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Who Is A Spouse? Changing Marriage Laws Impact Employee Benefit Plans

On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts began to permit gay and lesbian couples to marry. Whether your company has employees in Massachusetts or not, this development in the law may affect your company's employee benefit plans since employees may travel to Massachusetts to get married, or relocate to or...

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Changes To "All Appropriate Inquiry" Standard May Increase Real Estate Purchaser's Environmental Assessment Requirements

Recent statutory changes to federal environmental law and expected regulatory revisions may increase the burden on purchasers of real estate seeking to avoid liability for past contamination of the property being acquired. This story begins on December 11, 1980, when President Carter signed into...

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Leadership Buy-in And A Business Case -The Building Blocks For Diversity In Big Firms

So much has been written about racial and ethnic diversity in the legal profession (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) that General Counsel can rarely talk with outside counsel about their future relationship without discussing diversity. Diversity "initiatives" permeate every sector of the...

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SEC Approves New NYSE And Nasdaq Corporate Governance Standards

Even before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2003 ("SOX") became law, self-regulatory organizations, including the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") and The Nasdaq Stock Market ("Nasdaq"), were considering revisions to the corporate governance standards applicable to listed companies. On November 4, 2003,...

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