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The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has strict standards for prescription drugs before they can be sold to the public. They must undergo rigorous testing to validate their ingredients and effectiveness before being allowed to go to market.

Not everyone wants to take prescription drugs though. Many people prefer to first try natural alternatives, and that often includes supplements. Other people use supplements simply to make sure they are getting enough of the proper nutrients if they think their diet might be lacking. Either way, there’s plenty of money to be made in the supplements industry, and that opportunity, coupled with a lack of regulations, creates a strong temptation for some manufacturers to cheat.

When there’s big money to be made, there are usually people in place to make sure nothing interferes. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, for example, was a sponsor and chief architect of the 1994 law exempting supplements from the FDA’s strict approval process used for prescription drugs. Hatch has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the supplement industry and repeatedly intervened in Washington against proposed legislation that would put in place more stringent rules regarding supplements. Continue reading ›

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The first amendment to our constitution provides us with an invaluable protection to say anything we want – or at least almost anything we want. Judges and attorneys frequently have to balance the rights granted by the first amendment with their duty to protect citizens of the United States. In certain instances, such as injurious false statements (defamation) or threats, protecting individual citizens takes priority over the right to free speech. Defining that line is something courts continue to struggle with.

In one lawsuit currently being argued before the Supreme Court, Anthony Elonis faces the possibility of jail time for posting violent song lyrics about his wife and children on the Internet. Elonis posted these lyrics under the rap persona of Tone Dougie, but he did not keep his true identity a secret. Continue reading ›

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Statutes intended to protect one group of citizens can sometimes be applied to another group. Title IX, for example, is a federal statute that was designed to promote gender equality by protecting women. However, in one recent lawsuit against Columbia University, a male student is suing the university for discrimination under Title IX.

At issue is an evening in which the student had sex with a female freshman at the university. He says it was consensual. She says otherwise. The university suspended him for one year, an outcome that he claims was unjust.

He hired Andrew Miltenberg, a Manhattan attorney who has taken on the cases of the accused in numerous instances of alleged sexual assault. Despite the fact that representing the accused in such a situation is far from popular, Miltenberg insists that those accused are not always given access to the rights under the law. According to Miltenberg, as a defendant in one of these cases, “You got factual statements made that you’re not necessarily allowed to review and you’re certainly now allowed to have copies of. … You may or may not be able to present your witnesses. You probably don’t have the chance to cross-examine.”

There’s no doubt that this is a very delicate issue and remaining fair to all parties involved can be extremely difficult. After decades of women accusing colleges and universities of not being harsh enough on those who commit sexual assault, now there are groups saying they have gone too far in the other direction and have begun discriminating against men. Continue reading ›

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When an employee starts with a company, the employment agreement usually includes a certain number of paid sick and vacation days, in addition to salary and health care benefits. That constitutes a promise from the employer to provide that salary and those benefits to the employee. If the employee does not use all of her sick days or vacation days, she is still entitled to be compensated for them.

A recent class action wage and hour lawsuit filed against Coca-Cola in California, alleges that the soft drink company had a “use it or lose it” vacation policy, in which employees were not paid for any vacation time they did not take. According to the recent lawsuit, such practices are illegal under California labor law. Coca-Cola argues it has already revised its vacation policy and paid out all earned, unused vacation time dating back to 2008.

The lawsuit further alleges that Coca-Cola refused to pay employees for time spent driving between job sites during the day, including driving to the first job site of the day and driving home from the last job site of the day. According to the lawsuit, employees were driving Coca-Cola vans during these commutes. Continue reading ›

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Luring customers in with low rates, only to raise those rates once the customer has been acquired, is a common tactic known as bait-and-switch. It is particularly effective in hooking low-income and elderly customers who have a fixed budget because they are most often the people who are on the lookout for the best deal. Unfortunately, when a deal seems like it might be too good to be true, the sad fact is that it usually is.

When ComEd announced earlier this year that it would be raising its rates by 21 percent, the number of people looking for a deal jumped dramatically. Unfortunately, many companies took advantage of this jump by promising low rates. However, because many of these companies are unregulated, they can raise their rates later by as much as they want, when they want. They don’t even have to provide their customers with an explanation for the raise in rates.

ComEd’s rates recently went up from 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour to 7.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. A kilowatt-hour is the amount of energy required to power a medium-sized window AC unit for one hour. The average ComEd customer uses 655 kilowatt-hours per month. Despite Starion’s claims that customers can save money by switching to Starion Energy, Starion’s average rate is allegedly 13 cents per kilowatt-hour, almost double ComEd’s price. Continue reading ›

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Legit Enough to Quit?
Restrictive Covenants and Legitimate Business Interests

As means of protecting ones business, it may seem that a restrictive covenant is one of the most secure. However, a restrictive covenant does not always provide the magnitude of protection wanted by those who enter into such an agreement. A three prong test of reasonableness must be satisfied. The covenant must serve a legitimate business interest, it must not impose an undue hardship and it must not be injurious to the public. Without a legitimate business interest, a restrictive covenant may not be enforceable.

A prime example of the necessity of a legitimate business interest to sustain a restrictive covenant can be seen in Gastroenterology Consultants of North Shore, S.C. v.  Meiselman, 2013 IL App (1st) 123692, 989 N.E.2d 1126 appeal denied, 996 N.E.2d 12 (Ill. 2013). To achieve such a result, the company enforcing the non-solicitation agreement must demonstrate a legitimate business interest exists for such an agreement.

The Court takes a close look at the enforceability of a restrictive covenant when a doctor enters into such an agreement upon Plaintiff and later decides to take his professional work elsewhere. Plaintiffs try to enforce their restrictive covenant; however, the Court determines that the absence of a “legitimate business interest” renders the covenant unenforceable. Continue reading ›

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How Long is Long Enough: Substantial Employment Standard
for Non-Compete Agreements

Non-Compete covenants are among the strongest ways to protect against an employee potentially walking away with vital and, even more importantly, confidential information of the employer. Though it has long been established that timing plays a large role in whether or not an employment agreement is enforceable, a new holding has established that timing may not be everything when it comes to a post employment non-compete agreement.

A two-year time frame was considered to be the main threshold to satisfy “substantial” employment, however, the ruling in Montel Aetnastak, Inv.v. Miessen, 998 F. Supp. 2d 694 (N.D. Ill. 2014), demonstrates that because of inconsistencies between both lower Illinois courts and the Illinois Supreme Court, the implementation of a bright-line rule is not the determining factor when it come making a decision whether employment was “substantial”. Also, the Court determines that over broad post-employment non-compete covenant is not for the Court to narrow under the facts in that case. Continue reading ›

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Communicating with other people is arguably the only reason we own and maintain phones. As soon as cell phones became widely available, text messages became a primary means of communication between friends and family. It is therefore understandable that a cell phone user would become upset if prevented from accessing her text messages. This is allegedly the case with people who had an iPhone and switched to an Android or another non-iOS phone.

According to a recent class action lawsuit against Apple, the company allegedly prevented iMessages from being delivered to non-iOS phones, even though the sender of the message would see the status of the message as “Delivered”. Instead of going to the recipient’s new phone, the messages were being rerouted to their iMessage account.

Apple has released a statement saying that the best way to avoid the problem is for users to deactivate their iMessage account and completely disassociate their number from their iMessage account. That is not stopping Adrienne Moore from pursuing her class action lawsuit against the tech giant.

Moore alleges that Apple’s message blocking interfered with her contract with Verizon Wireless for wireless service, which she kept after switching from an iPhone 4 to a Samsung Galaxy S5. She alleges that Apple interfered with her contract with Verizon because her contract allowed her to send and receive text messages, which Apple allegedly prohibited. Continue reading ›

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The Fair Credit Reporting Act was enacted in 1970 to protect consumers from being unfairly denied a mortgage, rental apartment, or job based on incorrect credit histories. With the advent and growth of the Internet and social media, the Act has all sorts of applications that its creators could never have dreamed of.

Although, like most social media, LinkedIn provides many of its services for free, it also offers a service call “Reference Search” to its premium account holders who pay a monthly fee. This service allows an employer or recruiter to generate a list of people in its own network who worked at the same company at the same time as a job candidate. It also allows premium members to contact the people who appear on those lists using the site’s messaging system. All this can be done without the job candidate ever knowing.

Tracee Sweet, the lead plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against LinkedIn, applied for a job at a hotel chain via the social media site. She claims she was denied the job because the hotel company, without telling her in advance, used the site’s reference search to locate references on her.

Joseph Roualdes, a spokesman for LinkedIn, said the company takes its member privacy very seriously and that it intends to fight the lawsuit, which it insists has no merit. He said that, “A reference search, which is only available to premium account holders, simply lets a searcher locate people in their network who have worked at the same company during the same time period as a member they would like to learn more about. … A reference search does not reveal that member’s nonpublic information.” Continue reading ›

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