Employers invest substantial amounts of time and money in developing employee skills and knowledge. Upon employment, access to company information, including confidential information, is available. Over time, some, if not most, of your employees will learn who your customers are, what they desire, where they are located, when they want it and why. As an…
Members of the display fireworks industry should cautiously take notice, and advantage, of the recent ATF determination to issue non-expiring variances for preloading of fireworks on trucks. The notice was contained in the December 2005 edition of ATF Explosives Industry Newsletter. According to the ATF, the variance will not have an expiration date; therefore the…
Let me start off by saying that the mid-Winter APA conference was an unqualified success, and it was great getting together with all the members. An interesting issue regarding the doctrine of subrogation arose, and so I thought this would make a fine topic for an article. There are two kinds of subrogation, conventional and…
As a general proposition, an employee cannot be restrained from using “general techniques” learned on the job, and the employer’s interest in the trade secret must be “crystal clear” to justify monopolizing what may have become part of the employee’s general knowledge and experience. Therefore, in addition to proving that it alone knows and uses…
The following question was sent in by a FB subscriber, and the issues referenced are common to most, if not all, members of the fireworks industry. I’m sitting here anxiously waiting on my Chinese vendor to get EX numbers assigned by PHMSA so that I can get delivery on time this year. And I’m quite…
Part 3 – The Ex-Number Approvals Program Donald E. Creadore, Esq. Shortly after the publication of the first article to this 3-part series PHMSA published its “Notice and Request for Comments on the Clarification of the Fireworks Approvals Policy” (“Notice”). Admittedly, any overlap is attributable to coincidence, if only for the fact that it normally…
Citing “difficulties engendered in significant part by a lack of adequate technical justification for provisions or proposed provisions concerning the regulation of retail sales off consumer fireworks”, the NFPA Standards Council has seemingly undertaken a broadside attack on retail fireworks sales. This assessment is found in the Standards Council Decision (Final), D#08-19 (the “Decision”), dated…
[Due to the fact that many businesses will soon be ramping up for the upcoming sales season, coupled with the fact that April 15 arrives even sooner, I have received many requests for advice regarding employee-independent contractor classification. This article is a reprint of an article analyzing the issue.] The Internal Revenue Service, and its…
Pennsylvania’s recent, rapid publication of revisions to its storage and handling regulations, 25 Pa. Code Chapter 211, highlights one of the pitfalls of having fireworks lumped together with other explosives. The lack of a separate statutory scheme to regulate fireworks causes the industry to incur the same costs that apply to users of high explosives….
In last month’s column I discussed the preparation process leading up to your deposition; in this month’s article, I discuss how a witness should conduct himself at the deposition. Remember, depositions can, and do, win or lose cases. Your adversary’s attorney is a professional who is trained to extract information from you that is both…
