Posted by Wenxuan Yu. The minimum wage for workers must be guaranteed, which is the basis for social stability. Yet many social workers have unimaginably low basic salaries. Julio Payes from Guatemala has two jobs. He works 80 hours a week. He had to work sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, to pay for basic living expenses, and he once said he felt like a zombie.
The federal minimum wage was first established by the fair labor act of 1938 (FLSA). The bill’s immediate goal is to reduce poverty. Minimum wage legislation is designed to maximize the total income of minimum wage workers and lift their families out of poverty. The FLSA is administered by the U.S. department of labor’s wage and hour division. Today, the act’s labor standards affect the rights of more than 130 million workers, both full-time and part-time, in the private and public sectors.
After that, the Emeryville city council began to reconsider the city’s minimum wage. Emeryville followed Oakland’s decision to raise the minimum wage to $12.25. The city’s minimum wage was eventually raised to about $16 an hour by 2019, thanks to labor marches and advocacy efforts. That’s equivalent to the highest minimum wage in the United States, and even higher than the minimum wage in major cities like San Francisco and Seattle.
And in 2016, the minimum wage for workplaces with fewer than 55 employees jumped to $13 an hour, up from $14 in 2017 and $15 in 2018.On July 1, wages for all businesses will hit $16 an hour.
This is good news for all workers. At the same time, the increase in the minimum wage also led to many other benign effects. Patients are less stressed, and in high-wage states they are better able to pay for their care. Higher wages have also made society safer, and rates of child abuse and teenage drinking have fallen. Therefore, the implementation of the correct minimum wage is conducive to the development of society.
Wenxuan is a student at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University.
Posted by Jidong Zhang.
The recent Nike incident caused a heated discussion among sneaker owners. Nike’s shoes are usually representative of comfort, durability, and high-tech integration. Most people have Nike brand sports shoes. Nike’s latest shoes, “Back to Future,” has been sold on the stockx for thousands of dollars because of the automatic lace-up feature. This time the defective shoes broke the stereotype of Nike, also let people think about the balance between the player’s right to health and business transactions.
As we all know, sports brand companies will provide sponsorship funds for famous universities. This will not only promote the development of the university’s sports career, but also bring benefits to the company. Players don’t need to buy shoes at full price, as long as they wear them for a few games. In this part of the agreement, the player seems to be wearing a sneaker for a game and then will get the shoes for free. In fact, when the players wear the sneakers, the game will be broadcast live or recorded, so that the sports brand company will be advertised. To a certain extent, an employment relationship exists between the player and the sports brand company. As the employee, the player should be guaranteed to be safe and healthy during the game, and the sports brand company should take on such responsibility, but these responsibilities are usually are ignored.
As for Williamson, in this incident, if he suffers from injuries due to defective shoes this will ultimately affect his career. Would Nike be responsible for him? For a player, good health is crucial. The university or the league organizations should fully consider the interests of the players when signing the equipment agreement with the sponsor. The law related to this case needs to be improved.
Jidong is a student at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University.
Work Cited:
http:// https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/sports/zion-nike-shoe-ncaa.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Posted by Simran Patel. Throughout the country, the opioid epidemic has seen a 10 percent rise and taken the lives of more than 72,000 people due to overdoses. New Jersey has filed a lawsuit against a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that manufactures opioids and wants them to be liable for their products. The pharmaceutical company has been accused of misleading patients about the addictive dangers of the drugs. New Jersey Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, is trying to contain this spiraling opioid crisis by bringing legal action against the subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Grewal states that this company minimized the risks of opioid addiction in their marketing messages and targeted patients and older people who had little to no knowledge of opioids. New Jersey is known for its pharmaceutical industry and has a long history of producing vital, lifesaving drugs. Therefore, Mr. Grewal has said that they cannot turn a blind eye to the violation of laws and lives that are being threatened by companies like Janssen Pharmaceutical.
Eleven states, including New Jersey, have filed separate lawsuits against the manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, of the popular opioid painkiller OxyContin. More than 40 state attorney generals have joined New York state in an investigation of manufacturers and distributors of opioids. The federal government has not been effective in regulating the practices of pharmaceutical companies, so the opioid crisis has become a state issue. Although, this pharmaceutical company plays a major role in New Jersey’s economy, Mr. Grewal represents a new front in the battle against opioids. Mr. Grewal states that he is not shying away from holding Janssen accountable even though they are one of the state’s largest employers. Even though Janssen sold their rights to the drugs in 2015, the state attorney general’s office is focusing on the eight-year period that the company marketed the drug. The lawsuit has also brought to light disturbing trends in the prescription. According to one patient on a state health care plan, they received 125 prescriptions for opioids over the course of a year. This lawsuit is fighting against the misinformation and marketing put out by these pharmaceutical companies saying that these drugs do not cause addiction or dependence and do not lead to abuse. New Jersey is fighting to stop the reality in which tons of people die using the drugs as directed.
I agree with Mr. Grewal and his lawsuit against the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceuticals. The opioid crisis has increased at an alarming speed and the death toll from this epidemic rises every year. Without legal action being taken against the pharmaceutical companies that violate the law and misinform the public, the epidemic will continue to rise until the effects are detrimental. The federal government has not been making any major moves to regulate the practices of pharmaceutical companies and hold them accountable for their actions. State legislatures have taken this issue into their own hands and decided to create stricter regulations and issue lawsuits against the companies who are at fault for this rising crisis. I believe this epidemic can be decreased significantly if the pharmaceutical companies are forced to take responsibility for their misleading marketing campaigns and the misinformation they provided to the public. Especially in their own backyard, New Jersey companies should support and protect their community and ethically build up their economy.
Simran is a marketing major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2020.
Link to Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/nyregion/nj-opioid-lawsuit.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FLiability%20For%20Products&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection
Posted by Natalia Serrano.
In a recent blog post done by attorney Arina Shulga at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP., there has been conversation about what is happening to a certain Digital Tokens Exchange company since they have not been officially registered. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is an independent agency of the United States Government. Its purpose is to protect investors from dangerous or illegal financial practices. Recently, the SEC, “published an order announcing a settlement of charges it brought against Zachary Coburn, the founder of EtherDelta, a digital token trading platform.” This is what was stated in Shulga’s blog post on November 8th, 2018. This is all because the platform has failed to register their tokens and has not been abiding by the federal laws.
“EtherDelta is a decentralized trading platform that lets you trade Ether and Ethereum-based tokens directly with other users. You are responsible for your own account, funds, and private keys. EtherDelta makes no guarantee about the tokens that you trade using EtherDelta.” A decentralized exchange is a cryptocurrency which operates without a central authority. This simply means that it works independently without requiring any validation from an external third party. This is a peer-to-peer network technology. Because of all these technical terms, Coburn did not formally register his platform and is now getting fined for not doing so. The SEC is trying to send out a clear message to all its cryptocurrency participants. Just because you claim your platform to be decentralized, does not mean that you are not to obey the laws.
Coburns platform has been advised once before that it needed to start obeying the federal laws but continued to do things his way. In the article, Shulga explains that many of her clients claimed that their contemplated crypto exchanges did not need to register due to their decentralized nature. In section 5 of the SEC it explains what an exchange entail. It states that an exchange is “any organization, association, or group of persons, whether incorporated or unincorporated, which provides a market place or facilities for bringing together purchasers and sellers of securities.” If the company that one owns can be measured through this description it must abide by the SEC laws. “The SEC found that “EtherDelta operated as a market place for bringing together the orders of multiple buyers and sellers in tokens that included securities” without registration or exemption, regardless of its decentralized nature.”
http://www.businesslawpost.com/
Natalia is a finance and information technology major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2020.
Posted by Huangan Pan.Earlier this year, McKinsey & Company, a famous consulting firm, was accused because of its misdeeds in a previous bankruptcy case, which has increased the probability of which the judge could order McKinsey & Company to return tens of millions of dollars in fees. This accusation was raised by the bankruptcy case of SunEdison. In 2016, SunEdison filed for bankruptcy protection in United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan and employed McKinsey & Company as a bankruptcy consultant. However, FTI Consulting, an outside company that hired by the board of SunEdison, claimed that the managers of SunEdison were misstating cash flows, and described an email about how McKinsey was going to be paid between a McKinsey consultant and a SunEdison executive. Finally, an agreement will arrange these unpaid bills to four solar-energy projects that SunEdison set up for other customers instead of billing them from SunEdison itself. Jay Alix, a creditor of SunEdison, declared that “McKinsey had used the four projects whose financing was separate from that of SunEdison and would not be affected by the bankruptcy to remove any risk of the court finding out that McKinsey pulled money out of the company just before it went bankrupt” (Walsh 5).
In this case, McKinsey had not disclosed sufficient information about its relationship between SunEdison while acting as a creditor. At the same time, as a consulting company that was hired by SunEdison, they can easily reach an internal agreement with SunEdison in order to transfer the risk of bankruptcy because they can more easily access SunEdison’s internal business information and decision-making information than any other creditor. In response to this accusation, a spokeswoman for McKinsey said that “The firm had always conducted itself in compliance with the law. Mr. Alix was motivated by a desire to undercut its ability to compete with AlixPartners” (Walsh 9).
In my opinion, what McKinsey’s spokeswoman said seems reasonable. However, The Wall Street Journal’s survey found that McKinsey disclosed far fewer potential conflicts of benefit than other bankruptcy professionals. Hence, McKinsey still needs to give a sufficient disclosure in any case to compliance the bankruptcy law. In this case, McKinsey tries to shift its risk to another four solar-energy projects which were set by SunEdison. This kind of action obviously have violated the bankruptcy codes and undermined the rights of other creditors. “To make sure no one tries to remove assets before the court takes control, the bankruptcy code calls for a review of transactions within 90 days — and sometimes longer — of when the company files for bankruptcy” (Walsh 11). This means the court can order McKinsey to return consulting fees that SunEdison have paid and then, SunEdison needs to repay all creditors according to the priority of their claims. `
Huangan is an accounting major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2020.
Works Cited:
Corrigan, Tom. “Justice Department Chides McKinsey in Another Bankruptcy Case.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 15 Dec. 2018, www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-chides-mckinsey-in-another-bankruptcy-case-11544901946.
Walsh, Mary Williams. “McKinsey & Company Is Again Accused of Misdeeds in Bankruptcy Case.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Jan. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/mckinsey-bankruptcy-sunedison.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/mckinsey-bankruptcy-sunedison.html.
Note
Article’s link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/business/mckinsey-bankruptcy-sunedison.html
Posted by Christopher Saker.
Who would of thought after all these years college players are being closer to being paid than ever. Lawsuit has conferences quietly preparing for the likelihood of compensating players. Four years after she presided over the trial for Ed O’Bannon v. NCAA, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken is about to preside over a second college sports trial that could be a game-changer. On Tuesday, a trial for a lawsuit led by former West Virginia running back Shawne Alston and former Cal center Justine Hartman will begin in an Oakland federal courthouse. Alston and Hartman are co-lead plaintiffs in In Re: NCAA Grant-in-Aid Cap Antitrust Litigation v. NCAA, a class action brought on behalf of former men’s and women’s college players against the NCAA and the 11 major athletic conferences.
Once again, the NCAA will need to defend the unusual economics of big-time college sports from legal rebuke—and once again the 69-year-old judge will decide how to shape the relationship between universities and the student-athletes who bring them notoriety and revenue. A judge in the ongoing Alston vs. NCAA trial will conduct a final hearing on Dec. 18 pertaining to closing arguments. She will then decide — likely early in 2019 — whether scholarship limits imposed by the association violate anti-trust laws. Fearing what would amount to an open marketplace, a handful of conferences have notified officials within their leagues not to discuss the case outside their conferences for fear of collusion accusations. If conferences shared information on how to compensate athletes, that in itself could be interpreted as a way to cap scholarship benefits. That fear of collusion is based in part on rival league administrators even speaking casually about the outcome of the case. Example: “If the plaintiffs win, as expected, the SEC could theoretically compensate athletes with cars. Meanwhile, another league could offer … better cars or apartments or …”
If conferences took over, they would most likely have to establish their own enforcement staffs. At that point, the question would have to be asked: Why is there an NCAA at all? The NCAA argues that $4,000 is available to each family of a Final Four participant to travel to the games. Bowl gifts (capped at $550 per player) seemingly are a reward for playing football. The NCAA has argued that “pay for GPA” – grade point average incentives conferences could adopt — would establish “perverse incentives” forcing athletes to take easier classes. It should be noted that coaches regularly get contract bonuses for reaching a benchmark team GPAs. Also, in many instances, players already are encouraged to take classes that don’t interfere with their sport. This will be a very long process as both sides continue to battle this issue and will be something to keep an eye on.
Christopher is a finance major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2022.
Dodd, Dennis. “Lawsuit Has Conferences Quietly Preparing for the Likelihood of Compensating Players.” CBSSports.com, CBS Sports, 12 Dec. 2018, http:// www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/lawsuit-has-conferences-quietly-preparing-for-the-likelihood-of-compensating-players/.
Posted by Christopher Saker.
NASI raised more than $120 million from roughly 2,000 investors with the promise of guaranteed returns of 20% for each automated teller machine (ATM) an investor purportedly purchased and leased back to the company.
Each investor signed a contract memorializing their investment which included the serial number and location of each ATM but also prohibited the investor from “interfering” with the ATM’s operation by contacting any location where the ATM was installed or any ATM service provider. A bank account analysis showed that NASI raised more than $120 million from January 2013 to August 2014 alone. After NASI began bouncing checks to investors in August 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought an emergency enforcement action and obtained the appointment of William Hoffman as Receiver. Gillis and Wishner were later arrested and sent to prison terms of ten and nine years.
In addition to the promised returns, NASI also paid a referral fee of $500 to $1,000 to each investor or non-investor who referred investors to the scheme. The district court granted the receiver’s request to pursue claims against various third parties including those who received referral fees. The receiver filed suit against Howard Markowitz and alleged that Markowitz received nearly $750,000 in referral fees from NASI. The district court gave a partial summary judgment in the receiver’s favor in August 2017 and allowed the recovery of all referral fees paid to Markowitz, and that decision was later appealed.
When the appeal happened, the Ninth Circuit noted that the California Uniform Voidable Transactions Act (CUVTA) made payments from a Ponzi scheme to a third party voidable when made with either actual or constructive intent unless the transferee could show that they received the transfer in good faith and that they provided reasonably equivalent value for the transfer. Here, the receiver alleged that the referral fees were voidable under CUVTA because Moskowitz’s referral services provided no value to NASI investors and instead only served to further deepen the scheme’s insolvency through the increase in underlying liabilities. Other courts around the country have split on this issue, but the receiver urged the Ninth Circuit to follow the decision reached by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit which held that referral services for a Ponzi scheme did not provide any value to the scheme.
The Ninth Circuit declined to adopt a brightline rule holding that referrals to a Ponzi scheme are “per se voidable because they never provide value,” but did observe that Markowitz conceded that the only service he provided in return for the referral fees was the referral of new investors to the scheme. Based on these facts and the reasoning in Warfield, the Court sided with the receiver and affirmed the district court’s finding that Markowitz was required to disgorge nearly $750,000 in referral fees to the receiver. While the decision was not published and cannot serve as binding precedent, it is yet another tool available to receivers seeking to maximize recovery for defrauded victims.
Christopher is a finance major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2022.
http://www.ponzitracker.com/
Posted by Aiai Shen.With the development of globalization, people’s income level is increasing day-by-day. Travel has become one of the main forms of entertainment for people. At the same time, tourism has brought about significant revenue growth for most countries. With the continuous expansion of tourism, the relevant laws and policies are also constantly revised and improved.
According to KYODO’s article “Japan begins collecting $1,000 departure tax fund to inbound tourism promotion plan”, Japan started collecting a departure tax of 1, 000 yen from each traveler leaving the country (regardless of nationality) on 7th January. “The new tax applies to both air and sea travel and will be tacked onto transportation fares of passengers.” The policy also states that children under the age of two, transit passengers leaving Japan within 24 hours of arrival and those who leave the country because of bad weather or other unavoidable reasons will be exempted.
“Japan has enjoyed a surge in the annual number of inbound tourists in recent years,” and the departure tax is expected to generate 50 billion yen in revenue in 2019 according to the Japan Tourism Agency. The Japanese government said the tax revenue will be mainly used for providing “smoother travel services, facilitating access to information about the country ‘s tourist attractions and improving visitor satisfaction levels by promoting tourism resources in regional.” It is also aimed at attracting more foreign visitors in the run-up to and beyond the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
However, there are still some people who question the policy and think that the rising price of tourism is a burden to tourists. Hideaki Tanaka, a finance professor at Meiji University’s Graduate School of Governance Studies, said, “It will be necessary to check that the funds are not being used on less productive measures, but in ways that taxpayers find convincing”.
In my opinion, the departure tax is not the most critical issue. Whether the 1,000-yen tax becomes a burden for tourists depends entirely on themselves. But I don’t think it will. Because 1,000 yen is not a lot for those who can afford to travel internationally. The public (taxpayers) should pay more attention to whether the tax is used to benefit Japanese citizens and foreign tourists. In other words, its effects need to be presented in a more obvious way to truly convince taxpayers.
Aiai is an accounting student at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/01/07/national/japan-begins-collecting-%C2%A51000-departure-tax-fund-inbound-tourism-promotion-plan/#.XETm1VxKg2w
Posted by Jasmine Lightburn.
In this law suit, a content moderator is suing Facebook for causing her post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Content moderators are responsible for sifting through often criminal and disturbing posts that users all over the world upload and removing them from the web before the general public sees. She claims that the violent images and other brutal content she viewed caused immense trauma and led to this disorder. The former moderator, Selena Scola, viewed the harshest material ok the web. This included rape, suicides, and other killings every day and claims that she was not protected fairly. According to Scola, the correct psychological services were not in place.
In order to protect other content moderators, Scola urges Facebook to implement effective psychological support services to ensure that employees are receiving the necessary help. She also wants to incorporate mandatory medical testing on a regular basis to further guarantee on site medical attention. She believes that this will reduce the amount of workers who suffer from extreme disorders like herself and other issues that do not get reported or addressed.
In my opinion, Facebook should offer Scola a package deal to cover any medical costs associated with her diagnosis of PTSD. I do not think the company should have to pay any other money other than those costs related to her individual psychological appointments. Moving forward, I agree that Facebook should take deeper measures to monitor the content moderators. In the job description, the company should also include possible health effects that may result from the work that needs to be done. I don’t believe all of the blame can solely be put on Facebook, but they should be responsible for some of what happened.
Jasmine is a business management major with a non-profit minor at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2020.
Article:
Posted by Surya Makkar.
Over the past few years, Tesla has emerged as a frontrunner when it comes to electric vehicle technology. Their technology packed, self-driving, vehicles have come with their fair share of problems however. Not only has Tesla faced legal obstacles when it comes to their various technologies they use in their products, but more recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Elon Musk was accused of committing fraud by publically making false statements, which could have impacted investors. To give some background, around a month ago, Elon Musk tweeted saying that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420. Something interesting to note is that the SEC did not sue Tesla as a whole, but rather only filed a suit against Elon Musk.
Elon Musk had never said anything before this to investors or shareholders about taking the company private, which is why everyone was caught off guard and was extremely shocked. After the suit was filed, Tesla shares fell more than 12 percent in after-hours trading. The SEC subpoenaed Tesla, financial institutions, and Tesla board members, to interview them and gather more information. The SEC found that Musk had been in a feud with investors who continued to say Tesla shares would fall.
A few days later, Musk and the SEC reached an agreement that required Elon to step down as Chairman of the board of Tesla and required him to pay a $20 million fine. According to the agreement, Musk does not have to admit any guilt and has 45 days to step down from the role of chairman. He will continue to serve as the CEO of Tesla however. This case goes to show how business professionals are being watched at every moment. One wrong move in the business world can lead to millions of dollars of legal action being taken against you, which is why it is imperative that people in the business world act as if they are being watched at all times.
Surya is a business law student at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2021.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/business/elon-musk-sec-lawsuit-tesla.html