Congratulations to Rath Enterprises, Inc. DC’s Department of Transportation has certified Rath as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. DC-based Rath Enterprises, Inc. (http://www.rathinc.com/about.html) is capable of performing all aspects of environmental remediation and demolition services, including asbestos & lead removal, along with the remediation of mold, contaminated transformers, batteries, ballast, PCB oil and more. It already...
Author: Carol
Risk Allocation for Utility Contractors: Some Twists and Turns
By Carol L. O’Riordan Taimur Rabbani and Anthony J. Marchese, associates at the firm, just published an article in Utility Contractor magazine’s October 2015 issue on risk allocation provisions in contracts entered into by utility contractors. The risk allocation provisions that Taimur and Anthony discuss take two forms: indemnification provisions and “additional insured” provisions that...
No, the Government Contract Preference Programs are Not Broken
By Carol L. O’Riordan We believe that the various government contract programs that give a degree of preference to disadvantaged groups are a good idea, and we work hard to put our clients in a position to benefit from them, but we also recognize that they can be abused. Two years ago, we wrote in...
If VC Industry Needs to Find Women and Minorities to Fund, We Can Help
By Carol L. O’Riordan We frequently write in this space about the dearth of minorities and women in many sectors of the economy and about the need to raise those numbers both for reasons of equity and for good business reasons. That is why a current Washington Post article on diversity in the venture capital...
Counsel Needs to Focus on Developing Company’s Legal IQ
By Carol L. O’Riordan A current article in Corporate Counsel magazine asks the critical question: What’s your company’s legal IQ? The article points out that these days, legal issues are often quite diffused within sizable companies, so that managers don’t always recognize them as such. In addition, corporate legal departments haven’t necessarily done a good job...
Compliance Issues in Government Contracts: Not Just for the Lawyers
By Carol L. O’Riordan It’s clear from a great many recent news articles that if you are a government contractor, putting in a successful bid and being selected for a contract is only the beginning. A great many requirements, some of them onerous, come with a federal contract, including compliance with applicable laws and regulations....
Is it Safer to Discuss Some Things with Outside Counsel? (Pt. 3)
By Carol O’Riordan and Jay Shah In our last blog post, we discussed a recent New Mexico case in which the court wrestled with the question of how to determine whether a communication was primarily made for business purposes or for legal purposes. This question was important because it was the deciding factor in showing...
Is it Safer to Discuss Some Things with Outside Counsel? (Pt. 2)
By Carol O’Riordan and Jay Shah How should courts go about deciding, in close cases, whether an internal memorandum constitutes privileged legal advice or discoverable business advice? Bhandari v. Artesia Gen. Hospital, the New Mexico case discussed in our previous post, is illustrative. It involved an employment dispute between a hospital corporation and two doctors...
Is it Safer to Discuss Some Things with Outside Counsel?
By Carol O’Riordan and Jay Shah Does the attorney-client privilege apply less definitively to in-house counsel than to outside attorneys? About a year ago, the New Mexico Court of Appeals ruled in Bhandari v. Artesia General Hospital that a memo written by a hospital’s general counsel regarding an employee’s termination was not privileged because it...
Be Very Aware: Agencies Cracking Down on Dubious Practices by Contractors
By Carol L. O’Riordan We have written here and here about the types of violations and errors that can lead a company to be suspended or debarred from government contracts. There are a great many minefields out there, and it is not just criminal acts that can lead to suspensions or debarments. Many of our readers...