Gibbons Law Alert

Gibbons Law Alert Blog

NYSDEC Adopts Update to SEQR Regulations

Posted in Development/Redevelopment / Environmental and Green Issues

On August 2, 2018

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) announced on June 28, 2018 that it had adopted a rulemaking package directed at updating its regulations relating to the State Environmental Quality Review (“SEQR”). The updates – DEC’s first to its SEQR regulations in more than two decades – are the product of an effort that began in February 2017 with the DEC’s filing of an initial notice and, following a series of public comment periods and subsequent revisions, culminated with its publication of the Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement (“FGEIS”) and revised text of the regulations. As revised, the regulations become effective on January 1, 2019 and apply to all actions for which a determination of significance has not been made by January 1, 2019. For projects that receive a determination of significance made prior to January 1, 2019, the existing SEQR regulations (which originally took effect in 1996) will continue to apply. Once effective, the revised regulations could have a significant impact on SEQR’s applicability to future development projects. The new regulations contemplate a number of mechanical changes to the environmental review process itself, including mandatory scoping of environmental impact statements, changes to the required content of environmental impact statements (“EIS”), as well as new requirements relating to the preparation and filing environmental impact...

NY Commercial Division Promotes Technology Assisted Review

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in E-Discovery: Legal Decisions and Court Rules / Litigation Preparedness and Strategies

On August 1, 2018

On July 19, 2018, the Chief Administrative Judge of the Courts issued an administrative order adopting a new rule for the New York Commercial Division supporting the use of technology-assisted document review. Based on a recommendation and proposal by the Subcommittee on Procedural Rules to Promote Efficient Case Resolution, Commercial Division Rule 11-e has been amended to state: The parties are encouraged to use the most efficient means to review documents, including electronically stored information (“ESI”), that is consistent with the parties’ disclosure obligations under Article 31 of the CPLR and proportional to the needs of the case. Such means may include technology-assisted review, including predictive coding, in appropriate cases. The parties are encouraged to confer, at the outset of discovery and as needed throughout the discovery period, about technology-assisted review mechanisms they intend to use in document review and production. The Subcommittee noted that document review “consumes an average of 73% of the total cost of document production in cases involving electronic discovery.” With that in mind, the Court adopted a rule meant to streamline and make electronic discovery more efficient in large, complex and e-discovery-intensive cases. The use of technology-assisted review is still optional. It should be considered on a case-by-case basis and the parties are encouraged to confer about its potential use....

Third Circuit Overturns Summary Judgment Based on the Faragher-Ellerth Defense

by Richard S. Zackin

Posted in Discrimination

On August 1, 2018

Employers who are sued for sexual harassment committed by a supervisor may be able to avoid liability, even if harassment had, in fact, occurred, by asserting the so-called Faragher-Ellerth affirmative defense, named after the two United States Supreme Court cases that first recognized the defense. An employer may assert the Faragher-Ellerth defense to supervisor harassment when no tangible employment action has been taken against the harassed employee and the employer is able to demonstrate (a) it exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior and (b) the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer. Recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Minarsky v. Susquehanna County, addressed the requirements of the Faragher-Ellerth defense in the context of the assertion of a female employee that she acted reasonably in not taking advantage of the procedures made available by her employer to prevent or correct the harassment against her by her supervisor. In so doing, the Third Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the employer based on the Faragher-Ellerth defense and held on the facts of the case a jury should decide the whether the defense applied. Background Sherri Minarsky worked as a part-time secretary at...

Third Circuit Affirms Remand of Class Action to State Court Under “Local Controversy” Exception

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in Class Action Defense

On July 25, 2018

In a decision that may broaden application of the “local controversy” exception to removal under the Class Action Fairness Act (“CAFA”), 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)(4), the Third Circuit recently affirmed the remand of a putative class action to New Jersey state court holding a corporate defendant with New Jersey citizenship could be considered a “local defendant” because it did not fully divest itself of liability after previously transferring its potential liabilities to a Delaware entity and, thus, remained a real party in interest. In Walsh v. Defenders, Inc., putative class members filed their complaint in New Jersey Superior Court alleging that the contracts they entered into with Defendants related to the class members’ purchase of home security equipment and monitoring services violated New Jersey’s Truth-in-Consumer Contract, Warranty, and Notice Act (“TCCWNA”) and the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act (“NJCFA”). Defendants removed the matter to federal court asserting CAFA jurisdiction, and Plaintiff moved to remand under CAFA’s local controversy exception. After initially denying Plaintiff’s motion to remand, the District Court granted Plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration when additional discovery showed that the only defendant with New Jersey citizenship, ADT SSI-Tyco, had contracted with 35.3% of the putative class members. Defendants appealed and argued that ADT SSI-Tyco should have been ignored in the District Court’s diversity of citizenship...

Superfund Task Force Listening Session on Recommendation 16-2, Part 2: Improving Implementation of Cleanup Agreements for Response Actions by PRPs

by Paul M. Hauge

Posted in Environmental and Green Issues

On July 20, 2018

On June 18, 2018, the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) held the last of eight listening sessions on the recommendations of its Superfund Task Force. This last listening session concerned Part 2 of Recommendation 16-2018, which calls for improvement in the process of implementing cleanup agreements under which potentially responsible parties (PRPs) commit to carry out site cleanups under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). EPA speakers included Ellen Stern (Office of Regional Counsel, Region 10), Ken Patterson (Office of Site Remediation Enforcement (OSRE), Douglas Dixon (OSRE), and Charles Howland (Office of Regional Counsel, Region 3). They noted a number of reasons for delays in the completion of cleanups under such agreements, ranging from the submission of multiple versions of the same deliverable and time-consuming dispute resolution procedures to lax (or, conversely, excessively stringent) enforcement of deadlines and imposition of stipulated penalties. They also acknowledged EPA’s reluctance to exercise its most extreme enforcement tool – taking over the work and using financial assurance established by the PRPs. Outside participants called on EPA to expand the number of PRPs that are called upon to perform cleanups (including municipalities) to reduce the financial burden on any one PRP. The Superfund Task Force was created in May 2017 to propose recommendations for streamlining and strengthening the...

Supreme Court To Review Whether Non-Public Sales Are Invalidating Under Post-AIA Section 102

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in Biotech / Patent / USPTO

On July 18, 2018

The Supreme Court recently agreed to review Helsinn Healthcare S.A. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc., a case with broad implications for the pharmaceutical industry. In the opinion below, the Federal Circuit held that after the America Invents Act (“AIA”), “if the existence of the sale is public, the details of the invention need not be publicly disclosed in the terms of sale” for the sale to be invalidating under Section 102. The Court granted Helsinn’s petition for certiorari to answer “[w]hether, under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, an inventor’s sale of an invention to a third party that is obligated to keep the invention confidential qualifies as prior art for purposes of determining the patentability of the invention.” Before the AIA, § 102(b) barred the patentability of an invention that was “patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent.” By enacting the AIA, Congress amended § 102 to bar the patentability of an “invention [that] was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.” In its petition for certiorari, Helsinn argued...

Post-Alice Plaintiffs Beware: The Northern District of California Awards Attorneys’ Fees in Exceptional Case

by Charles H. Chevalier and Christine A. Gaddis

Posted in Patent

On July 17, 2018

Abstract ideas are not patentable pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 101. And, in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014) the Supreme Court set forth a framework to determine whether a patent is directed to an unpatentable abstract idea. Following Alice, defendants frequently move to dismiss patent infringement actions based on Section 101. That is exactly what recently happened in Cellspin Soft, Inc., v. Fitbit, Inc. in the Northern District of California. In that case, the 14 defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss pursuant to Section 101, arguing that the patents were directed to the “abstract concept” of acquiring, transferring, and publishing data and that the claims recited only “generic computer technology” to carry out the abstract idea, and thus lacked a requisite “transformative step” which would render the abstract idea patentable. The District Court agreed and entered judgment in the defendants’ favor. Following their successful motion to dismiss, the defendants moved, again successfully, for attorneys’ fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285. In patent infringement actions, courts have discretion, pursuant to Section 285, to award attorneys’ fees in an “exceptional case.” And, the district court found that the Cellspin case was just that. In considering the defendants’ motion for fees, the district court acknowledged that the plaintiff’s claims lacked...

Wrap-Up of United States Supreme Court’s 2017-2018 Term

by Christopher Walsh and Kevin R. Reich

Posted in General Litigation

On July 11, 2018

With the close of the United States Supreme Court’s 2017-18 term, we offer this wrap-up, focusing on decisions of special interest from the business and commercial perspective (excluding patent cases): In a much talked-about decision in the antitrust field, the Court held in Ohio v. American Express Co. that American Express’s anti-steering provisions in its merchant contracts, which generally preclude merchants from encouraging customers to use credit cards other than American Express, are not anticompetitive and therefore do not violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act. In so holding, the Court found that credit card networks are two-sided transaction platforms, one side being the merchant and the other side being the merchant’s customer. Thus, when assessing whether the anti-steering agreements are anticompetitive, the effects on both sides of the platform must be considered. The plaintiffs’ proof that American Express had increased its merchant fees over a period of time was insufficient to show an anticompetitive effect because it neglected the customer side of the platform, where consumers have received the benefit of ever-increasing rewards from credit card companies and other improvements in services that those higher merchant fees enable. Bringing an end to a fight that New Jersey had been waging against the NCAA and professional sports leagues since 2012, the Court paved the way for...

Tax Changes Funding New Jersey’s New 2019 Budget

by Peter J. Ulrich

Posted in State Legislation / State Legislative and Budget Matters

On July 6, 2018

This past weekend, Governor Phil Murphy and the New Jersey legislature avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to a $37.4 billion compromise budget deal, which included significant changes to New Jersey’s business and individual taxes, including: A new “millionaire’s tax” on individuals earning $5 million or more increasing the top marginal Gross Income Tax (“GIT”) rate from 8.97% to 10.75% Business taxpayers with NJ allocated income in excess of $1 million will be liable for a 2.5% surtax (on top of the current 9% rate) for the next two years, with the surtax reduced to 1.5% for the following two years The new federal pass-through business income deduction (IRC Section 199A) will be unavailable for Corporation Business Tax (“CBT”) or GIT purposes; other decoupling provisions were adopted For CBT apportionment purposes, sales of services will be sourced to New Jersey if, or to the extent that, the benefit of the service is received at a location in New Jersey Additional legislation to expand the reach of the sales and use tax to remote sellers in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling in Wayfair v. South Dakota is awaiting the Governor’s signature Mandatory unitary combined reporting under the CBT is now required, effective for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2019; these rules...

SCOTUS to Have the Last Word on “Wholly Groundless” Standard for Delegation of Arbitrability

by Gibbons P.C.

Posted in General Litigation

On July 6, 2018

If the parties to an arbitration agreement have agreed that an arbitrator should decide whether a dispute is arbitrable, the question of arbitrability should be decided by an arbitrator. But who should decide arbitrability when the suggestion of arbitrability is so frivolous as to be wholly groundless? Should the party resisting arbitration be required to arbitrate arbitrability before seeking judicial relief? The United States Supreme Court will soon decide. According to the United States Supreme Court, questions of arbitrability are “undeniably . . . issues for judicial determination”—“unless the parties clearly and unmistakably provide otherwise.” Thus, when contracting parties have clearly and unmistakably agreed that an arbitrator must decide questions of arbitrability, the parties’ dispute should be sent to an arbitrator in the first instance to determine whether the dispute is arbitrable. Some circuits, however, provide exception to this rule where the argument for arbitrability is “wholly groundless.” In such instances, the parties’ dispute can proceed directly to court without a stop at an arbitrator’s desk. The Fifth Circuit initially adopted this rule in Douglas v. Regions Bank, and most recently applied it in Archer and White Sales Inc. v. Henry Schein, Inc. In Archer, a dental-equipment distributor sued its direct competitor for alleged antitrust violations and sought injunctive relief. Defendants moved to compel arbitration,...