Star Equipment, Ltd., Manatt’s, Inc., and Short’s Concrete Cutting Co. recently secured a victory in the Iowa Supreme Court when the Court, in Star Equipment, Ltd., v. State of Iowa, Iowa Department of Transportation, Case No. 12-1378 (Jan. 31, 2014), reversed the district court’s ruling on the scope of remedies…
Today, Pillsbury attorneys Lawrence L. Hoenig, Craig A. Becker, Richard E. Nielsen, Dianne L. Sweeney, Matthew F. Burke and Breann Robowski posted their advisory titled 70 Days and Counting: Clock Is Ticking to Claim Embedded Software Tax Exemption. The advisory encourages companies to review California’s embedded software exemption, an established…
Recently I’ve come across a number of articles reporting on what I will refer to as the “bliss” factor for employees, measuring, for example, happiness with their current career path, with the city in which they work, etc. CareerBliss has published a number of bliss lists, evaluating what it considers…
Co-head of Pillsbury’s Energy Industry team Rob James and project finance partner Philip Tendler recently published 2014 Project Finance – United States. In it, they discuss collateral, how security interests are perfected and prioritized, liens, and enforcement of collateral. In addition, they touch on bankruptcy, foreign exchange, remittances, repatriation, offshore…
The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced that the following 20 collegiate teams have been selected to compete in the U.S. Solar Decathlon 2015 that will be held at the Orange County Great Park, located between Los Angeles and San Diego, in Irvine, California: California Polytechnic State University California State…
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System — the largest concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the world — officially opened on February 13, 2014. According to its website, “[l]ocated in the Mojave Desert, Ivanpah has 347,000 garage door-sized mirrors distributed across 173,500 heliostats. The heliostats track with the sun so…
UPDATE: Chief Executive Magazine, Best & Worst States for Business (May 2014) — In the 10th annual survey of CEOs, over 500 CEOs across the U.S. graded states with which they were familiar on a variety of measures, including the tax and regulatory regime, the quality of the workforce and…
You can never be 100% sure of what you will find below the surface when you begin excavating on a construction project. But I’m willing to bet construction workers in Seattle, Washington never anticipated finding a very rare 10,000 year old mammoth tusk. An employee of a plumbing subcontractor uncovered…
Today, Pillsbury attorneys William M. Sullivan, Jr., and Benjamin J. Cote published their advisory titled Feds’ Reliance on Environmental Activism Underscores Need for Lacey Act Compliance. This advisory discusses the search warrant recently executed by U.S. Customs and Fish and Wildlife Service agents on a Virginia-based flooring wholesaler premised on…
Privacy has and continues to be a hot topic in California and across the nation. On February 13, 2014, the California Office of the Attorney General confirmed that the “[c]ontinuous videotaping surveillance of truck drivers during their on-the-job driving does not constitute a misdemeanor under [California] Labor Code section 1051