At Your Service February 2010

Help! My company has suffered a payment card date breach, what do I do now? If you are asking this question for the first time after a payment card data breach occurs – you are already behind the eight ball.  Business have given lots of attention over the last 18 months to putting  plans in place in order to comply with the Massachusetts Data Privacy Regulations which go into affect on March 1, 2010.  But few businesses which regularly receive consumer credit cards have an understanding of the liability of a payment card data breach or how to respond to the breach when it does occur. Equally important are preventative measures you can take to limit your damages.

 

As the new year begins to unfold, it is a good time for employers to reflect on their paid vacation policies.  In the summer of  2009 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that employers must compensate any involuntarily discharged employee for unused, earned vacation time pursuant to the Massachusetts Wage Act (M.G.L. c. 149, § 148).  The issue before the Court in Electronic Data Systems Corp. v. Attorney General, et. al., 454 Mass. 63 (2009), was whether the employer’s written vacation policy, providing that terminated employees forfeit vacation pay, was lawful under the Wage Act.  The case came about when a terminated employee of Electronic Data Systems Corporation (“EDS”) filed a claim for his unpaid vacation wages with the Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division, which issued EDS a citation for failing to pay the employee. EDS appealed the citation.

 

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