Law Commons^™

Central Falls Retirees V. Bondholders: Assessing Fear Of Contagion In Chapter 9 Proceedings, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

Modern Chapter 9 litigation has been characterized by extraordinary protections for municipal bondholders, and Central Falls is no exception. Although not well understood by politicians, fear of contagion has encouraged the adoption of legal arrangements that have limited the bankruptcy courts’ ability to include bondholders in the cost of restructuring municipal debt. This preference for bondholders (and, by extension, their insurers) has meant increased misery for taxpayers and retirees. Given that all of these actors appear to have been complicit to some degree in the creation and maintenance of the fiscally imprudent conditions that triggered bankruptcy and that evidence of …

More Hair-Raising Decisions, And How Professor Wendy Greene Combs Through Their Flaws, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

If you are looking for an interesting and timely employment discrimination article to read, please consider Black Women Can’t Have Blonde Hair . . . in the Workplace, by Professor Wendy Greene of Cumberland, Samford University, School of Law. In that article, Professor Greene builds upon the work that she began in her article Title VII: What’s Hair (and Other Race Based Characteristics) Got to Do With It¹ where she argued that characteristics that are commonly associated with a particular racial or ethnic group should fall under Title VII’s current protected categories of race, color, and national origin. …

The Uncertain Impact Of Wal-Mart V. Dukes, Michael Harper

Faculty Scholarship

It has been less than two years since the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2541 (2011). During this short period the Court’s opinion has been interpreted by numerous lower courts. It also, not surprisingly, has been the subject of a substantial amount of commentary in law reviews and numerous proposals for legislative reform to restore a promise of class action challenges to employment discrimination that the Dukes decision allegedly shattered. Drawing from this commentary, I would choose these two very different articles as useful guides for tracking the impact of Dukes on employment discrimination class …

Zappers & Employment Tax Fraud, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Beyond the grey area of worker misclassifications and general employment tax irregularities there are darker employment relationships where workers are intentionally paid in cash “off-the-books” or “under-the-table.” Grey employment relationships present civil enforcement issues that may become criminal; darker-relationships are criminal from the beginning. Zappers are found on the dark side.

Zappers are fraud-technologies that automatically (and remotely) skim cash from electronic cash registers (ECRs) or back room point of sales (POS) systems. Globally, tax auditors are finding that Zappers frequently provide the cash that is used to compensate “under-the-table” workers. In fact, a Zapper appears to be at the …