Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

The workers’ compensation system is based on a trade-off between employers and employees. Employees are entitled to receive prompt, effective medical treatment for on-the-job injuries or illnesses no matter who is at fault and, in return, are therefore prevented from suing employers over those injuries. As a result, California employers, as in other states, are required by law to have workers’ compensation insurance, even if they have only one employee. And, if employees get hurt or sick because of work, the employer is required to pay for workers’ compensation benefits. Workers’ comp insurance provides six basic benefits: medical care, temporary disability benefits, permanent disability benefits, supplemental job displacement benefits, or vocational rehabilitation and death benefits.

Continual Improvement is an important aspect of any EMS and ISO 14001 references it in five separate clauses. To fully benefit from it, it’s not enough to implement a system based on ISO 14001, or even to have your EMS certified as ISO 14001-compliant—you must monitor and maintain your system, and find ways to improve to it. Similarly, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) reviews and revises its standards in an ongoing effort to improve relevance and effectiveness. ISO 14001:2004 is currently undergoing review, with some big changes expected in the new version due in mid-2015.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) establishes a national minimum wage for most employees engaged in interstate commerce, and requires time-and-one-half pay for overtime worked by most employees. Although the most obvious changes to FLSA requirements occur when Congress raises the minimum wage, other revisions also impose important effects on millions of U.S. workplaces.

We’re still a long way from the paperless office, but the paperless cab may be upon us. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently adopted a new rule that requires drivers of interstate commercial buses and trucks to record their hours using electronic logging devices (ELDs). According to the administration, widespread use of these devices, also known as electronic onboard recorders, will reduce hours-of-service violations by hampering efforts to misrepresent time put in on the job—and that reduction will result in fewer crashes and fatalities.

Although the federal Securities Acts do not expressly outlaw stock trading that exploits preferential access to “insider” information, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and courts have applied general language in those Acts to cover these situations. A very recent decision by the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit marks the latest such expansion, in a case holding the “tippee” of insider information liable for profits he helped third parties create by trading on that information (SEC v. Contorinis).

People who are victims of a construction defect will seek as many defendants as possible to recover the costs of repairing and replacing the defects. Sometimes they will file one suit naming every possible defendant. Other times they will attempt to file separate suits against the various categories of defendants thinking it best to divide the defendants and then conquer them independently and thereby avoid excessive litigation costs.

Prosecutors rely on informants from time to time to identify wrongdoing and “make their cases.” But corporate fraud whistleblowers can face bleak futures: at best they may be ostracized from future promotions, at worst they may be terminated with no favorable recommendation. Section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOA) adds important protections for whistleblowers

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was first enacted in 1938, to ensure “fair pay” for American workers. Sixty-five years later, it is invoked most often when minimum wage and overtime premium pay are under discussion. But it also includes a number of important secondary provisions—including one requiring employers and employees to determine which time at the workplace is considered “work” that must be compensated, and which is not.

When filing insurance claims for cases involving extensive damage, consumers sometimes choose to hire a public adjuster (PA) to help them submit the claim to their insurer. The PA handles every detail of the claim, working closely with the policyholder and the insurer to obtain a prompt and reasonable settlement.

For the second year running, SEC activities during 2013 were dominated by its efforts to issue rules required by two major pieces of recent legislation: