GUEST COLUMNS
Thursday, May 13, 2021
A cascade of countries is committing to net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, but there is one inconvenient fact: Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are increasing. That's problematic because transportation is the largest emitter in the United States and many other countries.
California's COVID-19 crisis appears to be diminishing, with declining infection rates and rising vaccination rates.
The U.S. Department of Justice already has publicly charged almost 500 defendants with criminal offenses based on fraud schemes connected to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Maybe you have had that sinking feeling of returning to where you thought you had parked your car, only to find an empty spot.
In California's fight against climate change, we have a single, indispensable tool that will be key to building a healthier, more resilient future in the coming decades. That resource is clean electricity.
Years ago, a high school friend of mine – a single mom living in fear due to her legal status – came to my door. "I don't have formula to feed my baby," she said.
The appellate process has many limitations that can deter a disappointed litigant's pursuit of relief on appeal.
In 1972, the California Legislature changed the age of majority from 21 to 18. One of the consequences of that decision is that (absent a child with special needs), the court no longer has jurisdiction to order child support payable for a child who has attained the age of majority and graduated from high school, or who has attained the age of 19.
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
In early 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began, many California employers quickly mobilized their workforces to perform their jobs remotely. Now, as California moves toward regular business operations, many employers are ready to reopen their workplaces. However, the legal landscape has changed, and employers must strategically adapt.
Monday, May 10, 2021
A growing list of California colleges will require students to get COVID-19 vaccinations as classes largely resume in-person this fall. For the roughly 160,000 international college students enrolled in California, the mandate introduces a new layer of complexity: Will the vaccines offered in their home countries be accepted in the Golden State?
Californians are looking forward to when immunity from COVID-19 is widespread. It is a goal that is closer thanks to the multiple vaccines and expanded statewide distribution.
Like so many essential workers, city employees and elected officials have been in overdrive for the past year, trying to save and support our communities from the ravaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic recession.
Cryptocurrency is the future of money in a world where cash is becoming obsolete. But until the world catches up with the crypto craze, it doesn't make sense from a legal standpoint for any company to pay employees in crypto.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican-American War was entered into by Mexico and the United States on Feb. 2, 1948, and ratified by both countries later that year. It contained a provision covering land ceded to the U.S. under the treaty, but owned by Mexicans. Ownership of such property, it said, "shall be inviolably respected."
Friday, May 7, 2021
Most construction attorneys know that "pay-when-paid" contractual provisions are enforceable but that "pay-if-paid" contractual provisions are not.
In Hytera Communications Corp. Ltd. v. Motorola Solutions, Inc., the District Court denied defendant's motion for attorney fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285, determining plaintiff's litigation positions were not baseless even after a granting of summary judgment of noninfringement that "was not a close call."
Thursday, May 6, 2021
British journalist James Bartholomew is widely credited with creating the phrase "virtue signaling" to describe positioning oneself on the popular side of an issue without actually doing anything about it.
Many are surprised to learn that a scent can be a trademark.
In a 2020 revenge porn lawsuit by former congresswoman Katie Hill, Hill alleged that her privacy was violated when her ex-husband, journalists and the media distributed two redacted nude photographs of her to the public.
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
A year ago, as the U.S. economy shut down during the pandemic and millions lost their jobs, the Federal Reserve Board changed a banking rule to give people easier access to the money in their savings accounts.
With two months to go before a statewide eviction moratorium expired in January, lawmakers, lobbyists and the governor's staff were already deep into negotiations on an extension.
Not long before Congress passed its latest COVID-19 relief package, California authorized a comprehensive $7.6 billion stimulus package of its own, with more than $2 billion allocated for small businesses. That legislation built on previous actions to keep California's Main Streets afloat during the pandemic.
On the way out the door, the Trump administration committed many environmental and financial scandals. One can cost low-income water users while lining the pockets of one of California's largest and most powerful water districts.
The subtleties of both implicit and explicit biases are not limited to our streets and neighborhoods, boardrooms or courthouses. As Nelson Mandela said, in an address to the UN General Assembly in 1994: "All of us know how stubbornly racism can cling to the mind and how deeply it can infect the human soul."
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Fifty years ago, California ratified the 26th Amendment, the Constitutional provision that gives young people the right to vote beginning at age 18.
There have been a lot of strange economic numbers over the past 14 months as the world has been whipsawed by the pandemic. But one particular line of the first-quarter GDP numbers released Thursday stands out even so.
Forty years ago California was in a recession with 10% unemployment, yet employers said that good jobs were going begging for lack of skilled workers. The state spent hundreds of millions of dollars on training, but both business and labor were dissatisfied with the results: lots of certificates, but not many jobs.
Positivity rates. ICU capacity. Unemployment claims. Vaccine efficacy. Inflation. Over the past year, California's public officials and individual citizens alike have navigated the pandemic by relying on data.
Monday, May 3, 2021
Growing up, Blossom Sergejev was lucky if she talked to her mother once a week. Usually it was once a month.
Forty years ago California was in a recession with 10% unemployment, yet employers said that good jobs were going begging for lack of skilled workers. The state spent hundreds of millions of dollars on training, but both business and labor were dissatisfied with the results: lots of certificates, but not many jobs.
The chair of the University of California board of regents said last Wednesday he's open to considering dramatic cuts in the number of armed, sworn police officers across the university system.
After nearly 70 years of implementation and 14 months of a pandemic, meaningful improvements to the open meetings guarantees in the Ralph M. Brown Act will take longer than one seven-month legislative session.
Because of "COVID fatigue," and the increasing number of vaccinated individuals in the workforce, many employers are becoming lax in their COVID-19 prevention efforts, such as social distancing and requiring facial masks. To avoid potential OSHA and Cal/OSHA citations and fines, however, they should continue to comply with all applicable COVID-19 guidance, regulations, and orders.
Friday, April 30, 2021
How far the Supreme Court's holding in the infamous Kelo decision goes (or whether it should be reconsidered and reversed) is the subject of a currently pending petition for certiorari.
If you pay much attention to sneakers, you might know that the agreement between Nike and the Bryant Estate for Nike's line of Kobe sneakers recently expired.
Thursday, April 29, 2021
The Derek Chauvin case could be an outlier, or it could signal a true turning point in the nation's move toward justice, and the fulfillment of the Civil Rights Act.
By the time this column is published, Northern California may be receiving some much-needed rain, and possibly some snow.
In the annals of California history, no one has ever had to put a broken state park back together. There's no guidebook, no rules. So now state officials and conservationists are attempting a complex and extraordinary Humpty Dumpty project: The reawakening of Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
In many ways, the plane is being built in mid-air. Concrete statements about what an NFT can or cannot do, and even what it is, have the potential to mislead.
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Many colleges have reinstated May 1 as the deadline for newly admitted applicants to declare that they will enroll and submit deposits. But with about a week to go, students still have time to appeal to a college for more financial aid, if they need to.
There are 8.8 million Californians receiving state benefits who are eligible for stimulus checks, according to a study by the California Policy Lab, and more than 2 million of them don't earn enough to need to file taxes. But without those filings, the IRS can't reach them.
Though California's financial aid grant is among the most generous in the country, the Cal Grant leaves out hundreds of thousands of students each year who are older and took more than a year to get to college after finishing high school.
Beyond wages, fewer than half of workers in California report having a "quality job," which the Future of Work Commission describes as "a living wage, stable and predictable pay, control over scheduling, access to benefits, a safe and dignified work environment, and opportunities for training and career advancement."
Housing affordability, racial inequity, getting California back on track after the COVID-19 pandemic – these are California voters' priorities, according to the most recent poll from the respected and non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California.
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Something strange is happening to the exhausted, type-A millennial workers of America. After a year spent hunched over their MacBooks, enduring back-to-back Zooms in between sourdough loaves and Peloton rides, they are flipping the carefully arranged chessboards of their lives and deciding to risk it all.
Monday, April 26, 2021
Doctors, lawyers and other highly-trained professionals often have their sights on lucrative salaries once they complete their courses of study – but many are also saddled with a less pleasant graduation gift: outstanding student loans.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday declared a drought emergency for parched water systems along the Russian River watershed that serve hundreds of thousands of Californians in two counties.
The election of Vice President Kamala Harris and the appointment of several Californians to top posts in the new administration signal not only the state's renewed clout in the nation's capital but also the influential role our world-class public higher education system plays in shaping leaders and expanding diversity at the upper echelons of government.
Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom described Pacific Gas & Electric and the events that led to the deadliest wildfire in state history saying, "It's about corporate greed meeting climate change. It's about decades of mismanagement."
The headlines are grim. Texas' power grid fails in the midst of a deadly cold snap, putting millions at risk. A historic heat wave brings California's power grid to its knees, putting millions at risk.
Friday, April 23, 2021
The era of California's big climate ambitions is over, even as California's megadroughts and wildfires worsen.
In the 9th Circuit (as well as the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 11th Circuits), the test for determining whether the use of a third-party trademark in an expressive work.
California, which has been mired in a pandemic recession for the last year, enjoyed some modest economic gains in March as the state's unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%.
Thursday, April 22, 2021
Earlier this week, American Rivers released a list of the nation's most endangered rivers. California's McCloud River is included because of the federal government's proposal to raise the height of Shasta Dam.
We Americans are blessed with abundant — even overabundant — consumer goods and services and often take that fact for granted.
Child care providers are pushing back against a state plan to restart in-person inspections after a year of sanitizing, social distancing and restricting parents and other outsiders from entering their sites in an effort to keep COVID-19 at bay.
California is once again into a critically dry year with memories of the last drought all too fresh. Scientists warn that "boom or bust" water years are the new normal, and we all knew we'd be back here again. The question is, what have we learned and what have we done about it?
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
On March 19, the California Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard JAssessment, known as OEHHA, proposed amendments to its regulations for Proposition 65 safe harbor warnings to address exposures to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC) and cannabis smoke.
Car shoppers may find that bargains are scarce this year. But better prices on trade-ins may help ease the pain.
Monday, April 19, 2021
Pfizer and BioNTech recently asked the Southern District of California to dismiss a patent infringement claim from Allele Biotechnology related to Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine.
Friday, April 16, 2021
Earlier this month, camera crews once again gathered in the Sierra Nevada to watch a man plunge a pole through the snow. The pole was removed and, following a tense few moments, Californians learned we experienced another dry winter, and we are plunging further into drought.
The court issued a narrow ruling that correctly recognized the FCC's commitment in the context of its Section 202(h) quadrennial reviews to ownership diversity as an important and freestanding policy consideration.
Is there a legal duty to protect others from harm caused entirely by third parties? "It depends," goes the standard refrain.
Thursday, April 15, 2021
By any standard, California is experiencing one of its periodic droughts after two successive years of below-normal precipitation.
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Last week, California's top legislative leaders unveiled a plan to spend more than half a billion dollars on efforts aimed at protecting the state from catastrophic wildfires.
Building investor trust while mitigating litigation risk
Reliance on binding precedent may no longer be enough
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