Current Affairs

Subscribe to Current Affairs via RSS

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard argument on three cases[1] that could have a significant impact on an estimated 55% of employers and 25 million employees. The Court will opine on the controversial use of class action waivers and mandatory arbitration in the employment context. Specifically, the Court will decide whether mandatory arbitration violates the National Labor Relations Act or is permissible under the Federal Arbitration Act. Notably, the NLRA applies in the non-union context as well.

Monday’s argument was noteworthy for another reason—the Trump Administration reversed its position and thus supported the employers instead of the employees as the Obama Administration had done when the cases were first filed. The current administration also argued against its own NLRB’s position that these agreements are invalid.

In a decision handed down by the NLRB before the Trump Administration switched sides on the issue, the agency ruled that Dish Network’s mandatory arbitration provision violates §8(a)(1) of the NLRA because it “specifies in broad terms that it applies to ‘any claim, controversy and/or dispute between them, arising out of and/or in any way related to Employee’s application for employment, employment and/or termination of employment, whenever and wherever brought.’” The Board believed…

I recently finished Elizabeth Pollman and Jordan Barry’s article entitled Regulatory Entrepreneurship. The article is thoughtfully written and timely. I highly recommend it. 

————-

This Article examines what we term “regulatory entrepreneurship” — pursuing a line of business in which changing the law is a significant part of the business plan. Regulatory entrepreneurship is not new, but it has become increasingly salient in recent years as companies from Airbnb to Tesla, and from DraftKings to Uber, have become agents of legal change. We document the tactics that companies have employed, including operating in legal gray areas, growing “too big to ban,” and mobilizing users for political support. Further, we theorize the business and law-related factors that foster regulatory entrepreneurship. Well-funded, scalable, and highly connected startup businesses with mass appeal have advantages, especially when they target state and local laws and litigate them in the political sphere instead of in court.

Finally, we predict that regulatory entrepreneurship will increase, driven by significant state and local policy issues, strong institutional support for startup companies, and continued technological progress that facilitates political mobilization. We explore how this could catalyze new coalitions, lower the cost of political participation, and improve policymaking. However, it…

You couldn’t pay me enough to be the owner of an NFL team right now. I almost feel sorry for them. Even if you’re not a  fan, by now you’ve heard about the controversy surrounding NFL free agent Colin Kaepernick, and his decision to kneel during the national anthem last year. You’ve also probably heard about the President’s call for NFL owners to fire players who don’t stand while the anthem is played and his prediction of the league’s demise if the protests continue. Surprisingly, last Sunday and Monday, some of the same owners who made a business decision to take a pass on  Kaepernick despite his quarterback stats (citing among other things, the potential reactions of their fans) have now themselves made it a point to show solidarity with their players during the anthem. The owners are locking arms with players, some of whom are now protesting for the first time.

Football is big business, earning $13 billion last year, and the owners are sophisticated businessmen with franchises that are worth on average $2.5 billion dollars each. They care about their fans of course, and I’m sure that they monitor the various boycotts. They are also reading about…

No one had a National Compliance Officer Day when I was in the job, but now it’s an official thing courtesy of SAI Global, a compliance consulting company. The mission of this one-year old holiday is to:

  • Raise awareness about the importance of ethics and compliance in business and shine a spotlight on the people responsible for making it a reality.
  • Provide resources to promote the wellness and well-being of ethics and compliance professionals so they can learn how to overcome stress and burnout.
  • Grow the existing ethics and compliance community and help identify and guide the next generation of E&C advocates.

Although some may look at this skeptically as a marketing ploy, I’m all for this made-up holiday given what compliance officers have to deal with today.

Last Saturday, I spoke at the Business Law Professor Blog Conference at the University of Tennessee about corporate governance, compliance, and social responsibility in the Trump/Pence era. During my presentation, I described the ideal audit committee meeting for a company that takes enterprise risk management seriously. My board agenda included: the impact of climate change and how voluntary and mandatory disclosures could change under the current EPA and SEC leadership; compliance…

Friend of the blog and South Texas College of Law (Houston) Professor Joe Leahy sent over the following post he authored. It is cross-posted at UberLaw.Net and Medium. Embarrassingly, I had not heard about Loftium before reading this post, though at least I know of and have used Airbnb. Joe has some interesting thoughts, and I am happy to include his post on this blog. 

———-

Yesterday, the New York Times trumpeted a new internet company, Loftium, and its interesting, new-economy business model (which, for the time being, operates only in Seattle):

Loftium will provide prospective homebuyers with up to $50,000 for a down payment, as long as they are willing to continuously list an extra bedroom on Airbnb for one to three years and share most of the income with Loftium over that time.

At first glance, the arrangement between Loftium and participating homebuyers might sound like a loan.  (Indeed, the Times even describes it as such in an infographic.)  But upon a closer look, the arrangement that Loftium contemplates with homebuyers clearly is not a loan.  First of all, Loftium says it is not a loan; rather, according to Loftium, the down payment assistance it provides to homebuyers is “a part of a services agreement” lasting 12-36 months.  Second, and more important, the arrangement between Loftium and homebuyers has none of the characteristics of a traditional (term) loan.  There is no “principal” amount that the homebuyer is required to repay in a set period of time, and Loftium does not charge the homeowner any “interest.”  In fact, the homebuyer is not required to make anypayments to Loftium in return for the company’s cash (unless the homeowner breaches the parties’ agreement and stops renting on Airbnb before the term expires).

All the homebuyer must do in exchange for Loftium’s money is (1) list her spare room on Airbnb continuously through the term of her agreement with Loftium, (2) be a decent host (i.e., “not be[] rude to guests”) and (3) split her Airbnb  rental revenue with Loftium (with two-thirds going to the company.)  If, at the end of the term, Loftium has not been repaid its initial investment, the homeowner is not required to repay Loftium’s initial contribution. Hence, if renting out the homeowner’s spare room is not profitable during the term of the parties’ agreement, “Loftium takes full responsibility for that loss.”

Of course, Loftium expects that the total income from renting out a homeowner’s spare room will greatly exceed the amount that it originally provided to the homebuyer, so that both will profit.  If Loftium makes more in rental income than it pays towards the homeowner’s down payment, Loftium will make a profit.

Further, by all appearances, there is no cap on Loftium’s potential profit is its business arrangement with homebuyers.  In fact, Loftium makes clear that it wants to maximize the income that it splits with homebuyers:  Loftium promises that it will work with them “to increase monthly bookings as much as possible, so both sides can benefit from the additional income.”  To that end, Loftium provides homebuyers with some start-up supplies for their spare bedroom (and a keyless entry lock), access to advice and know-how regarding how to rent an Airbnb room, and online tools to help maximize their rental income.

So, if the business arrangement between Loftium and homeowners is not a loan, what is it?  It is almost certainly a general partnership for a term (i.e., a “joint venture”).

[Post continues after the page break]

My family has been touched by terrorism.  My cousin, Scott Marsh Cory, died on Pan Am Flight 103–the Lockerbie flight–on December 21, 1988.  He was a Syracuse University student coming home from a semester abroad in England.  Every December 21, with Christmas and grading on my mind, I stop for a moment to remember him.  I think of him at various other times, too.  My son Scott is named after him.

The events of September 11, 2001 are irrevocably connected in my mind to all that.  I taught that morning after both World Trade Center towers had been hit.  I gave students permission to come and go in my class that day.  But I felt that I had to teach that class.  I vowed that I was not going to let terrorists have power over me and rule my life–which is, after all, what they want to do.  I did not teach my afternoon class.  I had learned after my morning class that my brother was scheduled to be down near the World Trade Center towers that morning–and we could not reach him.  I was too emotional to be able to teach, and almost everyone had cancelled their classes…

As previously mentioned, I am always looking for good podcasts. I listen to podcasts while mowing our lawn and on road trips. 

StartUp is the latest podcast series that I have uncovered, thanks to a recommendation from my sister Anna who works for a media/marketing start up herself.

From what I have uncovered so far, StartUp seems to be quite like NPR’s How I Built This, which I mentioned in a previous post. Hosts of both podcasts interview entrepreneurs about the founding of their businesses and the ups and downs thereafter. The biggest difference I see is that StartUp seems to focus on smaller companies (a number that I had never heard of), while How I Built This seems to focus on companies that are now quite large and successful. In early seasons of StartUp there appear to be a number of the podcasts that depart from the entrepreneur-interview model, but I haven’t dug into the early seasons yet. I am mainly focused on the recent podcasts. 

Perhaps most interestingly, I recently listened to a podcast on StartUp about Mokhtar Alkhanshali and his specialty coffee. Mokhtar sources his coffee beans from war-torn Yemen and a cup of his…

Reading closely is a highly valuable skill for both lawyers and law students.  But reading closely is not the only key to getting the most out of reading materials.  Often, knowing what to look for can help us discern what we’re really being told. An article at LawFare, How to Read a News Story About an Investigation: Eight Tips on Who Is Saying What, by Benjamin Wittes, does a nice job of providing some tools to help read news stories more carefully, and perhaps accurately, especially when it comes to sources.  Note that this piece applies to reputable reporters, not everyone who has written something about current events.  

One solid takeaway: 

Reporters publish what they know. If a story describes a series of interactions between a witness or a subject of an investigation and the investigators and the story contains information about one side’s thinking but not the other’s, that’s a powerful sign of where the disclosure came from.

Many of the skills here would translate into other settings, too.  For example, Wittes’ first rule: The Words Describing a Source Should Be Presumed Accurate.  He says, “Always start with the precise words the journalist is using to describe…

There has been quite a lot written about the relative lack of women on boards of directors (and their impact on boards of directors). See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Women hold slightly less than 20% of the board of director seats at major U.S. companies, depending on what group of companies you consider. See here, here, and here.

In this post, I am not going to discuss the vast literature on the topic of women in the boardroom or the quotas that some countries have established, but I do want to point out the curious lack of fathers at playgrounds in Nashville this summer. I am including this post in the Law & Wellness series because I think men and women would both benefit if we saw more fathers at playgrounds during the week.

During ten trips to our popular neighborhood playground, during weekday working hours, I saw 6 men and 72 women. Now, it is probable that some of the people I saw were nannies or grandparents, but I excluded the obvious ones and quite a large percentage seemed like parents anyway.

This…

Uber has a new CEO. Perhaps his first task should be to require one of his legal or compliance staff to attend the FCPA conference at Texas A & M in October given the new reports of an alleged DOJ investigation.. I might have some advice, but Uber needs to hear the lessons learned from Walmart, who will be sending its Chief Compliance Officer. Thanks to FCPA expert, Mike Koehler, aka the FCPA Professor, for inviting me. Mike has done some great blogging about the Walmart case (FYI- the company has reported spending $865 million on fees related to the FCPA and compliance-related costs). Details are below:

THE F​CPA TURNS 40:
AN ASSESSMENT OF FCPA ENFORCEMENT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

FCPA ConferenceThursday, October 12, 2017
Texas A&M University School of Law
Fort Worth, Texas

This conference brings together Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement officials, experienced FCPA practitioners, and leading FCPA academics and scholars to discuss the many legal and policy issues relevant to the current FCPA enforcement and compliance landscape.

Register here

AGENDA

[Click here to download agenda pdf]

Registration, 8:30 a.m.

Morning Session, 9:00 a.m. to Noon

FCPA Legal and Policy Issues

…