The Municipality as Shareholder: Securities Litigation in the Age of Fiscal and Social Responsibility Securities litigation is often viewed as benefiting individual shareholders who have been harmed due to misstatements, omissions, negligence, or intentional acts of public companies. But the reality is that millions of others participate in the capital markets as employees of  municipalities and local government subdivisions—counties, cities, townships, school districts, fire and police departments and more—who act on behalf of these workers as shareholders in publicly traded...

Dos and Don’ts For Advertising On Buses And Other Municipal Owned Property This webinar will examine First Amendment jurisprudence as it applies to advertising on buses and other municipally owned property including bus stops, street furniture, subways, and airports.  The webinar will provide practical pointers for drafting constitutionally sound regulations for advertising on such municipally owned property.  While the First Amendment usually requires that non-commercial speech be treated more favorably than commercial speech, the reverse is often true when looking...

What Labor & Employment Attorneys Should Understand About Human Resources! Depending on the local government, the Human Resources Department may entail a variety of areas that need sound and practical advice from a Labor & Employment Attorney and knowing how to handle when the advice is not followed.  In local government, Human Resources has to perform a balancing act – balancing what the City Manager/Mayor wants for the organization and being fair to the employees.  There are other parties such...

Bankruptcy: Help Us Put the Pieces Together Bankruptcy cases can have implications for a City beyond the collection of revenue. When that happens, the attorneys in the City of Philadelphia Law Department’s Bankruptcy Unit rely heavily on the expertise of other members of the Law Department to issue spot, educate, marshal documents and more. Achieving this type of symbiosis at the very outset of a bankruptcy proceeding is critical. The presentation will provide a brief overview of bankruptcy basics, review...

Public Records Responses: Then and Now Hilary Ruley has worked in Baltimore’s Public Records Response process for over 15 years.  In this presentation, Hilary will discuss key and current legal cases on body cameras.  This presentation will also discuss video redaction and some of the practical challenges of being an attorney involved in the public records process. Speaker: Hilary Ruley & Jen Snyder

Back to Basics: Guide to Resolving Construction Claims The construction industry has faced many unique challenges since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. As the industry adjusts to the new “normal” way of working, it is important for construction project participants to maintain their focus on the basic techniques that are effective in managing construction risks inherent to every construction project. This session will bring participants “back to basics” and provide guidelines to apply for the mitigation and...

Preempting to Thwart Racial Justice CLE available to Kitchen Sink Subscribers and in some cases to others but fees may apply. This session builds on our spring webinar documenting the 2021 legislative session as a session like no other.  To recap, state legislatures continued to target local authority, but the disturbing trend that this webinar will focus on was the use of preemption to prevent or limit local jurisdictions from taking steps to pursue racial justice initiatives.  In direct reaction...

Affirmative Litigation – The Municipality as Plaintiff This presentation is a review of various major affirmative litigation activities by local governments, including false claims, video services, e-cigarettes, PFAS, climate change, and opioids. This presentation will also discuss causes of action, defenses, and case trajectories. Speaker: Erich Eiselt, Sara Gross & Michael Bologna

Herding Cats- Augmenting Animal Services in a Post-COVID World 95% of Americans now view pets as members of their family and animal services is evolving to reflect new community values and expectations, similar to the evolving role of policing. Best Friends staff with expertise in these issues will discuss empowering animal field services officers to be more responsive and efficient in the field, effective policies concerning dangerous dogs and reckless owners, community engagement of volunteers and legal frameworks to reduce...

Ethics: the Local Government Attorney’s Role as a Competent Advisor One of the primary functions and a day-to-day responsibility of a local government attorney is providing advice. All attorneys advise clients, but the advice a local government attorney gives the local government governing body, boards, commissions, and staff affects an entire community and in a broader sense, our society. This presentation examines the interplay of ABA Model Ethics Rules 1.1 (Attorney Competence) and 2.1 (Attorney’s Role as Advisor) and how...