According to a firm press release, attorneys from the firm’s cross-disciplinary retail law practice will use the blog to comment on issues of law that impact the bottom line–ranging from price fixing to lease restructuring.
“Retailers are under tremendous economic pressure now, which makes identifying legal risks and opportunities all the more critical to running a successful enterprise,” said San Francisco Crowell & Moring partner Gregory D. Call, who heads the firm’s Retail Law practice. “Our goal for the Retail Law Observer is to highlight those legal issues most pressing to the retail industry,”
The firm listed a number of trends and issues to be covered by The Retail Law Observer, including:
- Retail lease provisions and cost-saving opportunities relating to minimum rent, percentage rent, CAM, real estate taxes, marketing fund, utilities, insurance, trash, and co-tenancy
- Lease restructuring and right-sizing your space
- Comparative risks and rights under traditional retail leases and pop-up store leases
- Employee claims, including class action lawsuits challenging employee classifications and meal and rest breaks
- Efforts by employees to unionize
- Opportunities for retailers to recover antitrust overcharges
- Duty savings through global trade negotiations
- Bankruptcy disputes that continue to rise out of the struggling economy
- How a retailer’s business, risks, and rights are impacted by the sale and financing of malls, shopping centers and mixed use facilities, and the merger and consolidation of center owners
- Consumer data collection and new privacy legislation impacting social media
- The FTC’s new guidelines on making “green” or environmentally friendly claims, such as recycled content, compostable, and non-toxic
- Upcoming changes to the Internet naming system, which will dramatically expand the domain names that can be used by retailers
- Changes to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and its impact on reporting requirements
Crowell & Moring has a broad retail law practice representing a wide spectrum of clients in the retail industry, including wholesale and specialty retailers, department stores, and “big-box” retailers across the United States and internationally.