetable growers and grocery retailers. Despite being open, many grocery stores tried to limit produce stock because they didn’t have enough, or consistent, labor to unload and process. That meant growers had to discard large percentages of their harvest and incur...
Governments, pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers around the world are racing to produce a vaccine for COVID-19, as well as potential drugs to fight the virus in those who contract it. The numbers show at least 70 reported potential vaccines and 150 other drugs for treatment that are in development...
As the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic keeps mounting, and employers try to make decisions about how to keep their balance sheets—and those of their employees—in the black, pay cuts to all ranks are becoming standard protocol. Certain companies have chosen to introduce pay cuts for those at the...