» News

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (“THUD”) funding bill for the fiscal year 2019. This appropriations bill funds the Department of Transportation and related agencies, among other federal departments. As with many of these large appropriation bills, numerous “riders,” or additional, small provisions attached to larger bills, made it through the committee stage. Several riders relate to the trucking industry in particular. One issue is with respect to livestock and insect haulers. They… Read More

If you can read this, you have access to a router. Maybe it's at home, but most of our readers are in small to mid-sized business, and all of them use routers. In a rare event, the FBI last week told Americans to "reboot" their routers. It showed up everywhere, including in the NY Times, and Fortune, and Forbes, and even PCWorld and Slate. I was asked about it by colleagues, friends, and baristas. It really is that big of… Read More

The Virginia Trucking Association's #1 issue for 2018 is the Study of I-81 Improvements and Truck-Only Tolls! Please read this important update and clarification about the upcoming series of public meetings and commit to getting involved in support of the VTA's efforts on your behalf! As previously announced, the Secretary of Transportation’s Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment (OIPI), VDOT and the Dept. of Rail and Public Transportation have developed their plan to study the entire length of the Interstate… Read More

Under the Equal Pay Act, all employers must pay equal wages to women and men in the same establishment for performing substantially equal work. The law covers jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility and are performed under similar working conditions. The law covers all forms of pay, including salary, overtime pay, bonuses, stock options, profit sharing and bonus plans, life insurance, vacation and holiday pay, cleaning or gasoline allowances, hotel accommodations, reimbursement for travel expenses and benefits.… Read More

The Supreme Court on May 21 handed down a ruling, Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis, that protected employers whose employees had signed arbitration agreements from being sued by those same employees for employment related issues in a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit pitted two separate federal laws against each other: the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”). The NLRA gives employees the right to self-organization and to “engage in concerted activities for the… Read More

Virginia has passed, effective July 1, 2018, a new Va. Code § 8.01-417 that has created much consternation, but little change. That statute was titled “An Act to amend and reenact § 8.01-417 of the Code of Virginia, relating to personal injury claim; disclosure of insurance policy limits. [S 535]” during its pendency, and is “Copies of written statements or transcriptions of verbal statements by injured person to be delivered to him; copies of subpoenaed documents to be provided to… Read More

In March of 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court handed down a much-anticipated ruling in Bailets v. Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, unanimously ruling that noneconomic damages like humiliation and mental anguish are recoverable for whistleblowers who are determined to have been harmed in violation of Pennsylvania’s whistleblower law. In Bailets, an employee with ten years of service for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, Ralph M. Bailets, was fired after he made several complaints of wrongdoing regarding the formation of contracts with contractors, as… Read More

It is the middle of the night, and you receive a phone call that one of your vehicles has been involved in an accident. With everything that starts racing through your mind, one of your first thoughts should be—I need to get a statement about what happened from my driver. And, while that seems simple enough, details of that statement may significantly impact whether it’s discoverable during litigation. The Circuit Court of Spotsylvania County took up this topic in an… Read More