President Obama recently signed the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 ("DTSA"), which provides California businesses with another tool to protect their trade secrets. Specifically, the DTSA provides trade secret owners with a federal civil right of action to pursue...
In Corbin v. Time Warner Entm't-Advance/Newhouse P'ship, the Ninth Circuit was recently asked to determine whether hourly compensation policies at a California call center which rounded hourly time stamps to the nearest quarter hour and which required employees to...
Changes that come with the New Year are not limited to personal resolutions. Laws also change and/or are enacted that affect all of us. From statutes which mandate equal pay to those that increase minimum wage, the legal landscape in 2016 has undergone changes and...
Despite the unambiguous language of Bankruptcy Code Section 365(d), which requires a debtor, debtor-in-possession, or bankruptcy trustee to "timely perform" all obligations under an unexpired non-residential lease, it is somewhat common-place for these lease...
Professionals seeking to be employed under Bankruptcy Code Section 328, most commonly when seeking to be employed on a contingency fee basis, should be careful to ensure the employment motion and order specifically state the professional is being employed under...
Owning and managing a business in California can be very challenging given the pro employee legal climate. In order to avoid liability you must stay on top of new laws effecting your rights as an employer. Effective April 1, 2016, employers are required to comply with...
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Ninth Circuit's imposition of an equitable surcharge on the basis of bad faith against a debtor's exempt property in Law v. Siegel, 134 S.Ct. 1188 (2014). The Supreme Court held that the general equitable powers of...
It is important to know the significant differences between a Limited Liability Company ("LLC") and a Subchapter S Corporation in California ("S-Corp"). This posting addresses a few of those differences.Both an LLC and an S Corp. provide limited liability to their...
In Emmert v. Taggart (In re Taggart), BAP No. OR-15-1119-JuKiF, the 9th Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (the "BAP") reversed an Oregon bankruptcy court's decision to sanction an Appellant for willfully violating the discharge injunction because the bankruptcy court...
The automatic stay only applies as to actions against a debtor and not as to actions filed by a debtor. See, In re Merrick, 175 B.R. 333 (9th Cir. BAP 1994); In re Mitchell, 206 B.R. 204, 212 (Bankr. C.D. Cal. 1997) ("Section 362 stay does not apply where, as here,...