Wilson Elser announced this week that its Albany office, formerly known for its lobbying/government relations practice, will refocus its business on the firm’s core services – commercial and civil litigation and corporate transactions – and will launch a government affairs advisory services practice.

Newly appointed regional managing partner Peter Lauricella, an Albany-based attorney for 20 years, who has been with Wilson Elser since 2005, will lead the office.

“Albany has always been a full-service office, but the stature of our former lobbying practice and the fact that we are located in the New York State capital often overshadowed our other practice areas,” said Lauricella. “With a deeper focus on litigation and corporate transactions, our practices are more closely aligned with the firm’s core services offered by our other 29 U.S. offices. By adding an advisory practice, we expand our capabilities and are able to advise clients in a way we couldn’t until now.”

The firm’s release continues:

Wilson Elser attorneys in Albany represent clients in high-stakes lawsuits and commercial transactional matters related to a variety of practice areas including:

• Complex commercial litigation, with an emphasis on contracts, noncompete agreements, trade secrets, unfair competition, corporate dissolution, shareholder derivative actions, intellectual property, construction, real estate, creditors’ rights and employment matters
• Professional liability matters, involving the defense of accountants, engineers, architects, directors, officers, attorneys, and financial and insurance brokers
• Premises liability, toxic tort and Labor Law actions.

For the newly formed advisory practice, attorneys in Albany, White Plains and the New York City offices will leverage their collective experience and reputations in government affairs and municipal law to help clients pursue their interests on legislative and regulatory fronts. They also will continue to represent clients before New York’s municipal and state agencies and legislative bodies providing regulatory and lobbying compliance advice, and represent clients in government investigations brought by the office of the New York State Attorney General and other state and federal agencies.

“Our experience in the government affairs and municipal law sectors has provided us with a deep understanding of the legislative and regulatory process that we can now parlay into a government affairs advisory services practice,” explained Lauricella.  “We see potential for new growth opportunities because for the first time in more than 20 years, we can work with numerous lobbying firms and serve clients in a consulting role that advances our offerings beyond our core legal business. This was a key factor in our decision not to reinstitute a traditional lobbying team at this time.”

“There is no one better suited to lead the office into its next chapter,” said Daniel J. McMahon, Wilson Elser’s chairman. “Peter is well respected by his colleagues in Albany and across the firm, and is highly regarded by his clients and the general business community.”

Lauricella joined the firm and founded its Commercial Litigation and Government Investigations practices in 2005; in 2014 he was selected to lead all facets of the Litigation practice. Although based in Albany, Lauricella represents clients across New York state and in federal district courts outside of the state.

A native of Upstate New York, Lauricella has practiced in Albany since graduating cum laude from Albany Law School with his J.D. degree. He also holds a B.A. degree magna cum laude from the University of Albany.

In 2000, Lauricella was selected to participate in the Albany-Colonie Chamber of Commerce “Capital Leadership” program (now named the Tech Valley Leadership program) and received the 2016 Capital District YMCA President’s Award for his board participation and decade-long service to the organization.  In 2010, he was honored by The Business Review as a “40 Under 40” rising business leader and has been selected for inclusion in the Upstate New York edition of Super Lawyers in the Business Litigation category the past four years.

NBC News is reporting tht Muslim-American groups are applauding President Barack Obama’s nomination of a Washington lawyer to serve in U.S. District Court — a move that could make him the first ever Muslim-American federal judge, according to advocates.

“If confirmed, Abid Riaz Qureshi would sit on the District of Columbia’s federal bench, the White House announced Tuesday,” according to the report by Chris Fuchs. “Qureshi, who graduated Harvard Law School in 1997, is a partner in the D.C. office of Latham & Watkins LLP, specializing in healthcare fraud, securities violations, and cases involving the False Claims Act, according to a White House statement.”

The report says that, while Muslim Americans have filled roles as state judges, none have served at the federal trial or appellate levels, according to Muslim Advocates, a national legal advocacy organization.

Read the article.

Elizabeth Holmes

Photo by Max Morse for TechCrunch

Fox Business is reporting that Theranos Inc. has withdrawn its request for emergency clearance of a Zika-virus blood test after federal regulators found that the company didn’t include proper patient safeguards in a study of the new test.

“The move is another setback for the Palo Alto, Calif., company as it tries to recover from crippling regulatory sanctions that followed revelations by The Wall Street Journal of shortcomings in Theranos’s technology and operations,” Fox Business reports. “Theranos has said it is appealing.”

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the troubled company, recently announced development of a new blood-testing device that she said was designed for use outside a clinical laboratory and could run accurate tests from a few drops of blood.

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The preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of Fort Worth that temporarily blocks the Obama Administration’s instructions for public schools to accommodate transgender students has intensified the national debate over students’ use of bathrooms and other facilities, according to an article posted by Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

“The nationwide aspects of the injunction will be interesting to watch because there are limited circumstances where that is appropriate, and this injunction only applies to those states that recognize the directive from the DOJ under their own state laws,” says Dallas attorney Shonn Brown of Lynn Pinker Cox & Hurst. “The big question is what does ‘sex’ mean. The differentiation between ‘biological’ and ‘identity’ will likely be interpreted differently by other courts, which will ultimately require an opinion of the Supreme Court to resolve. Also, this is a temporary order, which places a lower burden on the plaintiffs to show ‘likelihood’ of prevailing, whereas at the permanent injunction phase there is the higher standard of a trial on the merits.”

Federal officials interpreted the word “sex” in anti-discrimination statutes to also cover gender identity. They also argued that the lawsuit was filed too soon because the transgender policy isn’t binding and no enforcement action has been taken. Attorneys representing Texas, however, said the guidelines “obliterate” past rules, putting Texas and other states at risk of losing millions of dollars in education funding if the new guidelines were not followed.

Dozens of law professors banded together to assail a federal court’s recent decision striking down the Obama administration’s hydraulic fracturing rule, according to a report in E&E Publishing’s EnergyWire.

The report says 36 energy, public lands and environmental law experts filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the 10th Circuit, arguing that the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming got it wrong when it found fracking to be beyond the authority of the Interior Department and its Bureau of Land Management.

“The lower court’s decision has no basis in legal precedent or relevant statutes and violates basic canons of statutory interpretation,” the professors told the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing the decision. “It reads a sweeping government-wide exclusion into a surgical amendment explicitly tied to one statute. As a result of this decision, the BLM cannot fulfill its statutory mandate to serve as the chief steward of our public lands.”

“In particular, the professors take issue with the lower court’s interpretation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005,” writes E&E Publishing reporter Ellen M. Gilmer.

Read the article.

Image by Widjaya Ivan

Some Republicans in Congress argue the Obama administration’s final plan to effectively privatize Internet governance constitutes a federal government internet giveaway and effectively monopolizes web domain pricing, reports Fortune.

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration announced it will transfer internet domain name authority from the federal government to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Oct. 1.

The NTIA says the move won’t affect internet users in any meaningful way, according to a Wall Street Journal report, but it’s necessary to prevent governance fragmentation between nations as the Internet continues to grow and expand.

“The senators’ primary beef was with the Internet domain name registration company Verisign, which ICANN exclusively works with to register web domains,” reports Chauncey L. Alcorn. “The lawmakers complain fully transferring the federal government’s domain naming process over to ICANN gives Verisign exclusive authority to name its own price for the domain name registration process.”

Read the article.

HR Daily Advisor will present a complimentary webinar discussing what the overtime changes mandated by the U.S. Department of Labor FLSA mean for employers and recommend strategies for meeting these new challenges.

The event, sponsored by Kronos, will be Thursday, August 25, beginning at 2 p.m. EDT.

The overtime changes will extend overtime pay protections to more than four million American workers, HR Daily Advisor says on its website. The implications are enormous, affecting everything from job classifications and time tracking to compensation and compliance policies.

Register for the webinar.

The operator of 12 hospitals and more than 200 other treatment centers in Chicago and central Illinois has agreed to the largest settlement to date with the Office for Civil Rights for multiple potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, reports Kelly A. Leahy of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick.

The agreement will cost Advocate Health Care Network $5.5 million and force Advocate to adopt a multi-year corrective action plan that stemmed from three incidents reported to OCR in 2013.  The breaches involved Advocate’s medical group subsidiary, Advocate Medical Group, which employs more than 1,000 physicians. The incidents that cost Advocate involved data breaches involving unencrypted devices and unauthorized access to a network.

In the article, Leahy offers some suggestions for what covered entities and business associates can do to prevent costly fines and burdensome settlements.

Read the article.

Regulatory agencies have grown into what some call a “fourth branch” of the federal government, writes Richard O. Faulk of Alexander Dubose Jefferson & Townsend LLP.

“The threat posed by this de facto branch, also known as the ‘Administrative State’ or, more colorfully, our ‘Junior Varsity Congress,’ has attracted the growing attention of a number of Supreme Court justices,” he writes in the Washington Legal Foundations’s Legal Pulse.

Critics of judicial deference in administrative law had hoped that the court might grant certiorari in cases that would allow them plot a new course, but the death of Justice Antonin Scalia caused those hopes to dim, Faulk writes.

“Since none of the Court’s decisions after Justice Scalia’s death demonstrate that a majority exists to abrogate deferential judicial review, the continuing expansion of federal regulatory power—or its curtailment—may decisively hinge on the outcome of the 2016 Presidential elections,” the article says.

Read the article.

The U.S. watchdog for consumer finances unveiled on Thursday a proposal to toughen regulation of the multibillion-dollar debt collection industry, with a focus on keeping agencies from pushing people to pay debts they do not owe, informing borrowers of their rights and cutting down on calls to debtors, according to a Reuters report.

Industry advocates expressed concerns about the costs of complying with the suggested requirements, which they warned could be passed on to borrowers or force some of the thousands of small collection firms to shutter. “Those pushing for consumer rights said the proposal left major holes in borrower protections and did not go far enough,” wrote Reuters’ Lisa Lambert.

She also reported that the proposal covers third-party collectors and debt-buyers. The CFPB will address first-party collectors and creditors, such as banks with their own collection departments, in the future.

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Although Theranos’s history — which includes several administrative penalties for the troubled blood-testing company — has received an outsize amount of media attention, its experience with regulatory agencies highlights several important issues for start-up and emerging health care entities, writes Robert E. Wanerman in Epstein Becker & Green‘s Health Law Advisor blog.

He discusses four major questions raised in this type of case, with these headings: What Do Regulators Want?, What Do Health Care Providers and Payors Want?, Who Is Investing in the Venture?, and Who’s on Board?

On the first point, he wrote that “even in an environment that encourages innovation, health care organizations must understand the scope of regulatory oversight at the federal and state levels, and the range of remedies available to regulators for noncompliance. Every organization should also have a protocol in place for responding to regulatory inquiries or inspections.”

Read the article.

Image by NY Photographic

Bryan Cave has posted the audio and presentation slides of a webinar the firm recently presented examining how recent government settlements reinforce best practice components of an effective FCPA compliance program. The webinar was titled “Benchmarking Your FCPA Compliance Program.”

The webinar includes a landmark settlement against telecommunications provider VimpelCom Ltd.

DC partner Mark Srere, Denver partner Andrew Mohraz and DC associate Kristin Robinson lead the discussion on VimpelCom and other cases.

The webinar is the third of the year in Bryan Cave’s anti-corruption series. The topic will be of interest to in-house counsel and compliance professionals of companies that conduct business outside the United States.

Access the on-demand webinar.

Two former executives of Acclarent Inc, a medical device company bought by Johnson & Johnson in 2010, were convicted on Wednesday by a U.S. jury on charges of promoting a product for an unapproved use, Reuters is reporting.

Prosecutors said former Acclarent Chief Executive William Facteau and former Vice President of Sales Patrick Fabian were found guilty in federal court in Boston of 10 misdemeanor counts of violating the U.S. Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The counts each carry a maximum prison sentence of one year.

But the jury acquitted the two defendants of felony charges of wire fraud and conspiracy, finding they did not act with intent to defraud or mislead.

“In an indictment unsealed last April, federal prosecutors said that beginning in 2006 or earlier, Facteau, 47, and Fabian, 49, promoted Acclarent’s Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer device to deliver steroid medications to patients’ sinuses, though it was only approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for keeping sinuses open,” reports Brendan Pierson for Reuters.

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The U.S. Department of Justice has filed lawsuits to block the proposed mergers of four of the nation’s five biggest health insurers, reports The New York Times.

The proposed mergers involve Aetna and Humana, and Anthem and Cigna.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said the proposed mergers “would leave much of the multitrillion-dollar health insurance industry in the hands of three mammoth insurance companies.”

“If these mergers were to take place, the competition among insurers that has pushed them to provide lower premiums, higher-quality care and better benefits would be eliminated,” she said.

“The companies responded by vowing, in varying degrees, to fight the government’s challenge,” report Leslie Picker and Reed Abelson. “Aetna, which had hoped to gain an advantage by being the first to reach a deal, aggressively defended its proposed merger, which it contended was different from the larger Anthem-Cigna deal that followed.”

Read the article.

Littler Mendelson will present a webinar about maintaining compliance under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act as it concerns protection of employees, both legal and illegal immigrants.

The hour-long webinar will be Wednesday, August 31, at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

In a recent undocumented worker case, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the EEOC has the authority to investigate claims made by both legal and illegal immigrants, the firm said on its website. This decision has heightened employers’ attention as to who in their workforce is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and added to an already complex system of compliance standards set by the EEOC and OSC.

Topics will include:

• What changes do employers and in-house counsel need to be aware of?
• Who in your workforce is protected?
• What are the common pitfalls that lead to discrimination claims?
• What procedures can you implement to reduce legal risk?

Register for the webinar.

Image by Michael Vadon

Chris Christie gave his best audition to become Donald Trump’s attorney general Tuesday, putting Hillary Clinton on mock trial before a riled-up audience at the Republican National Convention, reports The New York Daily News.

The New Jersey governor relied on his experience as a former U.S. attorney “to present a case on the facts against Hillary Rodham Clinton,” courtroom-style, encouraging the captivated crowd to act as a “jury of her peers.”

The report by Adam Edelman says Christie made the GOP-loved case against Clinton’s “failures” in Libya, Syria, Nigeria, Iran and China, following each argument with the question: “Guilty or not guilty?” The crowd responded to each question with chants of “Guilty” and “Lock her up.”

Read the article.

A widening criminal probe casts new light on a bitter defeat hedge fund activist Bill Ackman suffered in his 2009 bid for board seats at U.S. retailer Target Corp, Reuters is reporting.

Target for years has paid proxy solicitor Georgeson LLC to track the votes of its top investors, writes Ross Kerber. Now five current and former Georgeson employees have been charged with fraud for using bribes to get advance voting information on proxy battles.

“The same tactics cited in the criminal complaint were used to help Target defeat Ackman in 2009, according to a former Georgeson employee turned whistleblower. Ackman, who runs hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, failed in the high-stakes battle to install his own slate of directors at Target and change its business direction,” according to the report.

The whistleblower told Reuters that he told regulators about alleged bribes that were being used to gain advance access on how investors were voting.

Read the article.

Civil fines across federal agencies have recently been increased dramatically under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 (2015 Act) (Sec. 701 of Public Law 114-74), with some more than doubling, according to an article published by Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP.

“Companies violating the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Improvements Act, the Securities Exchange Act, or the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), among others, could soon face civil monetary penalties that are up to 150% higher than the existing levels. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the 2015 Act would increase the federal government’s revenue by $1.3 billion over the next ten years,” the article says.

The authors provide a chart listing some of the notable increases in federal civil fines under the 2015 Act.

Read the article.

BP Plc faces more than $20 million in penalties and surrendered profits after a U.S. regulator found that the energy giant manipulated commodity markets in Texas, according to a report by Bloomberg and published by The Business Times.

The case dates back to 2008, when — according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — BP rigged prices at a Texas natural gas hub.

The order upholds an earlier ruling by the agency’s judge. BP had denied the allegations, Bloomberg reports.

“We find the violation here to have been very serious,” the commission said. “BP manipulated the market to profit from a natural disaster, and it did not stop after a trade or two but rather kept the scheme going for nearly three months.”

Read the article.

Theranos Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Holmes was banned for two years from owning or operating laboratories by U.S. regulators, a major blow against the controversial blood-testing startup that’s come under scrutiny for risking patient harm with unreliable tests, reports Doni Bloomfield for Bloomberg Technology.

“The once high-flying Silicon Valley company was also penalized for an undisclosed amount and lost its eligibility to get payments from federal health insurance programs for lab services, according to a statement late Thursday from Theranos, citing a notice it received from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,” the report says. “The closely-held firm is shutting down its Newark, California, lab and plans to rebuild it, Holmes said.”

The company founded by Holmes at one time had a $9 billion private valuation, based on technology that it said would allow for cheap, less-painful blood tests processed with breakthrough analyzers. Regulators soon stepped in, citing violations that put patients’ health and safety at risk.

Read the article.