product liability

Suing Chinese Companies for Product Liability

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

Free Product from China

How to Get FREE Product from China

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 employment lawyer

China Employee Lawsuits for Late Salary Payments

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

china law blog

Foreign Company International Arbitration

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

Force Majeure lawyers

Force Majeure in the Time of Coronavirus

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

stock png of soundwaves going into an ear

Pay Close Attention to California’s New IoT Law

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

Illegal transshipping false claims act

Illegal Transshipping/False Country of Origin — Help Us Help You Get Rich

Earlier this year, “Univar USA Inc. paid  U.S. $62.5 Million to Resolve Allegations that it Evaded $36 Million in Antidumping Duties on Imported Chinese Saccharin.”  My law firm profited handsomely from this case because we brought it to the government’s attention and then assisted on it. The United States Department of Justice describes this case

win spelled in scrabble pieces

Foreigners Win 68% of Cases in Beijing IP Court: How to Use This to YOUR Advantage

Many foreign IP owners doing business in or with China do not believe the Chinese court system works. They or their foreign lawyers therefore tend to choose foreign law and jurisdiction in their contracts. When this results in contracts that are unenforceable against a Chinese party, everyone blames the Chinese. The prophesy about the lack

International letters of credit

Good Contracts are Key, Corruption be Damned

Got an email the other day from a good-sized company the other day asking about the benefit of having manufacturing contracts with companies in countries like Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The email went something like this (I say “something” because I’ve changed it so nobody will ever be able to identify it): I am

China lawyers Korean lawyers

China’s Intellectual Property Courts: A Procedural Overview

— Protecting Innovation in an Innovative Way: What are China’s IP Courts? After decades of engagement between US and Chinese legal experts on reforming IP protection in mainland China, Chinese IP courts were first pioneered in 2014 in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou (see the National People’s Congress (NPC) Decision of Establishing Intellectual Property Courts in