Scamming, phishing, pharming, vishing -- people in the business world are well aware that hackers and other fraudsters have developed a myriad of schemes designed to obtain sensitive personal information and money. Every year, these schemes cause businesses to suffer significant financial losses. The FBI estimates that in 2020 business email...
The City of Milwaukee has sent its 2022 “Notice of Assessed Value – Real Property” to all City of Milwaukee property owners. Almost every year the City revalues properties, which is the case again for 2022 after having performed a maintenance assessment for 2021. The recently released 2022 assessments are effective as of January 1, 2022, and...
Many people dream of one day starting their own business, the attraction of doing so being unique to the individual. For some, the notion of being their own boss is sufficient to cause them to start looking at prospective office spaces. For others convinced by visions of the business quickly becoming wildly successful, the claim to a...
On Tuesday, November 16, 2021, litigation pending in several federal circuits regarding the federal vaccine/testing mandate described below was consolidated in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Below, we summarize the mandate, discuss the various court developments, and provide guidance as to steps employers could take while the...
The Consumer Price Index (or CPI) is a set of indexes generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) that measures “the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services.” Historically, CPI has been used in commercial real estate leases and ground leases “escalation clauses” or “index clauses” in an attempt to...
An essential tool in the rebuilding of our American economy is at serious risk as part of the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan being considered in Washington – and the damage will be felt in every state, city and town still reeling from the ravages of COVID-19. For the last 100 years, like-kind exchanges, which allow investors to defer taxes...
On April 28th, 2021, President Biden revealed a slew of tax proposals. One of these proposals involved curtailing the use of a long-standing planning tool -- the Tax Deferred Like-Kind Exchange. Flowing from Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, Section 1031 exchanges are a key component of the investment real estate market, especially for...
By: Timothy J. Feldhausen On March 23, 2021, the container vessel Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, grounded in the Suez Canal for nearly 5 days, blocking traffic through one of the busiest and most important commercial sea lanes in the entire world. The cost of this single incident is being measured in billions of...
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its grip on the country and appears to be entering a surge phase this winter, many commercial tenants are dealing with the uncertainty of the prolonged effect of both restrictive public health measures employed by local and state governments to combat the virus’ spread and also a general reduction in economic...
By: Ethan C. Geis and Michael Van Someren On September 1, 2020, the United States Department of Health and Human Services through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it was issuing a nationwide order temporarily halting certain residential evictions. (Order). The Order became effective beginning September 4, 2020 through...
