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Employers Must Be Mindful of Pay Practices, As Criminal Charges for Underpayment of Workers Becomes Increasingly Common
In 2015, speaking at a Labor Day campaign event, former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told a crowd, "I'm going to make sure that some employers go to jail for wage theft." "Clinton: I'll jail some employers for wage theft," CNN (Sept. 8, 2015). Her statement was shocking to some at the time, raising the possibility of incarceration for employment-related failures that had traditionally been viewed as primarily the province of private civil litigation or regulatory enforcement. Jailing an employer for, say, failing to provide sufficient fringe benefits on a government-funded job was, to many, an alarming prospect.
Clinton's statement was a nod to a movement, then in its early stages, to treat employers' failures to appropriately compensate workers as criminal rather than civil or regulatory failures. Where prevailing wage violations were previously handled primarily via audits by the Department of Labor or their state equivalent, and usually resulted in employers being required to pay back wages, this movement saw such violations as equivalent to traditional theft, and favored using the tools of criminal justice to address them. This movement has grown, and has recently gained momentum. Today, prosecutors across the country increasingly seek criminal fines and jail time for what were previously seen as non-criminal labor violations. For more information about corporate criminal liability, see, Carolyn Kendall, "Corporate Criminal Liability in the COVID-19 Era," Business Crimes Bulletin (June 2020).
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Bankruptcy Sales: Finding a Diamond In the Rough
There is no efficient market for the sale of bankruptcy assets. Inefficient markets yield a transactional drag, potentially dampening the ability of debtors and trustees to maximize value for creditors. This article identifies ways in which investors may more easily discover bankruptcy asset sales.
Judge Rules Shaquille O'Neal Will Face Securities Lawsuit for Promotion, Sale of NFTs
A federal district court in Miami, FL, has ruled that former National Basketball Association star Shaquille O'Neal will have to face a lawsuit over his promotion of unregistered securities in the form of cryptocurrency tokens and that he was a "seller" of these unregistered securities.
Why So Many Great Lawyers Stink at Business Development and What Law Firms Are Doing About It
Why is it that those who are best skilled at advocating for others are ill-equipped at advocating for their own skills and what to do about it?
Blockchain Domains: New Developments for Brand Owners
Blockchain domain names offer decentralized alternatives to traditional DNS-based domain names, promising enhanced security, privacy and censorship resistance. However, these benefits come with significant challenges, particularly for brand owners seeking to protect their trademarks in these new digital spaces.
Coverage Issues Stemming from Dry Cleaner Contamination Suits
In recent years, there has been a growing number of dry cleaners claiming to be "organic," "green," or "eco-friendly." While that may be true with respect to some, many dry cleaners continue to use a cleaning method involving the use of a solvent called perchloroethylene, commonly known as perc. And, there seems to be an increasing number of lawsuits stemming from environmental problems associated with historic dry cleaning operations utilizing this chemical.