As Michigan’s largest private employers try to cut back, they have been addressing the promises they made in more prosperous decades to fund retiree health care costs and defined benefit pensions. The results have uniformly led to cuts to or elimination of those benefits. Now comes the turn of state and local governments. The Government Accounting Standard Board is set to implement new rules next year that will require states, […]

Changes were recently made to the Michigan Statute governing recovery of damages for theft. The Conversion Statute now allows a person to get three times the amount of actual damages sustained from a person who stole or embezzled property for their own use. To support a claim, the defendant must have obtained the property without the owners consent and must have an obligation to return the property to the rightful […]

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has finally classified a longstanding dispute over whether certain “charge nurses” can be considered “supervisory” and therefore excluded from coverage under the NLRA. This case may also serve to clarify the status of other managerial employees. The NLRB determined that nurses, who serve permanently as charge nurses “on every shift they work” must be considered “supervisors.” Even though these nurses do not have employees […]

The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Rakestraw v General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. clarified whether a disability produced as a result of symptomatic aggravation of a pre-existing, non-work-related medical condition was compensable. The Supreme Court held the claimant must establish more than the aggravation of symptomatology from a pre-existing, non-work-related condition for that claim to be compensable based upon aggravation of that condition by work-related factors. However, […]

Recently, CMDA attorneys Ronald Acho and son James Acho successfully disposed of a case that garnered some local publicity. A police officer sued a local municipality for retaliatory discharge, when the municipal police department discharged the officer from his employment, based on performance. The officer had filed some inter-departmental complaints and felt that his termination was in retaliation by the police department for filing the complaints. Thankfully, we were able […]

With more and more workers relying on e-mail and other forms of electronic communication, there is a natural tendency to occasionally use the company e-mail for personal matters. In earlier issues of On Law, we summarized the employer’s right to view e-mails vs. the employee’s right of privacy. The rule has been: provided the employer provides the employee with notice that an employee’s e-mail at the office does not have […]

Recently, questions have been raised by community mental health facilities as to whether an electronic signature is given the same legal effect as a traditional, written signature. In 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA). Two years later, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a draft of a proposed HIPAA security regulations. In part, the regulations addressed security obligations of “covered […]

For those of us who grew up in small-town America, most memories of childhood include happy hours spent outside, on the sidewalks of our neighborhoods. Even today those memories of the old neighborhood still speak to you of “home,” “safety,” and a carefree outlook on life. As a homeowner, however, one place of potential liability to consider is the sidewalk and parkway in front of your house. Local Law: the […]

Whether you are a small, medium or large sized business owner or human resources professional, working your way through the State of Michigan unemployment process can be daunting at best. The fact that the state recently shortened the name of its agency from the Michigan Employment Security Commission to the less unwieldy Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) has done nothing to simplify the process of dealing with former employees who apply […]

Jim Acho, attorney for former Detroit Lions Ernie Clark, is pleased to announce that after several months of negotiating, Mr. Clark is the new spokesman for Health Alliance Plan (HAP). HAP is a non-profit health plan based in Detroit that provides health care coverage to 570,000 members. Mr. Clark followed up a Big 10 run at Michigan State with a career as a linebacker with the Detroit Lions from 1961-1968 […]