In spite of the Second District Appellate Court decision in Sacksteder v. Senny, 2012 Ohio 4452 (2012), which declined to adopt the more stringent pleading standards set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), it is still possible to get inadequately pled complaints dismissed via a motion to dismiss or for judgment on the pleadings. Coolidge Wall recently succeeded in having an intentional infliction of emotional distress count dismissed in a discrimination suit because the plaintiff had not pled facts sufficient to demonstrate the …
Ohio Approves Medicaid Expansion Under Affordable Care Act
The Controlling Board, a state legislative panel which oversees spending federal funds, voted October 21, 2013 to accept $2.56 billion from the federal government to extend Medicaid coverage to approximately 300,000 low income Ohioans. The expansion would allow, among others, childless adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level (approximately $16,000 for one person ) to be eligible for health care under Medicaid. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will fully fund the Medicaid expansion for three years. After three years, the federal funding is gradually reduced until it reaches 90% in 2020. Critics of the …
New 3.8% Medicare Tax Law Provides Some Exceptions for Real Estate Industry
Medicare Tax law generally. The new Medicare Tax law (I.R.C. § 1411) was added to the Internal Revenue Code by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, in part to offset some of the costs of Obamacare. Very generally, the tax is imposed on an individual’s unearned income (i.e., net investment income including, in part, net income from rents and a trade or business that is a passive activity with respect to the taxpayer). The tax does not apply to an individual who either (1) has no net investment income for the year, or (2) has modified adjusted …
How to Increase the Odds that the Loser Really Pays
Often, a client seeking our advice asks if they can recover their attorney’s fees in a lawsuit. We explain that an award of attorney’s fees to a prevailing party only occurs in a few situations: when a Federal or State law mandates an attorney fee award to the lawsuit’s winner, or when a court, in its discretion, determines that the behavior of the losing party is so egregious that punitive damages and attorney’s fees should be awarded. We explain that the necessary egregious behavior needs to almost rise to the level of criminal activity before a court will even consider …
When Charity Invites Liability, a Simple Contract Can Help
If you are a small business owner, you may often consider how you can give back to the community or make a charitable use of your commercial property. Picture this: A local nonprofit is hosting a 5K race and asks to use your business’s parking lot as a pre-race staging area. While you would like to help out the nonprofit (and get some good PR in the process), you are concerned about liability. If someone gets hurt at the race, could your business be sued for its involvement? The old saying is that “no good deed goes unpunished,” but, with …
Record Payout for Racial Discrimination by Merrill Lynch
A recent case demonstrates how dangerous it is when an employer does not monitor the workplace to ensure equal opportunity. In what could be a record payment to settle an American class action suit for racial discrimination, Merrill Lynch agreed in August to pay $160 million to black brokers and trainees who worked at the firm since 2001. The lead plaintiff in the case, 68-year-old George McReynolds, has worked at the firm since 1983 and remained at the firm during the pendency of the suit. An estimated 1,200 people may have a claim in the settlement. Allegations made during the …
When Employees Commit Electronic Theft
For business owners, holding an edge in the market depends on safe communication and storage of data and proprietary information. While theft of trade secrets once conjured up the image of cumbersome files bring stuffed into a briefcase, loss of essential data now occurs with the simple click of a mouse. In August, two New York men were charged with compiling and stealing information from their employer with the intention of using it to start their own business. The info allegedly taken from their employer, Manhattan-based Flow Traders, included proprietary computer code, trade strategies, and valuation algorithms. According to the …
Supreme Court Asked to Decide If Corporations Have Religious Freedom
As discussed in an earlier blog post, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) created a controversy about whether for-profit corporations have religious freedom. The issue concerns the requirement under ACA that health insurance sufficient to avoid penalties must include coverage for certain forms of birth control. Businesses closely held by families with strong religious convictions are objecting to this requirement as an infringement of religious freedom. In June Hobby Lobby and Mardel, Christian corporations owned by the same family, received a court order preventing the federal government from enforcing the contraception requirement and any related penalties. Also in …
Do For-Profit Corporations Have Religious Freedom?
A provision under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has raised the question of whether for-profit corporations have religious freedom. The ACA through guidelines from the Health Resources and Services Administration requires that non-grandfathered group health plans and individual health insurance cover, without cost to the individual, all FDA-approved contraceptive methods. The FDA-approved methods include contraception known as the “morning-after pill” and the “week-after pill”, which the FDA has acknowledged can terminate pregnancy after conception. While exemptions for contraception coverage have been made for religious non-profit corporations, no exemptions are available to for-profit corporations. In Oklahoma (10th Circuit …
Social Media and Employee Rights
The rise of social media in the last several years has led to a pattern of people pouring out every detail of their personal lives – from the mundane to the potentially damaging – for the world to see. Understandably, this has led to a variety of clashes with employers over issues ranging from social media use at work, to posting of disparaging comments, to workers’ compensation fraud. A recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) should give employers throughout the United States a moment of pause. While employees who disparage their employers online might expect that this …