Posted by Sheyenne Hurt-Lewis.

Customer reviews are extremely important to the reputation of a business. In today’s technological era, it is becoming imperative for businesses to manage their online reputation though social media and other outlets. Reviewing sites such as Yelp, Twitter, and Facebook can be used as means of reforming and promoting businesses. Dan Simons, a restauranteur in the Washington area expressed the importance of customer feedback by saying, “You could open a business and do everything right, but if you’re unaware of these social media you well perish. Social media can take a business and put a bullet in it.” Positive reviews generate business but the impact of negative reviews has a greater impact on businesses than one may think. The best way to keep a healthy reputation for your business is to continue providing satisfactory goods and services to consumers, and ensure that negative experiences are at a minimum, and addressed promptly if they must occur.

Monitoring what is being said about your business is the first step in ensuring that your businesses name rings satisfaction. One may do this by simply using one of the many available online resources to search yourself and tune into the varying customer opinions. Technology even goes as far as alerting a business person when the name of their business is mentioned on a social media network. Managing reviews is the next step in guaranteeing a good name for your business. Thanking customers who left good feedback and inviting them to come again is a good way to keep the customers satisfied and returning. Addressing negative reviews in a professional manner with intentions to “win back the customer” is another way to improve the business environment. It is more than likely that new customers will look at these pages before deciding whether to visit or purchase a product. Businesspeople should “try to put yourself in the customer’s place” and make certain that they are doing their very best to make sure every customer leaves pleased and willing to return.

Sheyenne is a management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2018.

Members of organized crime, drug dealers, and terrorists transact their “business” in cash to hide their tracks. As part of a scheme to launder money (make it look it was earned legitimately), criminals will deposit their ill-earned cash in bank accounts. In response, Congress passed the Bank Secrecy Act, requiring banks to assist the government in catching money launderers.

Under the Act, banks are required to report any cash transaction or combination of cash transactions in excess of $10,000 to the IRS.  Knowing this, criminals resort to structuring. Structuring is the deliberate parcelling of a large cash deposit into a series of smaller transactions in order to avoid detection by regulators. When bank officials suspect structuring is occurring, they are required to file a suspicious activity report, or SAR, and notify regulators of what they believe is happening.

In Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135 (1994), the Supreme Court found that government had to prove that defendant acted with knowledge that structuring is unlawful. As a result, Congress removed the “willfulness” requirement making it easier for the government tor prosecute structuring cases. The IRS, however, has been seizing assets of legitimate businesses and individuals without any proof or any charges filed. Small business and individuals can be a target. In one case, the IRS seized $66,000 from an Army sergeant’s college savings account, even though the sergeant was told by the bank teller to make smaller deposits in order to avoid taxes. Removing the “willfulness” requirement makes structuring a strict liability crime.

In a written statement, Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the IRS, said, “After a thorough review of our structuring cases over the last year . . . IRS-CI will no longer pursue the seizure and forfeiture of funds associated solely with ‘legal source’ structuring cases unless there are exceptional circumstances justifying the seizure and forfeiture and the case has been approved at the director of field operations (D.F.O.) level.”

The Supreme Court issued an order denying an application to vacate the Fifth Circuit’s stay of a district court’s final judgment enjoining the enforcement of a Texas voting statute. The statute requires voters to produce identification before they vote. Business law students learn about injunctions (in this case, the court’s power to stop a party from acting) as a equitable remedy.

Congressman Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, sued Governor Perry and Texas Secretary of State John Steen in federal court, challenging the enforcement of the voter ID law, named SB 14. Veasey claimed that the law had the potential of preventing hundreds of thousands of people from voting. The strict Texas statute “requires the state’s estimated 13.6 million registered voters to show one of seven kinds of photo identification” before casting their ballot. Defendants responded SB 14 was designed to prevent voter fraud and argued voter ID laws were already approved by the Supreme Court in an Indiana case.

After a hearing, the district court agreed with Veasey that enforcement of the law “may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5% of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification.” The district court determined the strict Texas statute was unconstitutional and enjoined defendants from forcing voters to produce ID. The Fifth Circuit issued a stay of the order, meaning defendants were temporarily permitted to enforce the law. The Supreme Court denied Veasey’s application to vacate the stay pending appeal. Led by Justice Ginsberg, three Justices wrote a scathing dissent (and in a rare circumstance, later corrected) expressing disagreement with the court’s decision not to vacate the stay.

Voting rights are analyzed under strict scrutiny. As of now, voters in Texas must show proper ID before they are allowed to vote in the midterm elections on November 4th.

Posted by Michael Cappelluti.

It is no surprise that our society is on the brink of a technological revolution. It is projected that “65% of elementary school students will hold jobs that do not exist yet when they enter the workforce” (Frank Diana). By 2029, Ray Kurzweil predicts we will have technology that will allow us to live forever. While these technologies may benefit us, our society will be forced to react to these changes. Ethics and law will be crucial in making these reactions a reality. A more pressing issue, though, is the introduction of autonomous vehicles on the road. The article, “Law & the Problem of Autonomous Cars” by Nicholas Stringfellow, offers a legal perspective on the implications of this new technology.

Autonomous vehicles will disrupt many aspects of law, but the article starts off by discussing statutory law. Stringfellow believes that the state and federal levels of government will have to create a body of law about self driving cars—specifically about what happens when the “autopilot system” fails and the passengers are forced to disengage the autopilot and take control. Four states currently have a statutory law for autonomous vehicles, but they differ in some ways. Some states require a person to sit in the driver’s seat in case something were to go wrong, whereas some are more lax about an “emergency driver.” A huge ethical issue will be whether the car is programmed to defend the passengers at all cost, or, from a utilitarian standpoint, make whatever decision will save the most lives in the scenario.

The article also goes on to discuss Tort law, specifically, products liability law. “Injured persons could bring manufacturing defect, design defect, failure to warn, or breach of warranty claims [to a court]” in the instance of an accident (Stringfellow). Courts will be forced to respond by “adopting a negligence standard, a strict liability standard, or by refusing to impose liability on carmakers.” Essentially, if a car is programmed to protect the most amount of lives in a situation—what happens? For example, if a car spins out of control onto the sidewalk to avoid a fatal accident pile-up on the road ahead, will the pedestrians killed by the disoriented car be able to file a law suit? These questions are unknown, at this point. This topic will be heavily discussed by futurists, ethical analysists, and lawyers in the near future—and this will pave way to the future of how we transport ourselves as human beings.

Michael is a marketing and management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Jessica Page.

General Motors Co. has recently been in the news for its faulty ignition switches in over 2.6 million of the company’s Chevrolet Cobolts and other models that were recalled in 2014. The faulty ignition switches were found to “slip out of the run position and disable features including air bags.” This product defect has been connected to over 100 deaths and over 200 injuries. In September, the U.S. Justice Department brought a criminal case against GM. They agreed to pay $900 million to settle and a $35 million fine for not reporting the defect.

On Monday, Judge Robert Gerber stated that it is possible GM will also face punitive damages to compensate consumers who were harmed by the defect, even though the company sought to block plaintiffs making these claims. Judge Gerber has suggested the punitive damages could amount to billions of dollars if the legal claims are settled or successful. This is partially due to the fact that GM admitted in the original settlement that they “[mislead] regulators about the defective switch and [failed] to recall millions of vehicles.”

Another interesting factor for this case is the bankruptcy restructuring GM went through. In the restructure, they assumed responsibility for “future product-liability cases involving older vehicles.” Since this is so broad, it is likely that GM could be held responsible for claims on both compensatory and punitive damage because of its knowledge of the defect and conduct, but only to the extent that the “New GM” holds. GM has agreed to spend over $500 million to settle these cases and over the next few months, the company is expected to face even more death and injury cases that have yet to be settled.

Jessica is a finance and marketing major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2016.

Posted by Samantha Staudt.

One in five Americans have reported that they have skipped medicine doses or failed to fill a prescription each year because of the cost of the medicine.  This statistic is outrageous and states have to start doing something about it because the federal government will not.  Certain states, like Nevada, have passed a new law that manufactures must disclose more information about why drug prices are rapidly increasing.  In the past few year, prices in Nevada have increased as much as 325 percent, so this law will help regulate the prices of prescription drugs.  Maryland provides another example of steps that must be taken in an order to regulate drug companies.  The attorney general sued generic drug manufacturers whose prices rose more than fifty percent in a year.  States are partly responsible for the funding of the Medicaid program, spending more than 20 million dollars a year on prescription drugs for public employees and prisoners.

Drug manufacturers have recently pushed opioids while denying and misunderstanding their addictiveness.  This may be enough to cut the political power of the pharmaceutical industry.  This statistic is not settling well with anyone and more than 100 states have filed lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies related to tobacco.  This is in an effort to recover the costs of dealing with the epidemic of addiction and overdoses.  Oklahoma’s attorney general, Nolan Clay, is making strides to fixing this rising issue by refusing to accept donations from drug companies.

Of course, pharmaceutical companies fight the big changes that would affect the company.  The industry has been at the top of the lists for lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions at the same time managing to block reform proposals.  During Nevada’s fight to lower drug prices, drug companies hired more than seventy lobbyist to descend on the bill.  When state drug pricing bills pass, the drug industry challenges them in court.  There have been several lawsuits filed, but none have succeeded yet.  In order to prevent drug companies from overpricing prescription drugs, states must enforce regulation laws immediately.

Samantha is a finance major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2020.

Posted by Wasif Rahman.

Voters in Washington, who have taken on a role to guarantee paid sick leave to those working in the state recently, brought the Paid Sick Leave Act into play. The new law calls for employers to give workers an hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours that they have worked. It also restricts when employers would be able to demand medical documentation from employees. While the new law may seem ideal for those working in the State of Washington, it poses a major problem specifically for airlines and its passengers. The problem was first pointed out by Airlines for America earlier this month.

Requiring airlines to conform to the Paid Sick Leave Act for their flight crewmembers is problematic since they are already subject to employment laws of their home state. This new law would enable those same crewmembers to also take advantage of Washington’s employment laws, including the Paid Sick Leave Act, if they are to pass through the state during their shift. Airlines for America filed a lawsuit against the State of Washington in the U.S. district court and subsequently released a statement noting, “airlines cannot operate their nationwide systems properly if flight crews are subject to the employment laws of every state in which they are based, live, or pass through”[1]. The defendant, the Department of Labor and Industries for the state of Washington, made no remarks on Airlines of America’s statement. Airlines for America suggests that Washington’s law promotes, to some degree, more crewmembers calling in sick as the airlines would have certain limitations to when they would be able to demand medical documentation to verify whether a crewmember is actually sick or not. They claim that if it gets to a point where enough crewmembers are calling in sick, it would lead to flights either being cancelled or delayed since there wouldn’t be enough flight crewmembers to serve the passengers. This would lead to severe disruptions not only at Sea-Tac International Airport in Washington but across all airports through out the country. From the airlines standpoint, it would be detrimental to their business having to tell their customers & passengers that they cannot serve their needs. Airlines also claim this new law violates the constitution.

Ultimately, this law is unfavorable to airlines as their passengers would have to face an increase in cost & time for their travels. On top of that, passengers are not purchasing these tickets for the flights to be cancelled or delayed. This isn’t only a major inconvenience for airliners but also for passengers. As of now, a few of the other airlines that have sued Washington State include JetBlue, United and Southwest.

Source:

[1] http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/airlines-sue-over-new-washington-state-sick-leave-law

Wasif is a mathematical finance major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2020.

Posted by Giancarlo Barrera.

First it was Target, Home Depot, and now, JPMorgan Chase.  They are the next victim under cyber attack. Chase is the biggest bank by assets in the US. They are also the dominate bank in New York City, where the majority of banks’ cooperate headquarters are located . “JPMorgan Chase has 65.8 million open credit card accounts, and 31.8 million of those accounts with sales activity, according to its most recent quarterly report. Chase also has 30.1 million checking accounts.”  According to what the FBI has been investigating, names, addresses, phone numbers, and emails were taken, but no passwords and social security numbers

It was reported that the hackers did not receive any money from this cyberattack. “The bank’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said that the company will spend $250 million this year on cybersecurity, but has been losing security employees to other banks with more “expected to leave soon.”

Giancarlo is a finance major at Montclair State University, Class of 2016.

The Supreme Court issued an order denying an application to vacate the Fifth Circuit’s stay of a district court’s final judgment enjoining the enforcement of a Texas voting statute. The statute requires voters to produce identification before they vote. Business law students learn about injunctions (in this case, the court’s power to stop a party from acting) as a equitable remedy.

Congressman Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, sued Governor Perry and Texas Secretary of State John Steen in federal court, challenging the enforcement of the voter ID law, named SB 14. Veasey claimed that the law had the potential of preventing hundreds of thousands of people from voting. The strict Texas statute “requires the state’s estimated 13.6 million registered voters to show one of seven kinds of photo identification” before casting their ballot. Defendants responded SB 14 was designed to prevent voter fraud and argued voter ID laws were already approved by the Supreme Court in an Indiana case.

After a hearing, the district court agreed with Veasey that enforcement of the law “may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5% of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification.” The district court determined the strict Texas statute was unconstitutional and enjoined defendants from forcing voters to produce ID. The Fifth Circuit issued a stay of the order, meaning defendants were temporarily permitted to enforce the law. The Supreme Court denied Veasey’s application to vacate the stay pending appeal. Led by Justice Ginsberg, three Justices wrote a scathing dissent (and in a rare circumstance, later corrected) expressing disagreement with the court’s decision not to vacate the stay.

Voting rights are analyzed under strict scrutiny. As of now, voters in Texas must show proper ID before they are allowed to vote in the midterm elections on November 4th.

Posted by Xiaoxie Zheng.

Now, more and more countries are beginning to regulate bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In this essay, I’ll focus on bitcoin. Unlike the French currency, there is no national credit endorsement behind bitcoin, and no guarantee of legal significance. It is implemented by the rules set by a group of people. Here are the main features of bitcoin:

First, there is no intermediary. The bitcoin publishing process is only controlled by the algorithm, and it is very difficult to control the centralizing mechanism.

Second, there is no inflation. Limited by the algorithm, the total supply of bitcoins is controlled and will never exceed 21 million.

Third, there is openness and transparency. Through technology, transactions are transparent and transaction costs are low.

Bitcoin is thoughtful. But the value of bitcoin is far from stable. The price of bitcoin can rise more than 100%, and sometimes it can collapse overnight. On the one hand, when it comes to determining value, it is difficult to do; on the other hand, the holder of bitcoin may be more speculative in his or her investment, which is not the ideal currency circulation function.

The problem with bitcoin is that hackers are a big threat. On June 19, 2011, a security hole in the Mt.Gox bitcoin trading center caused the price of one bitcoin to drop from $15 to a penny. In August 2011, the bitcoin exchange, MyBitcoin, was hacked, and more than 78,000 bitcoins worth $800,000 were missing.

As for the relationship between bitcoin and the economy, it has theoretically eliminated inflation and brought about deflation. In addition, the openness of technology is the intrinsic “spiritual value” of bitcoin, and therefore the competition of a large number of new virtual assets is inevitable. Its homogeneity itself leads to the risk of impairment of value and internal collapse.

Some countries have adopted a strict ban on bitcoin, such as Ecuador and Bolivia. But prohibition is not the best way to handle the matter. Comprehensively denying the authenticity and financial connotation of bitcoin and digital assets will not detract from its significance in financial transactions.

The lack of oversight of bitcoin can pose a significant systemic risk. The chaos of the digital asset floor and the trading platform can bring systemic risks. For example, money laundering is a public safety hazard. As a result, it is difficult to restrain speculation and the financial risks brought by it. Instead, governments cannot strictly regulate it under the current financial legal framework, nor can it effectively protect financial consumers.

The US Congress is right to impose stricter federal regulations on these emerging asset classes.

Xiaoxie is an accounting major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Source:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/us-congress-sets-sights-on-federal-cryptocurrency-rules