On Sept. 9, 2021, President Biden issued his Executive Order on Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors (EO), mandating vaccines for all federal employees and covered federal contractor employees. Although the respective agencies are expected to promulgate guidance and rules effectuating the EO, which will become effective Oct. 15, 2021, the Safety Federal Workforce Task Force has given guidance as to protocols federal contractors should follow, building on the prior government safety protocol …

On Sept. 9, 2021, the California Court of Appeal in Wesson v. Staples The Office Superstore, LLC,  supported what employers have been arguing since Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) claims became the norm in wage and hour litigation: courts can and should strike PAGA actions if they are unmanageable. Summary of the case: The facts underlying the decision sound like those of many wage and hour cases. In this case, a former employee sued his…

On Sept. 6, 2021, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the New York State Department of Health had designated COVID-19 a highly contagious communicable disease that presents a risk of harm to the public under the New York Health and Essential Rights Act (NY HERO Act), which passed May 5, 2021. As a result, NY employers must now activate their disease exposure prevention plans in accordance with the NY HERO Act. Click here to continue …

On Sept. 9, 2021, President Biden announced that he had asked the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to promulgate an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) that will require employers with more than 100 employees to take steps to ensure that their employees are either vaccinated or show a negative test result for COVID-19 each week. Complicating OSHA’s efforts is certain elected officials’ denouncement of President Biden’s directive, claiming that the authority to mandate vaccinations…

On Sept. 9, 2021, President Biden issued two executive orders (EOs) with a six-prong strategy to combat the COVID-19 variants, aimed to “save […] lives […] while also keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage.” The EOs prescribe mandates and recommendations for federal workers and contractors doing business with the government, private employers, school systems, and the health care industry. These EOs build on earlier vaccination requirements for federal…

In 2017, the Supreme Court decided Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, addressing due process concerns related to personal jurisdiction in the context of an action where the vast majority of plaintiffs were residents of states outside the jurisdiction where the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit. Bristol-Myers involved 678 individual product liability claims joined together in a California-state-court-based mass tort action. Nearly 600 of those claims belonged to nonresidents. To establish personal jurisdiction,…