FMLA Burdens of Proof: What You Need to Know
An important and developing issue under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA or Act) is the appropriate burden of proof to be applied in assessing a plaintiff's claim. Soon after the FLMA became law in 1993, courts automatically applied the McDonnell-Douglas burden-shifting analysis in all FMLA cases, as they do when considering many other employment-related claims. After nearly 10 years, however, courts are now focusing more directly on burden shifting issues — and revising, if not clarifying, the law.
Clause Of The Month
Long-term services contracts, such as contracts for outsourcing, generally provide the customer only limited rights to terminate. Typically, the customer is permitted to terminate the contract for the vendor's uncured material breach or upon the filing of a bankruptcy petition by or against the vendor. Even if the customer has the right to terminate for convenience, it is often conditioned on the customer's paying a substantial amount.
High Court Hands Fox Copyright Defeat
We offer the synopsis of the decision in the story below for readers who represent Web sites and other e-commerce enterprises that use public-domain material as content to drive sales, use it to market their products and/or Web sites or even sell public-domain material. The High Court's ruling allows use of unattributed public-domain material, lifting concerns that such unattributed use is actionable under the Lanham Act, which some authors and other artists have relied on to seek relief for repeated use of unattributed material, even though such material had entered the public domain.]
ADR: Increasingly Popular For Fixing E-Commerce Disagreements
Even though e-commerce has become a norm, businesspeople and consumers buy goods and services online without considering for a second how using the Internet has brought those goods and services to people and locations that would not have enjoyed these benefits a decade ago.
FTC Opens the Door To Spam Regulation
The FTC is under enormous pressure to address the growing proliferation of spam. n light of Constitutional and statutory limitations, the FTC has been forced to focus its efforts on deceptive spam, as opposed to the broader problem of too many unsolicited messages crowding consumers' in boxes.
