January 2015

stethoscope


stethoscopeAs indicated in a recent blog post in the Harvard Business Review, entitled “Who Has Paid Sick Leave, Who Doesn’t, and What’s Changing,” paid sick leave traditionally was a benefit that only some employers provided, and in some cases only to certain employees. In recent years, however, increasing numbers of cities and states have begun mandating that employers provide this traditionally voluntary benefit. In fact, if President Obama makes good on his promise from his State of the Union address, there will be a national standard for mandatory paid sick leave. With the fast-changing landscape of rules and regulations related to paid sick leave, in-house counsel and employers need to keep alert. In Massachusetts, for instance, voters approved a ballot measure which goes into effect on July 15, 2015.… Keep reading

TAGS: , , , ,


When seeking preliminary injunctive relief to enforce a non-compete, the moving party is often focused on how obvious it is that the defendant breached the parties’ agreement. As 7-Eleven recently learned, however, even when there is a valid and enforceable noncompetition provision and a clear breach of it, unless you can show that you will suffer irreparable harm without an injunction, and that such harm outweighs the irreparable harm to the defendant that an injunction would inflict, a court will not issue injunctive relief. … Keep reading


Letters of intent (LOI) are routinely used after business people have reached some degree of common ground on a potential deal. Sometimes an LOI comes very early on, before the parties know whether an ultimate agreement is likely or not. In other situations, however, LOI’s are entered into only after there is agreement on all the key business terms. Even in those cases, however, deals often crater during the process of negotiating a full-blown contract. This can be the result of one side simply getting cold feet and/or otherwise changing its mind about moving forward. Further, all too often the party left at the altar can do nothing but lament the fact that it expended a lot of time and money with nothing to show for it. Here are two strategies in-house counsel might consider employing in the LOI process to limit the risk that they have to go back to their internal client and explain that even though there was a letter of intent, the other side walked away from the deal and there is nothing that can be done about it.… Keep reading

TAGS: , , , , ,