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Back on the podcast today is Jessica Roberts – Professor of Law, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Health Law & Policy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center – to talk about the emerging set of genetic duties issues related to genetic reclassification. First question, genetic reclassification? No, it doesn’t mean your genes are changing. But as our understanding of the human genome expands, it means that what we know about how…
Business owners are in a tough position during the COVID-19 pandemic. They must look to their bottom line at a time when little revenue is being generated, while at the same time take into consideration what’s best for the health and safety of their employees and customers alike. To help, the “COVID-19: Relief Options and Your Business” webinar that first aired on April 8, 2020, is now available on demand. It features Dickinson Law Business & Real Estate…
On April 6, the SBA updated its Paycheck Protection Program Loans Frequently Asked Questions, which provides much needed guidance to borrowers and lenders. Many important questions were answered, including these two listed in italics: Question: The CARES Act excludes from the definition of payroll costs any employee compensation in excess of an annual salary of $100,000. Does that exclusion apply to all employee benefits of monetary value? Answer: No. The exclusion of compensation in excess…
On March 30, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N‑40‑20. This executive order (EO) is intended to provide regulatory relief to California’s small businesses. This particular executive order has a number of provisions. For one, it extends the Office of Administrative Law’s, the OAL, deadlines to review certain regulations. Specifically, the governor’s executive order provides that the deadlines that are specified in Government Code sections and the accompanying regulations related to the filing, refiling, certification,…
Governor Evers Administration’s Safer at Home Order has shut down or severely limited the activities of countless businesses throughout the State of Wisconsin. While businesses in the construction industry are generally deemed “essential” and are therefore exempt from many of the restrictions of the Safer at Home Order, they are not immune from the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 crisis. As owners and contractors feel the bite of shrinking revenues due to the economic…
Farmer sentiment plummeted in March as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The 47 point drop from February to March was the sharpest one-month decline seen since the Ag Economy Barometer began tracking farmer sentiment in 2015. Farmers cited the impact of the coronavirus crisis on profitability for 2020 and farmland values as reasons for their concern. Low prices for corn and soybeans are also impacted by the glut of oil resulting from…
One of my favorite (personal) sayings about computers is that they are highly advanced guessing machines. You can see this play out practically with things like branch prediction, where a processor must guess the path of a logical branch based on the history of that branch. This heuristic is analogous to how many humans guess; we use history as a predictor for future events. While HPCA has many similar techniques, this scenario is even more…
The recent passage of the CARES Act included language encouraging increased lending from community banks by relaxing leverage requirements on most community banks across the country. Section 4012 of the CARES Act mandated the appropriate Federal bank regulatory agencies to issue a statutory interim final rule reducing the required leverage ratio, a measure of Tier 1 & 2 Capital to risk adjusted assets, for qualifying community banks. Pub. L. 116-136 (Mar. 27, 2020). On Monday,…
Although not getting as much attention as forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans, Economic Injury Disaster loans are a viable alternative or complementary emergency loan for businesses — especially businesses that do not have many employees, such as real-estate holding companies. The CARES Act provide an opportunity for borrowers by waiving certain requirements that otherwise renders many businesses ineligible to receive EID loans.  Under the CARES Act, a business that does not meet the Small Business…