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OSHA Releases New Workplace Guidance on COVID-19

Posted in Disability / Policies and Handbooks

On February 10, 2021

On January 21, 2021, President Biden issued the Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety (“Executive Order”) directing, among other things, that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issue, within two weeks, revised guidance to employers on workplace safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, consider establishing emergency temporary standards for workplace COVID-19 protections, and, if needed, issue such standards by March 15, 2021. The Executive Order also requires that OSHA launch a national program to focus its enforcement efforts on those violations that place the greatest number of employees at serious risk or conflict with anti-retaliation principles and publicize its efforts through a multilingual outreach campaign to inform employees of their rights under OSHA’s applicable regulations, with special emphasis on communities hit hardest by COVID-19. On January 29, 2021, as directed by the Executive Order, OSHA issued new guidance, entitled Protecting Workers: Guidance on Mitigation and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace (the “Guidance”). The Guidance, which is supplemented by industry-specific measures, provides recommendations to assist employers in creating and maintaining safe and healthy workplaces, while also describing OSHA’s current safety and health standards. The new Guidance is not substantially different from previous OSHA guidance, but it sets a different tone – signaling greater support for OSHA enforcement. Importantly, the Guidance...

Litigating at the Intersection of Cooperation and Sedona Principle 6

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in E-Discovery: Legal Decisions and Court Rules

On February 9, 2021

The terms “cooperation” and “transparency” continue to gain traction in the context of litigation discovery, and the emergence of these concepts has been accompanied by a gradual erosion of a party’s ability to respond to discovery with autonomy. Litigants are often forced to make a decision as the expectation of cooperation in discovery intersects with the understanding that it is the responding party who will be in the best position to formulate a comprehensive discovery plan to search for, gather, and ultimately produce its own electronically stored information (ESI). This is based on the premise that the responding party is best situated to understand its own systems, the formats of communication used by employees, and the lingo used to discuss the subject matter of the dispute. The Sedona Conference Principle 6 recognizes that a responding party is in the best position to select relevant technology to appropriately gather and produce relevant information. On the other hand, the Sedona Conference Cooperation Proclamation, the 2016 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and countless judicial decisions extoll the benefits of cooperation. The intersection of Sedona Conference Principle 6 with the concepts of “cooperation” and “transparency” has been on full display in several recent decisions involving attempts by a requesting party to force a responding party to...

The NY DOL Issues Guidance on COVID-19 Sick Leave

by Cassandra J. Neugold

Posted in Sick Leave

On February 8, 2021

On January 20, 2021, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) issued new guidance on New York’s COVID-19 Sick Leave Law (“Sick Leave Law”), which was enacted on March 18, 2020. (A copy of the guidance can be found here.) As discussed in our previous blog post, the Sick Leave Law requires New York employers to provide varying levels of paid and unpaid sick leave (depending on employer size and net income) and access to expanded paid family leave and temporary disability benefits to employees subject to an order of quarantine or isolation due to COVID-19. All employees, regardless of the size of their employers, are entitled to job protection upon their returns from leave. The Guidance (which supplements the DOL’s earlier guidance on the use of leave) is summarized below: An employee who returns to work following a period of mandatory quarantine or isolation need not be tested before returning to work, with a limited exception for nursing home staff. If, however, an employee subsequently tests positive for COVID-19, the employee must cease reporting to work and is entitled to leave under the COVID-19 Sick Leave Law (“COVID-19 Sick Leave”) even if the employee already received sick leave for the first period of quarantine or isolation. Similarly, an employee who...

Opening Pandora’s Box: A Preliminary Showing of Spoliation May Result in the Compelled Production of a Litigation Hold Notice

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in General Litigation

On January 28, 2021

In Radiation Oncology Servs. of Cent. N.Y., P.C. v. Our Lady of Lourdes Mem’l Hosp., Inc., the New York Supreme Court reminded litigants that while litigation holds are generally protected by the attorney-client privilege or under the attorney work product doctrine, a preliminary showing of spoliation of evidence may compel the production of an offending party’s litigation hold documentation. In this litigation involving clinical privileges related to an exclusive radiation oncology services agreement, the plaintiffs identified seven specific instances of spoliation by the defendants. These included certain emails that the defendants produced in hard copy form, but for which they were unable to produce the corresponding electronic version and the related metadata – which the court seemed to globally refer to as the “electronically stored information,” or ESI, relating to the emails – because they had been deleted. The plaintiffs successfully argued that the failure to produce the ESI constituted spoliation because it deprived them of the ability to understand whether there were follow-up discussions with other individuals about the content of the communications, including those who may have been copied on the communications or follow-up emails. The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to compel the production of the defendants’ litigation hold notice because it found that the permanent deletion of the ESI “potentially deprived...

Thomson West Releases 2020-2021 Update of Business Law Deskbook, With Two Environmental Law Chapters Authored By Gibbons Attorney

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in Environmental and Green Issues

On January 27, 2021

The recently released 2020-2021 update of the Thomson West New Jersey Business Law Deskbook includes chapters authored by Paul M. Hauge, Counsel in the Gibbons P.C. Environmental Law Department. Mr. Hauge authored Chapter 26, which discusses the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), and Chapter 27, on New Jersey Environmental Law. The Deskbook, updated annually to reflect statutory, regulatory, and judicial developments, is designed to give attorneys user-friendly primers on roughly 40 areas of business law. Gibbons Environmental Law Department Director Susanne Peticolas pioneered the firm’s involvement with the Deskbook in 2003, authoring the Gibbons contributions until 2007 and sharing authorship with Mr. Hauge between 2008 and 2019.

FCC Reverses Course and Finds That Government Contractors Are “Persons” Under the TCPA

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in Class Action Defense

On January 26, 2021

Last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an Order on Reconsideration, overturning Commission precedent by clarifying that federal, state, and local government contractors are “persons” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and therefore must, under 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)-(D), obtain prior written consent to make certain calls using an automatic telephone dialing system or artificial or prerecorded voice; to initiate a call to any residential telephone line using an artificial or prerecorded voice; to use a fax machine or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement; or to use an automatic telephone dialing system in such a way that two or more telephone lines of a multi-line business are engaged simultaneously. This ruling is the latest in the Commission’s efforts to protect consumers from unwanted robocalls. The TCPA prohibits certain unsolicited calls made by any “person,” which includes an “individual, partnership, association, joint-stock company, trust, or corporation,” without the prior written consent of the consumer. In 2016, the FCC issued a declaratory ruling stating that the federal government and federal government contractors were not “persons” under the TCPA, and therefore, the limitations on calling enumerated in Section 227(b)(1)(A)-(D) did not apply to them. The FCC reasoned that there is a longstanding presumption that the word “person” does not include the sovereign and that,...

NYSDEC Commissioner Directs Agency to Investigate PFAS Contamination in Consumer Products

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in Environmental and Green Issues

On January 25, 2021

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) Commissioner, Basil Seggos, announced last week that he is directing the Department to conduct a new investigation of potential per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”) contamination in consumer products. PFAS have been designated as chemicals of emerging concern by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Specifically, Commissioner Seggos has directed the Department to “take a hard look at new science shared by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about potential PFAS contamination in consumer products, including insecticides, pesticides, and other crop protectant products packaged in fluorinated high-density polyethylene (‘HDPE’) containers.” Earlier this month, the EPA had issued a press release that stated, “the agency has determined that fluorinated HDPE containers that are used to store and transport a mosquito control pesticide product contain PFAS compounds that are leaching into the pesticide product.” The EPA press release that triggered the Commissioner’s directive announced the EPA’s investigation into companies that use fluorinated containers and companies that provide container fluorination services, in an effort to identify potential sources of contamination. The directive from Commissioner Seggos is the latest in a line of actions taken by New York to address PFAS contamination, including a statewide investigation of potential sources of PFAS and the establishment of drinking water maximum contaminant levels for two PFAS...

Lack of Plaintiff Article III Standing Proves Fatal to Eleventh Circuit in FACTA Class Action Settlement

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in Class Action Defense

On January 25, 2021

In a 7-to-3 en banc decision, the Eleventh Circuit vacated a high-stakes $6.3 million class settlement on standing grounds. In James Price v. Godiva Chocolatier, Inc., et al, the court held that a named plaintiff lacked standing to bring a claim under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) on behalf of a proposed settlement class. The plaintiff, Dr. David Muransky, filed a class action complaint against Godiva claiming a violation of FACTA, which prohibits “merchants from printing more than the last five digits of the card number (or the card’s expiration date) on receipts offered to customers.” After visiting a Godiva retail store in Florida, the plaintiff was handed a receipt that contained the first six and the last four digits of his credit card number–a technical violation of FACTA. The plaintiff claimed that the violation was “statutory in nature” and did “not intend[] to request any recovery for personal injury.” The plaintiff further framed the class’s harm from violations as “irreparable harm as a result of the defendant’s unlawful and wrongful conduct,” and that “Plaintiff and members of the class continue to be exposed to an elevated risk of identity theft.” The putative class was so large that Godiva could have faced statutory damages, punitive damages, and costs of more than $342...

Second District Court to Dismiss Claims Based on Unconstitutional Statute Provision

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in Class Action Defense

On January 22, 2021

In Lindenbaum v. Realgy, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio dismissed the plaintiff’s “robo-call” class action under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), based on the Supreme Court’s 2020 holding that a statutory exception for automated calls to collect government debts was unconstitutional. Because the statute was unconstitutional at the time of the alleged violations, the district court determined that it lacked subject matter jurisdiction and dismissed the lawsuit. Originally enacted in 1991, the TCPA restricts almost all prerecorded sales calls to cell phones. In 2015, Congress amended the provision to allow prerecorded calls “made solely to collect a debt owed to or guaranteed by the United States.” 47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii). The 2015 provision was struck down in 2020 by the United States Supreme Court’s plurality decision in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants, Inc. While the Supreme Court struck down the portion of the statute dealing with calls for government debt, it left the rest intact. In Lindenbaum, the plaintiff brought a class action lawsuit alleging violations of the TCPA. Specifically, the plaintiff alleged that she received two prerecorded calls, one to her cellphone and one to her landline, and had not provided express written consent to receive these calls. The plaintiff argued that the severance of the...

Planning Ahead: The Critical Importance of Early Agreement on the Proportional Scope of Preservation

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in E-Discovery: Legal Decisions and Court Rules

On January 21, 2021

In M.A. v. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., and H.H. v. G6 Hospitality LLC, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, rejected plaintiffs’ objections to the Magistrate Judge’s decision excluding certain types of electronically stored information (ESI) from defendants’ duty to preserve. In doing so, the District Court emphasized the fact that the parties had spent a considerable amount of time addressing issues related to ESI and that plaintiffs had consented to the exclusions during a status conference with the Magistrate Judge. In adopting the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation, the District Court based its decision on “guiding principles of proportionality, default standards in other jurisdictions, and current trends in ESI discovery.” Plaintiffs filed related complaints against several hotel locations and parent companies pursuant to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). In April 2019, plaintiffs sent letters to defendants reminding them of their duty to preserve potentially discoverable ESI. A number of discovery disputes ensued related to proposed confidentiality and ESI orders. While this decision also addresses issues related to confidentiality, the primary focus of this post is the dispute regarding defendants’ obligation to preserve certain types of ESI. In particular, plaintiffs objected to an oral decision rendered by the Magistrate Judge finding that defendants were not obligated to preserve:...