Welcome back to LexBlog’s Top 10 in Law Blogs. In this edition, Bob Ambrogi discusses Thomson Reuters’ announcement last week to cut its workforce by 3,200, and what reductions in staff, offices and products could mean for customers. A 13 year long fight over a renowned Pissarro painting stolen by Nazis went to trial last week, according to Conrad Wilton. Mary C. Zinser reports on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling that employers have an obligation to protect employees’ personal data. Only two more Top 10s before the end of 2018. Happy Reading!
Decades-Long Fight Over $30 Million Pissarro Painting Stolen By Nazis is on Full Display as Court Wraps Trial – By Conrad B. Wilton: The oil painting by renowned impressionist Camille Pissarro titled “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain” appears innocent enough. The work depicts a boulevard in Paris during a dreamy drizzly afternoon in 1897. But it is what appears behind the canvas that portrays a far darker portrait of human suffering and has set the…View Full Post
Healthcare Worker’s Vaccine Refusal Not Immunized by Americans with Disabilities Act (US) – By Daniel Pasternak and Melissa Legault: On December 7, 2018, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit unanimously held in Hustvet v. Allina Health System that an employer did not unlawfully terminate an employee who refused to receive a rubella vaccination. The plaintiff, a healthcare specialist working with potentially vulnerable patients, requested an accommodation exempting…View Full Post
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Recognizes Common Law Duty to Safeguard Personal Data – Will Other Jurisdictions Do the Same? – By Austin Dunn and Mary C. Zinsner: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that employers have a legal duty to use reasonable care to safeguard the sensitive personal information of employees stored on an Internet-accessible computer system. In Dittman v. UPMC, former and present employees of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center filed a putative class action against UPMC arising from a…View Full Post
The Mouse Study That’s “No Big Deal”, But Monsanto Continues to Try and Bury – By Jason Edward: So implies Monsanto in the ongoing In RE Roundup litigation venued before Judge Chhabria in San Francisco, as well as a state-court consolidated filings in St. Louis, Missouri. To date, only one case has been tried and the case resulted in a $289 million verdict, which included a large punitive damages award for what the…View Full Post
ALM attempting to stop small UK conference from using the phrases “legal tech” and “legaltech” – By Kevin O’Keefe: Talk about shooting yourself in the foot when your legal publishing company is already struggling in the eyes of a lot of folks. ALM is attempting to stop a couple young legal tech entrepreneurs, one a lawyer and one a technologist, in Sheffield, England from using the term or phrase “LegalTech” in the title of…View Full Post
Changes Ahead: Department of Education Proposes Revisions to Title IX Regulations – By Catherine Nguyen and Kate Emert Gleason: As expected, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) recently released proposed Title IX regulations, specifically concerning sexual harassment, including sexual assault. This is significant because the DOE has never addressed these issues through regulation. In the past, guidance has only been available through informal resources, such as the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter and the 2014…View Full Post
FDA and Artificial Intelligence in Digital Health Innovation – By Mark C. Levy: FDA is taking steps to embrace and enhance innovation in the field of artificial intelligence. It has already permitted the marketing of an AI-based medical device (IDx-DR) to detect certain diabetes-related eye problems, a type of computer-aided detection and diagnosis software designed to detect wrist fractures in adults (OsteoDetect), and most recently, a platform that includes…View Full Post
#MeToo and Its Impact on Global Investigations – By Georgia Jolink and Jose Irias: Introduction : The #MeToo movement is a worldwide phenomenon. Since October 2017, the hashtag has trended in at least 85 countries, and in dozens of languages—for example, #YoTambien in Spanish, #MoiAussi or #BalanceTonPorc in French, #QuellaVoltaChe in Italian, #Ятоже in Russian, גםאנחנו# in Hebrew, and أنا_كمان# in Arabic. As the #MeToo movement gains momentum, global employers must…View Full Post
Internet-of-Things Security Standards: Will States Follow California’s Lead or Look Across the Pond for Further Guidance? – By H. Michael O’Brien: In September 2018, California passed SB-327, the first Internet of Things (IoT) security law addressing growing concerns over cybersecurity for the burgeoning market of consumer IoT devices. The law appears, in part, a response to the October 2016 Mirai “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack that used tens of thousands of poorly secured internet-connected consumer…View Full Post
As Thomson Reuters Readies Layoffs of 3,200, What’s It Mean for Customers? – By Bob Ambrogi: Thomson Reuters, the dominant provider of research and information services for the legal profession, last week announced plans to reduce its workforce by 3,200 and close 30 percent of its offices by the end of 2020. What is going on and what does it mean for the company’s customers? The timing of the news, announced…View Full Post