Neil Eddington | Chapman Glucksman

Proof or It Did Not Happen: California Court of Appeal Rules on Electronic Signature Authentication

Sep 30 2016

By: Ashley Verdon and Neil Eddington
September 30, 2016

If you belong to one of the ever-increasing number of businesses using electronic signatures, then it might be time to review your authentication security procedures in place. As electronic signatures become the norm in conducting business, California courts are busy with cases challenging their enforceability. Recently, in Espejo v. Southern California Permanente Medical Group (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 1047, the Second District Court of Appeal ruled that an employer sufficiently authenticated an employee’s electronic signature to an arbitration agreement. In doing so, the court offered some clarity as to what evidence is necessary to enforce an electronic signature under the Uniform Electronic Transmissions Act (“UETA”). (Cal. Civ. Code §1633.)

Top Dollar for the White Collar: Obama Administration Increases Salary Thresholds for White Collar Overtime Exemptions

Sep 30 2016

By: Ashley Verdon and Neil Eddington
September 30, 2016

With a regulation sure to invite both praise and condemnation, the Obama Administration announced new salary thresholds for the Fair Labor Standard Act’s (“FLSA”) overtime exemptions. The new thresholds will bring overtime eligibility to millions of previously-exempted white collar workers. Under the new guidelines, executive, administrative, and professional employees earning $47,476 per year or less will be entitled to overtime pay, doubling the previous federal threshold of $23,660.

Total Transportation Gets Hauled Away

Apr 24 2016

How Worker Demands are Changing the Transportation Industry

By: David A. Napper and Neil A. Eddington
April 24, 2016

Total Transportation Services, Inc. (“TTSI”), a prominent drayage hauler out of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The bankruptcy filing is the direct result of workers’ demands for employee designation.¹

For many years, drayage hauling – the short-distance transport of goods from local ports –functioned primarily through an “owner-operator” business model where drivers contracted to perform services using trucks they either own or lease. As a result, the drivers had always been characterized as independent contractors not employees. However, in 2010, after the IRS ruled a single TTSI driver was an employee, other TTSI drivers began to resist the model, filing their own suits to garner employee designation.² For companies like TTSI, litigation expenses have piled up and led to bankruptcy; for the drayage hauling industry, the viability of its business model is in doubt.

Author - Neil Eddington

How Worker Demands are Changing the Transportation Industry