Mirick, O'Connell, DeMallie & Louges, LLP Firm News Feed

Mirick O'Connell has officially kicked-off our Summer Associate and Summer Intern Programs

4 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Mirick O’Connell has officially kicked-off our Summer Associate and Summer Intern Programs. We are pleased to welcome Afnaan Syed, Faye Desmond, Christina James, and John Fogarty.

We are also thrilled to welcome back Madison Sandusky for a third summer with us!

Madison, Afnaan, Faye, and John are joining the firm’s Legal Administrative Assistant Team, helping to provide administrative assistance in areas throughout the firm where needed.

As a Summer Associate, Christina will work with as many attorneys at the firm as possible; she will have the opportunity to observe in the courtroom, at the closing table, and at client meetings. She will also attend social and networking events in order to become better acquainted with our attorneys and with life at Mirick O’Connell.

Paul Carey Presented on the Intersection of the Bankruptcy Code and the Federal Arbitration Act at the Geneva Group International North American Conference

4 Jun 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Paul spoke about the conflicts between the Bankruptcy Code and the Federal Arbitration Act in light of recent decisions by the Supreme Court and several Courts of Appeals. The Conference took place May 30- June 2 2024 in Cleveland OH.

Ted Bassett interviewed for Spectrum News story, "Autopsy confirms social media challenge a factor in 14-year-old Harris Wolobah's death"

16 May 2024 00:00:00 -0800

WORCESTER, Mass. — An autopsy report confirms the viral “One Chip Challenge” led to the death of a Central Massachusetts teenager this past September.

The state’s Executive Office of Public Safety and Security confirmed to Spectrum News 1 that 14-year-old Harris Wolobah died as a result of a cardiopulmonary arrest in the setting of recent ingestion of food substance with high capsaicin concentration.

According to the office, Wolobah was living with an enlarged heart and a congenital heart defect, and the high amount of chili pepper extract only made things worse.

His parents at the time confirmed he participated in the challenge.

It’s composed of eating an extremely spicy tortilla chip, which registers more than one million Scoville heat units. For comparison, a jalapeño can be anywhere between 2,500 and 8,000.

Wolobah was a 10th grader at Doherty Memorial High School.

Personal injury attorney Ted Bassett told Spectrum News 1 there’s in fact some form of negligence in this situation.

“All you have to prove in a products liability case or in a negligence case is that the product was a substantial contributing cause to the death or to the injury,” Bassett said. “And clearly the autopsy report refers to this ingestion of the product, as it is a substantial contributing cause. The easier test for a layperson to understand is the ‘but for’ test. But for him doing this within a day, well, clearly not. This is a precipitating factor. So, yes, he had a heart condition. There’s nothing in there that says that he was going to die because of that heart condition. But for him ingesting this powerful, powerful spice.”

There have been reported cases across the country of children getting ill after eating the chip.

Manufacturer Paqui pulled the popular “One Chip Challenge” from store shelves across the country in the days following Wolobah’s death.

Spectrum News 1 reached out to the Hershey Company, who owns Paqui, but did not get a response as of Thursday afternoon.

Video of this story can be found here:
https://spectrumnews1.com/ma/worcester/news/2024/05/16/autopsy-confirms-challenge-aided-in-teen-death

BY CAM JANDROW WORCESTER
PUBLISHED 5:50 PM ET MAY 16, 2024

Grace Roessler discusses Pet Custody Issues Post Divorce on The Divorce Hour with Ilyssa Panitz

9 May 2024 00:00:00 -0800

Attorney Grace Roessler participates as a guest on this week's The Divorce Hour with Ilyssa Panitz. Grace discusses Pet Custody Issues Post Divorce.

>> Tune into Grace's episode of The Divorce Hour podcast

About The Divorce Hour with Ilyssa Panitz

The Divorce Hour with Ilyssa Panitz is a safe and comfortable place for listeners to put their feet up and escape from the daily grind while we offer you comfort and advice during a challenging and often isolating time in your life. It is hard to turn to friends and family who don’t understand what you are going through emotionally, mentally, or economically but we do and there is nothing to feel ashamed about! While the topics and guests will vary every week – the messaging is always the same: we are going to help you get through this dark period and despite how bleak you may think things look.

Anthony DaSilva quoted in "Why corporate jet perks are coming under federal scrutiny"

8 May 2024 00:00:00 -0800

HR Brew
By Courtney Vinopal
May 6, 2024

When we think of company perks, the standard offerings often come to mind: A gym membership, subway card, or office snacks are all items employers might foot the bill for in order to keep their employees happy. If you’re lucky, maybe you get a branded company mug at the holiday party.

But what about country club dues, or tickets to a sporting event? How about a ride on the corporate jet? These more lavish rewards—known as perquisites or perks—are typically non-cash benefits reserved for executives at larger firms. They’re also regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which requires public companies to disclose these benefits when they amount to more than $10,000 annually, unless the perk is “integrally and directly related to the performance of the executive’s duties.” Such personal benefits are considered a form of income, and thus subject to taxation.

Boeing recently revealed in an SEC filing that it neglected to properly disclose more than $500,000 worth of travel that executives took on the company’s aircraft in 2021 and 2022. While these trips were initially recorded as business travel, they should have been disclosed as perquisites.

How employers should approach perquisites. Perks like the one Boeing grants its executives are coming under closer federal scrutiny. The SEC has brought 20 cases against public companies for failing to properly disclose perquisites in the last decade, Bloomberg Law reported, including two last year. In one case that was settled in June 2023, the SEC found Stanley Black & Decker failed to disclose $1.3 billion worth of perquisites and personal benefits paid to four of its executive officers, predominantly associated with corporate aircraft use, between 2017 and 2020.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said in February it “plans to begin dozens of audits on business aircraft involving personal use.

Given the sensitive nature of perquisites, someone in the finance or tax department will likely be tasked with recordkeeping, though HR may play a role as well, said Anthony DaSilva, a partner at Mirick O’Connell, a Massachusetts-based law firm, who leads the compensation, benefits and ERISA practice. To avoid getting in hot water with regulators and the federal government, it’s best to err on the side of caution and “treat something that has elements of something that is non-business related as a perquisite,” DaSilva added.

This judgment call isn’t always easy to make, DaSilva said. In the case of corporate jet use, there are clear-cut cases when this can be categorized as business travel, i.e., a CEO is flown from the company headquarters to visit a facility or division, or to meet with investors. But what if that executive decides to bring along their spouse or children? In this case, the expense starts to veer from business toward the perquisite category. For situations that aren’t clear-cut, “it’s a best practice to just go ahead and disclose, and put it in income. Because the consequences of it being brought to light…is going to hurt the brand, the image of the company.”

Reconsidering executive perks. When developing policies on perquisite use, employers may want to take a step back and consider whether such perks are really critical and essential for their business, DaSilva said. In lieu of perquisites, companies might consider compensating individuals “in a way that allows them to make their own decisions in terms of how they spend their income.”

Perquisite offerings have declined in recent years, he noted. Organizations that continue to offer them, he posited, are “likely standing out, and maybe not in a good way.”