Companies reporting liability insurance claims need to be aware that the pertinent rules vary depending on whether a policy is “claims made and reported” or “occurrence”.

Most, if not all, Directors and Officers and Errors and Omissions policies are written on a claims made and reported basis. By contrast, Commercial General Insurance, or CGL insurance, is written on an occurrence basis. Under a claims made and reported policy, a claim must have arisen and been reported during the same policy period. By contrast, under an occurrence policy, the claim may be reported long ...

With the stated purpose of providing protection to freelance workers who may struggle to receive timely and full payment for their services, the city of Los Angeles has established an ordinance which will require hiring entities to have a written contract with any freelance worker for services valued at $600 or more in a calendar year.  Titled the “Freelance Worker Protections Ordinance”, the legislation establishes specific rights and remedies for freelance workers which could prove costly to uninformed employers. 

As defined by the ordinance, a “hiring entity” is any ...

On August 9, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) announced a direct final rule revoking certain uses of partially hydrogenated oils (“PHOs”) in food.  The rule will go into effect on December 22, 2023. Any comments to the rule must be submitted by October 23, 2023.

The rule removes PHOs as an optional ingredient in the standards of identity for peanut butter and canned tuna. It also revises FDA's regulations affirming food substances as generally recognized as safe pertaining to menhaden oil and rapeseed oil to no longer include partially hydrogenated forms of these ...

On August 14, 2023, a panel of judges for the United State Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a published opinion affirming dismissal of two complaints alleging that food product labels advertising the amount of protein in products were false and misleading under federal and state law. The panel held that the claims were preempted by FDA regulations.

In Case No. 22-15377, the panel ruled on two related cases, Nacarino v. Kashi, and Brown v. Kellogg. The plaintiffs in both cases argued that the protein claim on Kashi and Kellogg’s labels were false because the nitrogen method ...

On July 21, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court order denying Domino Pizza’s motion to compel arbitration in a putative class action brought by plaintiff Dominos truck drivers who alleged that Domino’s had violated California labor law.

The decision in Carmona v. Domino’s Pizza, No. 21-55009 involved an analysis of the Federal Arbitration Act. A Ninth Circuit panel had previously affirmed the denial of the motion to compel, but the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the panel’s decision and remanded ...

Following the United States Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Moriana v. Viking River Cruises, California courts were tasked with the open question of whether an “aggrieved” employee whose individual Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) claims are subject to an arbitration agreement has standing to represent other similarly aggrieved employees in Superior Court.  In Adolph v. Uber Technologies, Inc., the California Supreme Court answered that question in the affirmative; a representative employee’s standing to represent others is not affected by any existing ...