Since the start of pandemic, our courts have rendered a number of decisions regarding the impact of COVID-19 and whether it constitutes superior force (commonly known as “force majeure” ) for the purposes of limiting liability. In particular, we can think of numerous cases in real estate law, whereby lessees and owners looked to the courts for either relief or an order for payment after businesses were forced to shut down by government decree. But how…

Depuis le début de la pandémie, nos tribunaux ont rendu plusieurs décisions concernant l’incidence de la COVID-19 et la question de savoir si elle constitue un événement de force majeure aux fins de la limitation de la responsabilité. On peut notamment penser aux nombreux cas, dans le domaine du droit immobilier, où des locataires et des propriétaires se sont adressés aux tribunaux pour obtenir soit un redressement, soit un ordre de paiement, après que des…

The latest COVID-relief bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, will allow most current and former employees and their dependents to receive fully subsidized COBRA continuation coverage beginning April 1 and continuing through September 30, 2021—even if they never elected COBRA or dropped coverage. To learn more about what employers with group health plans subject to federal COBRA need to know about the new law, read our legal update, Beware of the COBRA lurking in the …

News about young Wall Street analysts asking for an 80-hour working week and employees working from home for a year now due to the Covid pandemic gives rise to the question of whether employees have the right to disconnect. In this blog we will discuss recent legislative developments in the EU as well as the status of the right in the Netherlands. European legislative initiative On 21 January 2021 the European Parliament passed a legislative…

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has handed down its judgement looking at a workers right to claim holiday pay. The claimant, Mr. Smith, worked for the respondent, Pimlico Plumbers between 2005 and 2011, and was considered throughout the six year period to be self-employed independent contractor. As such, he had no entitlement to paid annual leave, although he took periods of unpaid leave. In 2011, the claimant alleged that the respondent had fundamentally breached the…

It is difficult to imagine that the evil of human trafficking, and all the pain and suffering it entails, can still be so pervasive this deep into the 21st Century. One would have expected that contemporary domestic and international law enforcement, to say nothing of the United Nations and all the monies it has at its disposal for such purposes, would serve as a resolute bulwark against this scourge of modern humanity. And yet it…

In a recent decision – Centre de services scolaire du Lac-Témiscamingue et Syndicat de l’enseignement de l’Ungava et de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 2020 QCTA 641, an arbitrator was called upon to determine if a school board’s requirement that teachers undertake a dual teaching system of simultaneous in-person and online learning was contrary to their right to privacy and constituted fair and reasonable conditions of employment. As many of us know, given the COVID-19 pandemic, many students have…