For at least a decade, our law firm has probably never gone a week without getting an email from a company that has paid anywhere between $500 and $50,000 for product from a Chinese manufacturer and received either nothing in return or product that clearly is not up to snuff. These days, we are getting
1. International Dispute Resolution Clauses Every month or so, a lawyer will write me out of the blue with a “quick question” about a draft contract. One of the most common “quick questions” we get are those asking us to “confirm” that some particular court or arbitration body would make the most sense for such
Our international litigation lawyers long ago developed template emails for responding to companies that write us about their China product quality problems. The below is the one we use for U.S. companies that write us with a China product quality problem and the contract provided us is not good at all. Most of the time
In the last few years, my law firm’s international dispute resolution team (of which I am a part) has seen a tremendous increase in cases involving individuals and companies and lawyers wanting to sue Chinese companies for a Chinese manufactured product that injured someone. The cases coming to our law firm typically involve one of
Every day for the last week I have gotten at least one email from a foreign company that paid money to a company in China and got literally nothing in return. The term for this is theft. This sort of thing is a given by Chinese companies and for why this is so prevalent lately
China presumes employers are more powerful than their employees and so it explicitly favors employees. For example, not only does the law permit employees to unilaterally terminate their employment contracts by giving notice of leaving (unless one of the very limited exception applies), employees also may terminate their employment contract and demand statutory severance for
Last fall, in U.S. Supreme Court to Rule on Important International Arbitration Issue, I wrote about an important international arbitration matter pending before the United States Supreme Court on whether foreign companies doing business in the United States can arbitrate a dispute with an American company. The specific issue was: Whether the New York Convention
On May 26, 2020, MTD Products Inc. (Petitioner) filed antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) petitions against Certain Walk-Behind Lawn Mowers from China and Vietnam. MTD produces lawn mowers that are sold under the Troy-Bilt, Bolens, Cub Cadet and Craftsman brands. Under U.S. trade laws, a domestic industry can petition the U.S. Department of Commerce
Way back in the pre-coronavirus days — October 30-2019 — in Do Not Let Force Majeure be a Major Force In Your China Contract, we did a post warning of force majeure provisions in contracts with Chinese companies. That post began with the following warning/joke; Pull out and look at your contract with your Chinese
A few days ago, California passed the first U.S. information security law specifically targeting the Internet of Things (or IoT). We wrote about the law, SB-327, about a year ago when it first passed. SB-327 has gotten relatively little press compared to California’s other pioneering data protection statute, the California Consumer Privacy Act. But when it
